Today, savvy business marketers are defining search marketing success not just in terms of pre-defined conversions… but rather, based on the value of multiple, desirable online actions.

That’s right — they are thinking beyond the white paper!

4 Questions To Help You Evaluate Search Marketing Value

I urge you to ask these four questions when considering how to evaluate your search marketing efforts:

1. What are the various actions prospects can take on your website?
2. Do these actions indicate some level of interest in your company; your products and services?
3. How might each of these actions relate to a prospect’s buying process?
4. Is there some marketing value (even if it is small) associated with each of these actions?

This is particularly important for B2B companies selling high consideration, complex products or services, and companies with long sales cycles. B2B marketers at these firms need to think in terms of engagement and relationship building — not simply registrations forms.

Consider All Website Actions

In addition to the obvious tasks (i.e. conversions) such as form completions,  evaluate all the other actions website visitors can take. For example, most business marketers would agree that there is definite value in getting a prospect to:

• View a product page
• Use an app such as a Dealer Finder, or a Product Selection Tool, or a calculator
• Access a client case study
• Read an analyst review related to your company
• Take a product tour
• Watch a demo

All of these actions are indeed valuable. All of these actions indicate interest. All of these actions involve some level of engagement.

et, most are not considered “conversions”, do not require a registration form (hopefully), and are not tracked nor evaluated in the vast majority of B2B search marketing programs.

Website Actions Provide Clues About The Buying Cycle

The website engagement process also provides clues as to where a prospect may be in the buying cycle.

For example:

• Early-buying-cycle prospects are in education mode. They are looking for general market information and basic industry knowledge. Assets that provide a good overview, or discuss broad market trends can be a great way to engage these visitors.
• Mid-cycle prospects who are already familiar with the industry, are typically evaluating options and vendors. At this stage, website information and downloadable assets like comparison papers or analyst evaluations are very helpful.
• Late-stage prospects are ready to select a vendor/partner and purchase. At this point, they are looking for specific information on packages and pricing, terms and conditions, and service contracts.

Business marketers, make sure your website offers information that is helpful and meaningful to prospects at all phases of the buying cycle. It is important to get your brand in front of potential customers early and often as they research, compare, select and purchase products and services.

Estimating Conversion Value

In terms of online registration forms and other conversions, typically B2B marketers start with the lifetime value of a customer and then work backward through the lead funnel to determine an estimated value.

For instance, the value of a white paper registration is probably based on:

• percentage of registrants who provide valid contact information
• percentage of these valid contacts who are target leads
• percentage of these target leads that are worthy of follow-up by your sales team
• then, high quality sales leads
• and finally… customers

The lead management and sales process described above can take months for many B2B firms.

Regardless of the time required, B2B search marketing leads can deliver big results.

Point in case: I work with a software firm that recently obtained a new customer. The initial sale was worth nearly half a million dollars. The origin of the contact was a $3.50 PPC click that resulted in a white paper download.

Estimating The Value Of Other Desirable Actions

Tracking and evaluating search-generated conversions can be difficult enough, but what about all those other online actions? We’ve determined that they do represent engagement and interest, and we know that these actions help prospects move through the buying process.

So, why wouldn’t you want to estimate the value? After all, getting prospects to take these steps is a direct result of your search marketing and website investment. But what’s the best way to estimate the value of all these possible website actions?

Here’s a crazy idea: Guess!

That’s right… estimate a small, but reasonable value associated with each web site action. Base it on other marketing efforts, if possible. Talk with your marketing team. Start with a very conservative value that everyone can agree on.

Ask yourself: what is it worth to your company to:

• Get your brand in front of a prospect (ppc ad impressions or organic listing)
• Have someone click through to your home page (or landing page)
• Go beyond this page and surf around your website
• Visit a product/services page
• View a case study
• View an online demo
• Interact with your Find a Dealer application

…you get the idea!

Perhaps a search engine impression is only worth a few cents. A search visitor is worth a few dollars. Getting the visitor to move beyond the landing page is worth even more; and viewing a product demo or accessing a case study – provides even more value yet.

I encourage you to assign small, estimated values to all of these actions – defined as goals or events via your analytics platform.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

We used to encourage online marketers to “think beyond the click”. Now it’s – “think beyond the conversion”.

