A recent statistic from a Marketing Sherpa survey has been noted by many blogs already, but it struck me as so powerful I had to share my two cents.
1,038 B2B Marketers involved in software, hardware and technology were surveyed by Marketing Sherpa about what works and what doesn’t in the world of lead generation. When asked about the purchases or vendors they have hired over the past 12 months, 80% claimed that they found their vendors on their own. They think they found you.
Google was the number one discovery tool mentioned, with 83% of those surveyed claiming they always use Google in their search efforts. A variety of other sources were also cited, including vendor websites and analysts, but the other leading paid search vendors (Yahoo and MSN, at 14% and 5% respectively) brought up the rear on the list.
How about this, though — I say they only think they found you.
The obvious correlation is to paid search advertising through Google Adwords. They may think they found you after doing a search on Google and clicking on one of your ads, but we all know that they wouldn’t have even seen the ad if you hadn’t put it there in the first place. You have the cost per click to prove it. And if you’re smart, you are tracking the ad groups and keywords they clicked on all the way through the sales cycle so you can adjust your spend in favor of the areas driving the most revenue – because it is not always going to be the same as the ones that are driving the most clicks.
It gets more tricky when you think about natural search and public relations. Have you ever done a search on your own company name and been shocked by what comes up? Sure, your website is there, but sometimes it isn’t even the first listing. Press releases are big, both your own as well as anyone you have ever done business with. If anyone from your company has ever been interviewed or contributed articles to an online publication those listings are probably there. Blog entries are becoming a huge source of online content that the search engines are indexing. Resumes of past employees. Mentions of your company on message boards (hopefully lauding your great customer service rather than complaining about you). The list goes on.
PR or online marketing spend is easy to cut because so much of the return on investment cannot be easily quantified. Certainly, with tools like Salesforce.com it gets a bit easier to credit the appropriate marketing campaigns with the leads they bring in, and then track those leads from the nurturing process all the way through the sale. It’s much harder to quantify the value of that blog entry or press release, however, so they become easy prey for the budgetary knife. And yet, with more and more people subscribing to things like Google Alerts on topics of interest as well as blogs or RSS feeds the impact of content like this is getting bigger than ever. Just look at the numbers! 80%!
So, my advice is this. Blog with a tool like this one (Typepad). Publicize the blog with a tool like Feedburner. Post to other peoples blogs. Optimize your website for natural search (get some great tips from an excellent podcast called The SEO Advisor which can also be found on iTunes). Investigate paid search. Digg it. Do regular press releases, and optimize your posting with text-rich links to content on your website and by doing it someplace like newsforce. Do everything you possibly can to get your company name out there, even if you are hesitant to spend marketing budget on areas where ROI is harder to measure. Your prospects are out there looking for you, so let them think they found you.
Just make sure that you are hiding in plain sight.
