Modern B2B Marketing
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June 15, 2007
80% of Your New Customers Think They Found You
Posted by Jon Miller
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.
Sponsored by: Get a 30 Day Free Trial of Marketo’s Pay Per Click Software.
Jon Miller said on June 16, 2007 at 8:57 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.
My Educated Guess – Technology Marketing Answers – TechTarget.com said on June 19, 2007 at 7:37 am
IT Marketing in a Brave New World
In one of my recent posts, I spoke of a shift in control within the IT purchasing relationship from vendor to buyer and that successful marketing involves acknowledging this and aligning your marketing efforts to support this shift. New research releas…
seo ruby said on June 26, 2007 at 7:24 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.
Andrew Kordek said on July 5, 2007 at 8:40 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
JNFerree said on January 13, 2009 at 1:28 pm
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?
dan said on June 16, 2007 at 8:37 am
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