B2B marketers should take these steps to estimate your true search marketing ROI:

• Make sure your website offers plenty of engagement options.
• Ensure that you are offering information and assets that aid all types of prospects across the entire buying cycle.
• Verify that you can isolate paid and organic search traffic in your analytics data.
• Track all desirable website actions using goals and events.
• Assign a small but reasonable estimated value to each action.
• Include the estimated value of all of these actions in your search marketing ROI calculation.

Tracking online conversions is important… but there’s more to the search marketing value equation.

Business Buying Is A Process

Think about your own experience — both as a consumer and, if applicable, as a business buyer. How do you use search engines? Do you only conduct a search only when you’re ready to choose a partner and purchase a product or service? Probably not.

In fact, market research shows that business buyers use search engines throughout their entire buying process, and we know that buyers rely on search heavily during their initial research phase.

Typical B2B Buying Process

But, let’s face it…. searchers engaged in general market research are not sales-ready-leads, are they?

Problem Or Opportunity?

Here’s a suggestion. Instead of viewing this as a problem, B2B marketers should view this as an opportunity; and use the situation to create a competitive advantage.

How?

• Utilize search marketing to reach all people conducting relevant searches
• Establish your brand as a leader in the market place
• Engage and educate prospects
• Proactively move them through their research and buying process.

I believe that B2B marketers need to find and reach prospects early and often. Don’t wait until they are ready to make a purchase. You will likely be too late!

At the point of purchase, a competitor has probably already engaged them in a “conversation” and established an online relationship.

Offer Engagement Choices

If the only call-to-action you present — in your ppc ads, on your landing pages, and across your website — is some version of “talk to a sales person” (examples include: Contact Us, Request a Quote, etc.) your lead volume and ROI are probably quite low.

Tip: I urge B2B marketers to offer multiple action options; and to provide information that appeals to prospects across every phase of the buying process.

The following assets are examples of what typically appeals to prospects at various buying phases:

Research phase

• Market overview and analysis
• Research studies

Product knowledge and comparison phase

• Product demo
•  Case studies
•  Product comparison charts

Vendor selection and purchase phase

• Request a quote
• View pricing options and contract terms

Measuring Results

The real challenge is how to estimate true marketing value and measure your search marketing results.

Tip: If you’re only assigning a value to sales-ready-leads, your ROI probably doesn’t look very good! Instead, I recommend that B2B marketers to assign an estimated value to all the steps in a typical buying process.

Ask yourself, what is it worth to have a prospect:

1. View your ad
2. Click-through to your website
3. Engage with the information on your site
4. View product/service information
5. Download an asset
6. Request contact

Think Like Your Buyer

Don’t be short-sighted and unrealistic about your search marketing goals. Think like a searcher and a prospective buyer. Embrace the way your prospects actually use search engines.

There is a real opportunity for B2B marketers to establish a competitive advantage by (1) establishing your brand as a trusted partner, and (2) by interacting early and often with prospects as they move through their buying process.

Then, when prospects are truly ready to become a sales-ready-lead… YOU will be the obvious choice.

Today, we’ll continue our market analysis with a look at how B2B search marketers are scoring and tracking leads, interacting with their sales teams, and dealing with lengthening sales cycles.

B2B Sales Cycles Are Lengthening

When Marketing Sherpa recently asked B2B organizations what marketing challenges are the most pertinent to their organizations, 41% selected a lengthening sales cycle.

The chart below shows B2B marketers’ responses when asked: How long is your sales cycle (from first inquiry to purchase)?

• The vast majority of business marketers (90% of all organizations surveyed) are dealing with a sales cycle in excess of one month.
• 60% report a sales cycle of 4 months or longer, and
• 10% of B2B marketers are managing a purchase process that is greater than 1 year.

In general, sales cycles are longer for marketers working at larger companies than small businesses. Also, not surprisingly, large (higher priced) deals take longer to close than small, lower-priced deals.

Sales Stages Tracked

As purchase times lengthen, B2B search marketers are putting more emphasis on defining and tracking leads through the sales funnel.

It’s no longer sufficient to simply track organic and paid search conversions – marketers are now focusing on what happens after the initial search-generated conversion.

