Up-to-date Research Results on B2B Search (Finally!)

The results of a new study of business-to-business search and its role in purchase decisions were just released by Enquiro Search Solutions. This is an update of Enquiro’s 2004 study of B2B search. Here are some key findings:

• Vendor websites, along with word of mouth from a colleague or peer, are the top influencers in B2B buying decisions.
• General search engines follow closely behind, with Google being the first choice for 77.7% of business-to-business searchers.
• Of the B2B searchers surveyed, 74.4% clicked on an organic link, and the top four organic listings captured 52.6% of all clicks.
• Only 18.7% chose to click on a sponsored link.
• While12.2% clicked on the ads at the top of the search engine results rages (SERPs), only 6.5% clicked on those down the right side of the SERPs.

Some background

Back in the fall of 2004, Enquiro teamed up with MarketingSherpa to conduct what I believe was the first real research study of B2B search behavior. I can’t tell you how happy I was at the time to finally have some real data!

I’d been making recommendations to my marketing consulting clients and seminar attendees about the importance of being found at the top of the SERPs by prospective customers searching for companies, products or services. I was making these recommendations based on having witnessed the success of other B2B marketers in using search engine marketing (SEM) tactics to drive leads and sales. However, because my clients wanted to keep their results confidential, I wasn’t able to share the hard data (other than results from my own SEM efforts) that supported my recommendations.

Suddenly, with the release of the 2004 study, I had proof of my claims about how B2B searchers were actually behaving—and proof of the importance of organic or natural search engine optimization (SEO) in driving leads and sales. I must have referenced findings from the 2004 B2B search study a thousand times when consulting with clients and in my seminars and articles when discussing SEM and SEO.

Then, a year later, when the 2004 study data was starting to feel like old news (doesn’t a year sometimes feel like eons when it comes to the Internet?), I ran into Gord Hotchkiss, president and CEO of Enquiro, when we were both speaking at MarketingSherpa’s B-to-B Lead Generation Summit (later renamed MarketingSherpa’s B-to-B Demand Generation Summit) in San Francisco. I remember begging Gord at the time, “PLEASE repeat the B2B search research study!” I told him how important I thought the research was, and how I believed it would help position his company as a leader in search marketing. Now, two years later, my wish has come true!

Some of my thoughts about the new B2B search study results

Surprisingly, the current results are not that different from the original 2004 study results. For example, Google is still leading the search engine pack and B2B searchers are still much more likely to click on organic links on the SERPs.

However, the new study sliced the data according to the four stages of a prospect’s buying process: awareness, research, negotiation and purchase. It clearly shows the role that search plays in each of these stages in the B2B buying process.

The new study also sliced the data according to the respondent’s role in the purchase decision. These were identified as Economic Buyer, User Buyer, Technical Buyer and Coach Buyer. Enquiro plans to report further on these cuts of the data in a series of three white papers to be released later.

My initial conclusions and recommendations

Organic SEO continues to be a marketing best practice. And Google is still the search engine on which to concentrate your SEO efforts.

But if your website fails from the perspective of your human visitors, SEM won’t do you any good either. (Please help yourself to my Website design checklists for B2B marketers. It addresses optimizing your website for both the search engines and your human visitors.)

And while the report clearly shows that search marketing plays a very big role in the B2B buying process, it also confirms that more traditional off-line marketing communications continue to have a significant impact on buyers as well. So be sure to keep some of your marketing eggs in those off-line baskets too.

Get your copy of this new B2B search study, compliments of Enquiro and its research sponsors, Zoom Information, MarketingSherpa and Survey Sampling International.

Then subscribe to Enquiro’s newsletter so you’ll hear about the study’s additional white papers when they become available.