Business to Business Spotlight: Reaching B2B decision makers

I am pleased to bring you post #4 of our semi-regular industry spotlight series. This month we're looking at the B2B space, focusing specifically on where small business decision makers go for information on services and suppliers, and how this insight can help inform marketing strategies for your B2B clients.

To better understand the role of the Internet to small businesses, Google and Slack Barshinger surveyed purchase decision makers from 444 companies, ranging in size from 1 employee to 499 employees. The survey, conducted online from March 11-13, 2009, focused on finding answers to four main questions:

1. What is the role of the Web overall?
The Web plays a central role in small business owners' activities, whether it be solving business problems, researching business purchases, or paying for the purchases. Overall, 94% of respondents shared that they use the Internet for work-related activities.

2. What is the role of Search in finding suppliers?
Over 3/4 of respondents turn to search engines to find business suppliers, with 52% sharing that this is the first tool to which they turn. In addition 99% find search engines to be the most effective tool for finding suppliers.

3. How is Local Search used?
About 1 in 5 respondents use maps online to find suppliers. Of those who do, 90% go directly to a map site for their search, while 52% click on a map from a search result.

The majority of respondents, though, do not place a high importance on suppliers being local. Through qualitative interviews, we discovered that competitive pricing and availability were the most important to SMBs. Services that respondents feel are more important to be local are Professional Services (42% say it is important to be local), Contractors (38%), and Printing Services (24%).

4. What is the value of Social Media?
Respondents find business value in social media, with around 1/2 sharing that they use online forums, blogs, social networking site and video sites for business purposes. Video site usage ranges from finding customer feedback (30%), to finding competitor research (35%), to watching how-to videos (46%).

In addition, blogging participation more than doubled to 40% in 2009 (compared to 18% in 2008) and 40% of respondents maintain a social network profile for business reasons.

Conclusion
With the Internet playing a key role in small business owners' day-to-day problem-solving and decision making, it is important for your B2B clients to have a multi-faceted online marketing strategy.

To maximize reach on search engines, turn to tools such as the Search-based Keyword Tool and Wonder wheel. These tools can help you identify search queries at different stages of the purchase funnel, whether they be long-tail keywords entered by users who start their decision-making process on a search engine, or branded keywords entered by users looking for specific products or services.

Next, having your clients upload their business listings through the Local Business Center can cost-effectively capture traffic from users specifically searching for local vendors.

Finally, make the most of YouTube and the Google Content Network. Create a YouTube channel, upload a client's videos then drive traffic with Promoted Videos. Use Ad Planner to identify social networking sites within the Google Content Network that reach your target demographic.

Posted by Leslie Hernandez, B2B Marketing