According to Marketing Sherpa, here are the most common 8 stages tracked by B2B firms:

1. Online lead (typically defined as: registration form completed)
2. Validated lead
3. Phone call-ready lead
4. Phone-validated lead
5. Sales-team-ready
6. Sales-team-validated
7. Active (i.e. forecasted lead)
8. Sale/Customer

In general, larger organizations have a more defined, granular sales funnel – tracking all the steps listed above. Many smaller B2B firms have simpler sales processes and track less overall phases.

Regardless, there is still significant room for improvement, since approximately 22% of all B2B firms surveyed didn’t have a well-defined sales funnel at all.

B2B Lead Scoring

Of course, most B2B search marketers are tracking organic and paid conversions (for example, volume of online registrations and cost/registration).

But now, in addition to this basic analysis, business marketers are looking at lead scoring factors, and tracking these factors over time.

The most common B2B lead scoring factors include:

• # website visits over time
• level of website activity/inactivity
• company size
• budget
• purchase timeframe

This type of ongoing, detailed lead analysis enables B2B firms to be smarter about how to follow-up and nurture potential customers, investing limited sales and marketing resources where most likely to pay off and generate sales.

Integration With Sales

As sales cycles lengthen and as B2B marketers become more sophisticated in tracking lead quality over time… not all search-generated leads are immediately (or ever) passed to the sales team.

Sales and marketing teams are grappling with the question: just how much information is required?

Basic contact information

Many marketers still employ a fairly simple approach when determining which leads to forwarded to sales.

• 80% of B2B marketers polled forward leads to sales as long as the most basic contact info has been collected (for example: first and last name; email address; company).
• Typically, this contact info is collected via a website registration form or a phone call.

Optional, additional lead qualifiers

• 42% B2B marketers only pass leads to sales if the lead has indicated a valid business need
• 28% only pass if the lead has identified themselves as a decision maker
• 25% also analyze scoring factors such as email opens, content downloads, website visits, etc. – before deciding if the lead should be forwarded to sales.

Good News For Search Marketers

In my opinion, all of these market trends are good news for B2B search marketers! Why? As we become more informed about lead quality, we become more capable of demonstrating and improving search marketing ROI.

I urge you to work with your clients’ sales teams, or your internal sales team, to establish a solid search marketing lead-quality feedback loop.

Ask yourself (or your CMO), ultimately, what is more important:

How many searchers “convert” and complete a registration form, or

How many searchers become long-term, valuable customers?

When you let ROI drive your search strategy, you may be surprised… the search marketing program that drives the most registrations (“search leads”) may not be the program the ultimately delivers customers and sales.

1. Generating high quality leads
2. Generating a high volume of leads, and
3. Dealing with lengthening sales cycles

This column explores how business marketers are tackling these tough issues in terms of their search marketing efforts.

B2B Budgets Continue To Shift Toward Online Marketing

What are B2B marketers doing to combat today’s challenges? Clues might be found in how they allocated their 2010 budgets.

Not surprisingly, and according to the same Marketing Sherpa Report, four of the top five spending categories are related to online marketing.

2010 B2B Budgets, Top Categories

• Website design, management and optimization (13% total marketing budget)
• Email marketing (12% marketing budget)
• SEO (11%)
• PPC (9%)

In fact, the only traditional marketing effort in a top five budget position is Trade Shows (at 12% total marketing budget). This is a significant change from just a few years ago, when business marketers were spending most of their budgets on industry events, public relations, direct mail, and print.

These B2B budget trends clearly reflect marketers’ goal of generating a large volume of high quality leads.

Marketers are turning to cost-effective channels such as email and search — ideal for lead generation because volume and cost are relatively easy to control, and marketers are working on optimizing their websites –  for both search engines and visitors.

Website Improvements, A Critical Part Of The Equation

As a B2B search marketer, I am very encouraged to see website design and optimization at the very top of the investment list! Savvy marketers realize that getting prospects to your website is only half the battle (and frankly, probably the easy part).

The harder part of the equation is getting clickers’ attention, motivating them to engage with your website, offering information and assets that are unique and truly valuable. Other challenges include making website interactions as fast and easy as possible, providing clear, compelling paths to conversion, and finally– gaining personal/business contact information for your lead follow-up and nurturing program.

