What are two of the top ways potential buyers find out about new software, hardware or services?
They Google for information, and they ask their colleagues and peers. Research in 2008 from ITSMA and The Marketing Practice back this up in concrete terms.
Relationship management and account-based marketing programmes are important as I’ve covered in previous posts, and are an important central platform in your lead generation. They are also extremely useful when looking to influence colleagues and peers both within and intra-organisation.
But what about Google? Technology firms, considering the market they are in, can be woeful at appearing in the search engine rankings. Research consistently shows that when people want to find out about something, they Google it.
Bear in mind this recent research from Think Eye Tracking. It would appear, if you’re not on the top page, you might as well have just fallen off the face of the earth.
Think Eye also says “when asked afterwards what they would normally do when they couldn’t find their desired search result on the first page of Google, 87% respondents replied that they would modify the search terms or refine the search by category. 97% of people tested answered that Google was the search engine they most commonly used and out of those people, 87% stated they wouldn’t bother using anything else.”
When considering go to market strategies and campaigning, B2B marketers simply must consider their organic Google page rankings. You don’t want to generate a lot of interest in what you do, only to find that your competitor comes up number one on the rankings whilst you languish on page 6. And sponsoring the keywords through Google’s advertising programme just isn’t enough.
There’s a lot of unncessary confusion around web 2.0. Online communities, wikis, blogs, podcasting…the list goes on. Most sensible marketers say to me, “but my target market doesn’t comment on blogs” and they are absolutely right.
But there is a danger of missing the point here. Your target market may not be commenting on blogs, but your target market is very probably Googling you and search terms related to issues they are having that you can solve.
To get inbound leads from the web, you need to get as high as possible up the organic rankings for your chosen search terms. To do this, you need to contribute to the debate in your area, online. You need to get out and do this online as well as offline, to cater for different tastes. Think of it as journalism - where you control what the article says. Make your articles interesting and get out there and comment in influential places.
3 comments
I think some people still struggle with the idea of a CIO sitting at their computer and typing ’service oriented architecture’ into Google (or, more specifically, ‘SOA success’, ‘SOA failure’, ‘SOA SAP’ or ‘SOA Tibco’…).
But we’ve seen that that’s exactly what they are doing (in the interviews for our decision-maker research, Google came up time and again, over and above any specific vendor sites, as the internet source for information on new challenges).
And if you type ’service oriented architecture’ into Google, just two vendors appear (can anyone name the biggest two software companies in the world?). The rest of the list is made up of Wikipedia, a couple of blogs, a free articles site from a speaker/consultant, and a Google book search online preview of ‘Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture’.
I’ve had a few conversations recently with senior sales and marketing people in major IT companies who have commented on the surprising number of ITTs they recieve, unsolicited, via their websites.
Major Government departments, it seems, are willing to attach briefs for significant IT projects to simple contact forms and send to addresses like enquiries@
I don’t understand it; instinct tells me it should never be that simple. But it very definitely does happen. We can never be sure where they first heard of the company or how they found the site but the above suggests, unless they have a friend in the know, Google is the most likely source.
Perhaps it is time for vendors to start putting a “Where did you hear about us?” box on their contact forms.
Any let’s not forget about the 2nd half of the answer; senior people consult their colleagues and direct reports.
There remains an obsession in some quarters with only communicating with c-level audiences. Forgetting the very people who are their primary source of influence.
Planning communications top down and from the middle up will deliver the best results, but remember the audience will respond to different messages, often packaged in different ways.
Clive
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