The Influence Index

110694 Resource 102363 102466 102466 1134518762172 1135567488065 Controlled The Long Tail of Business Buyers

Managing Search Engine Researchers among Business Buyers is Not As Easy As It Sounds

The <a href="http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/">long tail phenomenon</a> continues to interest us and this week we had a healthy discussion of the long tail phenomenon among business buyers. After all our firm is a business to business seller. Are there differences in the long tail between B to B companies and B to C companies? What are those differences? And how do we adjust to bridge the difference, if need be?First, how do businesses buy? Certainly there are a lot of different ways but one rule is that buying patterns really depend on level of customization. For example, if you're a business buyer who's thinking of a new building you will probably want to consult other business people that you know for references on architects. But if the transaction is for a commodity, like a building to lease, then you may be more inclined toward seeking out a few different agents and selecting one. How would you do this? Search online makes sense. <a title="Search engines" href="http://www.searchtrends.org/2005/05/long-tail-of-search.html">Google has documented the fact that most business people now use search engines to research potential purchases</a>. In fact, businesses have a greater need to use search engines because the products and services that they buy are not easily found in the larger consumer marketplace. For example, you would not find a true CRM system on the shelf of a software retailer. Nor would you find any useful information about implementation other than by researching solution providers. But though the search engine, and its spinoff applications like AdWords, affords the business seller an incredible new opportunity to get in front of buyers, it has also made the search playing field very level. The popularity has led to some very high costs per click. There is also the recognition that business buyers tend to be more diverse in their searches than consumers. For example, a consumer knows what car they are looking for when they start a search because they are buying from a known universe of products and service in most cases. The business buyer however buys from an unknown universe of products and services. We hear this all the time in phrases like "We not sure what's out there...". As a result the business buyer's keyword search will reflect this unknown quantity.Try typing CRM in a search engine. You will receive at least 70 million hits and, more importantly, hundreds of paid AdWords listings. More than you can absorb, even after a couple of grandee lattes. So you become more specific, CRM for my industry, say "medical devices." Now you have limited the search to 10 or so vendors. But the researcher could type in the industry keywords in a hundred different ways, from "health care instruments" to "prostheses" and everything in between. You can use the Keyword tool on Overture to get an idea of the variation that people actually use. These two search engine behaviors - sellers bidding up the cost of popular keywords and buyers beautiful eccentricity when it comes to keywords - have together made Search Engine Marketing (SEM) a viable business. There are companies now whose sole purpose is to help business sellers find the long tail of keywords for their search campaigns in an effort to keep a lid on costs while finding the long tail of business buyers in the wild variation of keyword search. The question is - Can they succeed? To some degree of course they can, and do. But having run Ad word campaigns myself I can tell you that you can brainstorm for hours on a very discrete search and come up with thousands of variations. How can you manage this many keywords? And can you get enough click throughs to prevent Google from killing the ad and, most importantly, to bring in new customers for your business. It's nearly impossible.So what's a business seller to do when trying to meet the business buyer online through search engines. One exceptional solution is the corporate blog site. Just in talking in an anecdotal voice about your industry, products, services and markets you will naturally use the 1000s of phrases and keywords that business buyers will use in search engines. Some may never show up in Overture because they are truly one-offs. This is one of the main reasons that companies spend the time and effort to blog: Saying something useful and interesting about your business is valuable in a myriad of ways. Even those customers who do not read the actual post may still benefit from your knowledge and insight. And with any luck you will benefit from their customer relationship. <a title="Blogging is Marketing" href="http://chasnote.blogspot.com/2005/08/influence-index.html">Even the most hardened marketing professional has to admit that blogs have their place in today's toolbox</a>. 9 application/xml false blogging corporate blog marketing crm google search engine search engine marketing sem the long tail The Influence Index What does blogging mean for b to b sellers http://chasnote.blogspot.com/2005/08/influence-index.html The Long Tail of Search Can you setup your website and Google Adwords to capture the long tail? http://www.searchtrends.org/2005/05/long-tail-of-search.html The Original Long Tail Blog Good info, good cake http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/ Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 70.236.162.151 70.236.162.151 tfoydel false true false false true 102363 blog blogsite/SightLines/web