Bottom line: PPC and SEO are only part of the equation. Advertising and optimization alone won’t improve your marketing ROI no matter how much traffic you drive.

Search Marketing Generates The Bulk Of B2B Leads

The balancing act between lead quantity and lead quality is a common marketing challenge, and is of particular interest to search marketers. Why? Because the majority of B2B leads are generated via search!

This chart shows the relative volume of B2B leads generated by various search sources and the lead quality associated with each of these methods.

SEO Delivers Superior Lead Volume & Quality

In terms of volume, B2B marketers report that the largest quantity of leads (coming from a single source) is generated from organic search (i.e. SEO efforts), followed by Google AdWords, followed by paid ads on other search networks (such as Bing/Yahoo and AOL), and lastly — paid listings on vertical engines (including: medical, legal, business, engineering and science).

Furthermore, regarding quality, B2B marketers feel that, in general, SEO generates a higher percentage of high quality leads than paid search advertising.

Search Marketing For Lead Generation

Search marketing and lead generation go hand-in-hand for B2B marketers. Recent industry reports indicate that:

• Search marketing is the #1 driver of B2B leads.
• SEO is particularly effective at generating a large volume of high-quality leads.
• B2B marketers continue to shift funds to focus on website improvements and online marketing efforts such as SEO and PPC.

In my next column, we’ll explore industry trends around lead quality, and will focus on B2B search marketing combined with lead tracking, scoring and nurturing.

1. Generating high-quality leads (chosen by 78% of respondents)
2. Generating a high volume of leads (chosen by 44%)

Balancing lead quality and lead quantity is a significant challenge for nearly all B2B marketers. How do you find the “sweet spot” for your company?

PPC Advertising: A Cost-Effective Way to Generate Inquiries

It’s common for B2B marketers to utilize PPC advertising to generate online inquiries. Typically, only a portion of these inquires are deemed to be of sufficient quality to be entered into the company’s CRM system as “leads” which will be proactively nurtured and contacted. A certain percentage of these leads will become high-quality leads actively worked by the sales force, and ultimately a few will become customers and sales.

Controlling Costs

Every campaign should be managed to maximize ROI, and proactively controlling costs is a critical component of this formula.

There are many elements of a PPC program that impact cost/spend. For example, keyword scope, match type, ad relevance, day-parting and ad distribution all influence the amount of money an advertiser spends.  However, the two most obvious cost factors associated with every PPC campaign are bids and budget.

Let’s take a look at each…

What is the value of a click?

As a B2B advertiser, you must determine (or estimate) the value of a PPC click. Initially, it’s important to understand the value of a PPC click in general… but ultimately, you will want to understand the value of a click for each keyword, or group of keywords, for each search network.

The best way to determine acceptable click value is to start with the value of a customer; preferably the life-time value of a customer. Life-time value takes into account things like: set-up costs, average duration of relationship, churn rate, average sales value per year, discounting, etc.

By starting with this customer value metric, you can back-into the maximum amount you should pay for a click. This graphic (provided by Google) shows a typical process for determining click value by working backward from customer value.

In the above scenario, the B2B marketer must estimate the following metrics as a paid search prospect moves through the sales process:

• % of PPC clicks that become registrants
• % of registrants that become leads
• %  leads that become high-quality leads, and
• % high-quality leads that become customers.

This may not be easy to do, and it certainly is not an exact science… but it’s very important that every marketer tie PPC click value to customer value. Why?  Marketers need to set bids (for each keyword) at a level that ensures an acceptable profit margin. This is your “profit maximizing bid level”.

Spend, and the Point of Diminishing Returns

Once you’ve determined a reasonable click value, how do you determine the right level of spend, or your optimal budget?

With PPC advertising, the more you spend, the more traffic, inquiries and leads you receive…  Or not!

Savvy B2B advertisers realize that there is a point of diminishing returns; a point where increasing your budget does not deliver the expected increase in visitors, inquiries or leads.

The only way to find your optimal budget is to test… and test results are influenced by many, many things including campaign optimization, website conversion rate and competitive market conditions.

