We’re back from the BMA breakfast roundtable where our friends at Google gave a great overview of the State of B-to-B Search. A lot of good information was presented; here are some highlights:
- Large and small-business owners use search and social media more than you might expect. 64% of C-level executives conduct six or more searches per day to locate business information — and they conduct the searches themselves, choosing not to delegate the task.
- B-to-B searches on Google grew 139% since 2007.
- There are more than 1.5 million business searches daily on YouTube, making it the second most visited destination for business searches, behind Google.
- Small and medium-sized business owners are very involved with social media, with about half using blogs, wikis, Twitter and other social media channels for business purposes.
Roundtable questions from the audience focused on where search and social media belong in the sales funnel. The answer?: Google’s research shows that search has great impact high in the funnel — in the awareness phase — as well as further down at the point of decision and purchase. Their strongest recommendation is for a well integrated approach whereby off-line media are working with a strong online advertising strategy to drive search actions. We couldn’t agree more.
One last thought: The industry has shown that the business audience is there and the medium is currently under used in this setting. Now it is up to b-to-b marketers to catch up to to the practices of their consumer facing counterpoints.