80% of Your New Customers Think They Found You
According to MarketingSherpa's Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007-08, 80% of decision makers who made a technology purchase believe that they found the vendor — as opposed to the vendor targeting them.
This is an amazing statistic that proves just how much the Internet has transformed B2B marketing. Nobody questions that the Internet transformed B2C industries, such as travel (Expedia), car buying (Edmunds), or house hunting (MLS and Zillow). I wouldn’t think of buying an airplane ticket or car or home without first doing my research online. It is clear that B2B buyers trained to search online for their personal purchases are now using the same strategies for their business purchases.
As a result, the B2B marketer’s job must change as well. Interruption-based techniques where the marketer searches for customers no longer work. What DOES work are techniques which smooth the process of customers searching for you. In other words, since the buyer controls their buying process, the B2B marketer’s job is to synchronize the company’s marketing (and to some extent sales) activities to the buyer’s process.
MarketingSherpa lists some tactics that are now critical to your marketing mix:
- SEO and pay per click management so prospects find you when they search
- White paper syndication on the third-party sites prospects use when researching
- PR, blogs, public speeches, awards – so your brand appears wherever prospects are reading
- Consistent brand awareness efforts so they’re aware of you when they make their short list
- Focus on client satisfaction to encourage referrals and word
To this list, I’d add landing page optimization so you have the best chance of converting prospects when they do find you. I’d also add post-click lead management: if buyers are seeking you out, you’ve got to be able to follow-up with the promptly and accurately.
Download a PDF excerpt of MarketingSherpa’s Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide.
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Hi Jon, I'm enjoying this site very much, thanks.
I am now using blogger for creating sites, including landing pages on the fly, and wufoo for form generation.
If you have time to review my business plan? thanks, dan
Posted by: dan | June 16, 2007 at 08:37 AM
Dan -- Thanks for coming by. You should try out Marketo for creating landing pages and forms on the fly. Much better than using blogger! Feel free to sign up for a 30 day free trial.
Posted by: Jon Miller | June 16, 2007 at 08:57 AM
That's interesting. I think in addition to these things, it's important that once they "find you" the website provides all the information they are looking for. Too many websites are passive and rely on the end user to ASK for more information - which they won't. They will find a website that gives them what they want.
Posted by: seo ruby | June 26, 2007 at 07:24 AM
Jon,
Thanks for this post...I posted this on an internal blog within quest...so if you get a trackback that you cant get to..you will know why.
It just goes to show that interruption based marketing is starting to fade
Posted by: Andrew Kordek | July 05, 2007 at 08:40 AM
Seems that during these tough "R" times, it would make a lot of sense to execute detailed Split Testing runs on different landing pages, USP's and track the subsequent lead/conversion numbers to the max?
Posted by: JNFerree | January 13, 2009 at 01:28 PM