Many marketers (especially direct marketers) will invest as much money as possible as long as the click costs and resulting cost/lead generates an acceptable profit margin. This is a great approach, as long as you can cash flow the required PPC investment. The PPC cash flow equation can be a challenge for companies with very long sales cycles.

Can you spend money on PPC-generated inquiries today realizing that only a small portion of this investment will generate customers and revenue many  months from now?

Managing Budgets

Budgets apply to an entire campaign and determine how often your ads are eligible to be shown (i.e. potential market exposure for the keywords in each campaign.)

Daily budgets allow you to prioritize and allocate your investment. For example, B2B advertisers should separate best performing keywords into separate campaigns and set daily budgets high enough to capture the maximum amount of ad impressions, clicks and conversions.

Managing Bids

Whereas daily budget determines how often your ad can potentially show each day, your bids play a major role in determining specific ad position relative to your competition.  (Ad position is based on CPC bid multiplied by Quality Score.)

I recommend that you manage bids at the keyword level. This gives you a very precise, granular method of controlling click costs based on ROI. You can optimize/estimate keyword bids using Google’s bid simulator and Traffic Estimator tools.

Don’t forget, along with bids, you now need to proactively manage Quality Score. Bids and QS go hand-in-hand:

• High quality keywords cost less for each click.
• High quality ads can show in a better position without costing more.
• High quality keywords allow for more clicks within your budget.

Finding Your Sweet Spot

B2B search advertisers must engage in a constant, ongoing process of measuring and managing results associated with keyword bids and campaign budget levels.

• Proactively manage the cost of each keyword click based on ROI.
• Use budgets to ensure that you are getting the maximum volume of clicks available in the marketplace at this optimal click cost, and
• Continually measure the ultimate value each click returns.

Find your PPC sweet spot!

Quality Score algorithms

In simple terms, ad position is primarily determined by how much an advertiser is willing to pay for each click (i.e. your bid) and the popularity, or click-through-rate (CTR), associated with your ad. Relevancy also plays a role… and very poor landing pages can lead to penalties.

More information can be found here on Google Quality Score, and Yahoo Quality Index. Details aside, Quality Score causes most advertisers to try and maximize response, or click-through-rate.

Note: Not surprisingly, this methodology also increases the click charges that go into the pockets of search networks!

Consumer traffic vs business buyers

I recently participated on a search advertising panel at an industry event, and had a very interesting discussion with other marketers in the room about Quality Score. I noticed that the majority of retail marketers seemed to agree that maximizing Quality Score made a lot of sense and that high scores did indeed generate improved PPC results.

I suppose that when you’re selling consumer products online — increasing PPC traffic (and getting the maximum amount of clicks for the money) does translate into more sales, revenue and hopefully profit. But for many B2B firms, I just haven’t found that this is the case. Why?

A specific target audience

Most business marketers are not necessary trying to reach a lot of people. Typically they have a very specific audience in mind, and can define buyers (and influencers) based on geography, type of company, size of company, and specific business needs.

For example, I work with many technology companies. The fact is, not every firm selling enterprise software is trying to reach every IT employee in the country. Rather, they know exactly what their buyer profile looks like and what a typical buying process entails.

B2B advertisers are usually very concerned about the specific characteristics of each PPC clicker. Most business marketers — especially those selling complex products or services with long sales cycles — would prefer a few high quality leads versus a huge volume of visitors.

High click costs and limited budgets

This need for “quality clicks” is even more pronounced when B2B advertisers are operating in markets with very high click costs and/or have limited budgets. For instance, if you’re paying $15.00 a click, a popular ad with a high CTR can get real expensive, real fast.

No doubt about it, increasing click-through and improving Quality Score/Index will deliver better ad position and usually more traffic for the money relative to your competitors. But, B2B marketers must ask themselves the following questions:

• Based on my budget and current click costs, can I afford to maximize clicks?
• What would a high CTR require in terms of a monthly PPC budget?
• Does an improved Quality Score justify the associated cost?

Tips on PPC targeting

All advertisers should be deploying these PPC best practices to accurately target your audience:

• Select very specific keywords and long tail keyword phrases
• Utilize keyword match-types
• Deploy negative keywords
• Test geo-targeted ads (even for national brands)
• Implement day-parting

But what if this isn’t enough? What if you’re still paying for PPC visitors who don’t convert (i.e. PPC visitors who don’t become leads and customers)?

