We know that the Internet has changed the way consumers find products and services. Now it is influencing the business to business sector as well. According to a survey published in late last year in "Electronic Design" magazine, reaching 96% of your audience is possible if you include a carefully crafted Internet marketing strategy. When asked, "Where do you find the most useful information about new products and technology?" respondents ranked print magazines (54%), Web searches (23%, Google primarily), and E-mail newsletters (19%) as the top three sources. This covers 96% of the bases, surprisingly relegating old favorites like trade shows (2%) and word of mouth (2%) to the sidelines. These figures show that while print is still important to BtoB buyers, the Internet has become equally as important. And of the online part, Google searches account for a big percentage. If you are not including website optimization in your Internet marketing strategy this year, you will be missing a chunk of your audience. Do a Google search on the best keyword for your industry and see who does show up on page one. Although optimization may seem like black magic, it is possible to get high rankings in the organic search in Google. In a recent report Marketing Sherpa wrote, If you think you're covered because you have a paid ad (PPC listing) in a search engine for a search term that's important to your business, think again. Organic results (free listings) are far more important and can get more viewership and clicks. This is borne out by the eye tracking studies that show only about 35% of all searchers click on the paid ads. A website is not a static brochure. It has to be updated with relevant optimized content. Optimization of the site, fresh content and using RSS feeds to distribute the content across the Internet is the name of the website marketing game in 2006. |