Pre-qualifying ad copy?

Many B2B marketers deploy a strategy that involves “pre-qualifying” ad text. With this approach, you use your very precious, limited ad space to actually specify who should (and shouldn’t) click on your ads.

For example, here is a successful ad for an IT outsourcing provider. This ad has a high CTR and Quality Score:

IT Outsourcing Find out if IT outsourcing is right for your company

Compare this to a much more specific ad with pre-qualifying text:

Nationwide IT Outsourcing

Serving firms with 20 – 300 users. Take self assessment survey.

The second ad actually specifies the target audience. It has a significantly reduced click-rate and a lower Quality Score, but a much higher conversion rate, and ultimately a better ROI.

Summary

Is ad popularity an appropriate metric for your firm? Can you actually afford to maximize click-through-rate? Does increased traffic lead to improved search advertising ROI? Each marketer must test and measure results using various campaign optimization philosophies.

If there is a fairly direct relationship between ad position, traffic and ROI, by all means focus on improving Quality Score. Get the best ad position and the most visitors for the money. If not, stick with a ROI-focused program and test techniques such as pre-qualifying ad copy.

Just remember: don’t keep ‘em guessing… tell them why they should click on your ad!

The value vs. hassle equation

Getting the “what” right is a crucial part of any successful B2B search marketing program. Marketers must truly understand what their buyers are looking for in order to offer something of value. And more importantly, the perceived value of what is being offered must be greater than the time, effort and risk associated with the act of completing the registration form.

I’m sure you have personally experienced a situation where this isn’t the case. Have you ever been asked to complete a long, complex registration form just to access a mere marketing brochure? I bet you bailed before you hit the download button! Not surprisingly, these types of programs have very low conversion rates because the value of what’s offered doesn’t justify the effort required.

What are business buyers looking for?

So, what do business buyers want when they go online? According to a B2B survey conducted by Enquiro and Marketing Sherpa, buyers are primarily looking for:

1. Pricing information
2. Product information
3. Reviews and comparisons

B2B marketers should:

• Evaluate your website
• Review your search ads and landing

Most importantly, you should take a look at the information and assets you’re offering behind your registration forms. Are you giving prospects what they’re actually looking for?

Sharing pricing information online

I realize that many B2B firms do not provide prices online. This is especially true of companies selling complex, high-consideration, expensive products and services. Even so, don’t ignore prospects’ needs altogether. Ask yourself: What information can we share? Ideas include:

• A summary of your company’s pricing methodology
• Information on general service/product packages and price ranges
• A comparison chart showing how your pricing approach stacks up against the competition

Prospects appreciate any type of helpful information, especially related to pricing, as they explore options and evaluate vendors.

Value varies by phase

What searchers find valuable varies depending upon where they are in the buying process.

In the early (awareness) phase, buyers are looking for insightful, educational information. Downloadable assets such as a market overview, a summary of emerging market trends, and industry research are very helpful.

As buyers move into the research and comparison phases, they start to formalize their needs and evaluate alternatives. Product information related to features and functionality, technical spec sheets, buyer guides and comparison charts are valuable.

Finally, in the negotiation and purchase phases buyers are analyzing their specific choices and evaluating risks and consequences. At this point, purchase check-lists, pricing information, and service agreements are useful.

What?! You’re going to contact me?

Your prospects may not be as naïve as you think. Based on a study by Google and TechTarget many IT buyers realize that companies they register with will likely be contacting them.

• 25% of online registrants expect to be contacted by a sales person via email
• 14% are expecting a sales-related phone call.

Why is this significant? Marketers must ensure that what is offered in exchange for contact information is unique, valuable and (in the registrant’s mind) worth the perceived value or inconvenience of a probable sales contact. Searchers will be thinking, “Is this white paper worth a sales call?”

Think like your customer

To ensure success, B2B search marketers must understand customers’ needs and give prospects exactly what they’re looking for online. Provide valuable information and assets that are aligned with buyers’ needs at each phase of the purchase process, and keep the complexity of registration forms reasonable based on the perceived value received.

Think like a customer! And then directly align your search marketing program with their needs.

Today, I’ll cover another (free) tool that can help you understand your customers’ entire search process, and the best ways to capitalize on this data to improve marketing results.

Expand your keyword focus

One of the most common mistakes B2B search marketers make is researching only those keywords that are directly related to their company. A tremendous amount of time and energy goes into analyzing keywords associated with their brand, products and services.

Perhaps it is not intuitive to think beyond your own keywords. But, marketers should really be asking, “What else are my customers looking for, and how can I address their broader set of needs?”

Understanding the relationship between searches related to your company and all the other things your prospects look for – can provide some valuable marketing clues.

The search funnel

One of my favorite tools, the search funnel, is part of Microsoft AdCenter Labs. This type of tool shows what people searched for either immediately before (incoming) or after (outgoing) a specific query.

Here is what the Microsoft Search Funnel interface looks like:

Search funnel data

Let’s take a look at some search funnel data related to Verizon, a company regularly listed as one of the largest B2B advertisers.

By running a series of search funnel queries for outgoing searches, you can see that the most common search made immediate after a query for “verizon” is a search for “verizonwireless”. This makes sense. People start with the brand name, and then move to a search for the service.

Perhaps more insightful is the data for a search oerformed after “verizonwireless”. Amazingly, four out of five of the most popular next searches are for a competitive service. This type of data really verifies that prospects do indeed use search engines for product comparison purposes.

How can a marketer capitalize on this? Think about how to best meet peoples’ needs as they move through their search process. What about promoting a wireless service comparison chart in your PPC ads and on your landing page? This clearly seems to be what most Verizon wireless prospects are looking for. This type of marketing message anticipates prospects’ needs and will likely boost response and ultimately, conversion rate.

Another example

Let’s review some search funnel data for the popular small business accounting software, Quickbooks.

By looking at outgoing search data, you can see that people who search for “quickbooks” are also interested in these four things:

1. Learning about the parent company (Intuit)
2. Understanding the differences between various Intuit products (Quicken, QuickBooks, Quick Books Pro)
3. Finding where to purchase the product (Staples, Office Depot, Office Max)
4. Comparing Quickbooks to competitive software (Peachtree)

How could a marketer capitalize on this? My first thought is that the PPC ads and corresponding landing page for the keyword “quickbooks” should include items like: a table that allows people to quickly compare features and functions of various Intuit products, a competitive comparison chart, a retailer locator function, and a link to information on Intuit.

Capitalize on the search process

Searching is (usually) a process. This is especially true for B2B companies and firms with long, complex sales cycles.

Search funnel data can be used to anticipate needs, provide truly helpful information, and associate your brand with prospects’ needs as they move through the process.

Marketers must strive to learn more about how their customers search. In addition to keywords directly related to your company… what are your prospects looking for?

Today, I’ll discuss several easy-to-use tools that provide meaningful insights into your customers’ needs, emerging market trends, and competitive market threats.

Market research at a price you can afford!

Web analytics tools provide insight into the people who have already found your website. Alternatively, search engines can tell you about the entire online population. In fact, this collective set of data can be viewed as a gigantic, publicly available research study; your very own focus group. And all at no charge!

Every year, marketers spend millions of dollars on research in order to determine how customers think; what they are looking for; and how people view a company relative to the competition. I propose that many of these insights can be gleaned from (free) search data.

Customer needs and terminology

One of the most interesting things you can learn from search engines is how people actually think about (and search for) your products and services. A very simple but effective tool is Google Trends. Marketers are able to analyze relative search volume, for multiple queries, in various locations, over time.

So, for example, a B2B network provider might want to determine the specific language used most often when prospects search. Perhaps the marketing department is focused on messages related to “high speed internet” but the sales force suspects that more people think in terms of “broadband services”.

A simple query in Google Trends will quickly indicate exactly what people are looking for. This chart shows relative US search volume for these two queries over the past 12 months. It also indicates major news events (the letters in the boxes) that might influence general interest and search volume.

We can quickly see that significantly more people are looking for information related to “broadband” than high speed internet. This knowledge can help marketers craft meaningful messages and run campaigns that are better aligned with customer needs and terminology.

The analysis can be further expanded upon by using numerous, free, keyword research tools. For example, the Google Search-based Keyword Toolallows a marketer to enter a relevant website URL or a target keyword and receive many more related search phrases.

Entering “business broadband” returns these additional search queries (and more) with relative estimated monthly search volume:

This data reflects how customers think and specifically what they are looking for. Marketers can utilize this information to better align marketing messages (both online and off) with customer terminology.

New market trends

Search tools can also be used to identify market trends and competitive threats. For instance, let’s analyze search queries related to the business networking service, Linked In. Take a look at search volume for “linked in” in the US from 2004 to 2009:

Virtually unheard of in 2004, and with only minimal interest in ‘05 and ‘06, the popularity of Linked In has skyrocketed since 2007. Any company even remotely associated with the business-networking industry should (at a minimum) be aware of, and hopefully capitalizing on, this phenomenon.

This example shows how search engines can provide early clues to changing behavior. Marketers must ask themselves how to best capitalize on this knowledge. What does the enormous popularity of Linked In mean to your business? How could you be using this service with respect to your marketing efforts, sales contacts, suppliers, partners and current customers?

Competitive threats

Lastly, search data provides insights into current and emerging competitive threats. Let’s compare the relative interest in various small business accounting packages. We’ll look at US search volume over several years for queries such as: Peachtree, QuickBooks, and Microsoft Dynamics.

At a glance, we can see that the QuickBooks and Peachtree brands have a similar level of search activity (with QuickBooks being slightly more popular). Microsoft Dynamics is significantly less popular and really didn’t become a competitive factor until mid-2005.

I recommend that B2B marketers use monitoring tools (a very simple option is Google Alerts) to keep track of news events related to current and potential competitors and periodically compare search volume to determine growing or waning market interest.

This type of analysis can be conducted on competitive company names as well as competing product and service brands. Search data can be analyzed for a specific city, metro area, state, country, or globally. Trends can be viewed across many years or behavior can be analyzed on an annual basis.

Mine the gold

Search tools provide insights into actual, real-time online behavior. B2B marketers who capitalize on this gold mine of knowledge can better align marketing messages with specific customer needs — thus, increasing response rate and improving overall marketing results.

What you can learn from the hundreds of millions of searches that take place each day?

I contend that there is an optimal lead cost for every company. Establishing the right cost-per-lead model involves testing the market relationship between volume and cost… and ultimately must be driven by ROI.

Continually reducing cost-per-lead

Many B2B search marketing programs are designed to drive prospects to online contact or registrations forms. A common way to manage these campaigns is to drive cost/registration lower and lower, over time. Of course, one must ask: what is happening to volume with this strategy? How many potential registrations are being left on the table?

The cost/volume relationship

Undoubtedly, there is a relationship between lead cost and lead volume, but typically it is not linear. Let’s use a B2B pay-per-click (PPC) campaign as an example.

If 50 leads per month cost $2,500 ($50/lead) twice as many leads will not necessarily cost $5,000 (still $50/lead). It is common for lead cost to increase as investment increases. Why? With a very small budget you can milk all possible efficiencies out of a PPC campaign. As spend grows, budgets and bids are increased and a wider keyword net is cast. All of this will likely generate more leads but at a higher overall, average cost/lead.

The marketing efficiency curve

Each marketer must test this “PPC efficiency curve”, understanding the volume/cost relationship for their particular market. As campaigns are being optimized, data is been gathered, and marketers must analyze their options.

For example, would you rather have 100 leads per month at an average cost of $50/lead, or 150 leads per month at an average cost of $80? True: $80 is more expensive than $50 — but, depending on factors such as lead-to-sale ratio and the average profit margin associated with a sale, an eighty dollar lead might be the best choice. In fact, a savvy marketer might be willing to spend much more per lead, based on ROI.

Finding the optimal lead cost

Marketers who expend the time, energy and effort required to estimate the value of an online lead have a big advantage over their competition when navigating the marketing efficiency curve. Instead of focusing solely on driving cost/lead down, these savvy marketers focus on maximizing lead volume at an acceptable (profitable) cost/lead.

Where is the sweet spot for your company? I urge B2B marketers to test the market and find the optimal balance between lead volume and lead cost, based on ROI.