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Whilst they all have something to 'sell', many of their customers undertake an extended information search as a key part of a fairly involved and lengthy sales cycle.
Some purchases are 'capital', high-value/high involvement decisions on the part of their customers. Therefore, the prime objectives for SEM include: brand building and awareness raising, keeping their 'share of voice' on the web and the supply of information to searchers who are at varying stages of their information search and sales cycle. Additionally, the web has always provided a good platform for new product or service launches, plus support to wider PR activity.
My question is simple: is there a good reason for companies like these to stay in the SE race?
It seems as though unless you are in the market of selling fairly low to medium value items, with price being a large factor in the sale, you are not going to stump for for the new Overture network et. al. where you cannot see a direct ROI in sales. It seems that the SE's are being structured to cater for the mass market rather than the kind of targeted referals possible in the past with skillful working of the SE networks.
Currently, because many of our clients keyphrases are niche and specialised, targeting searchers who have some 'intent' and the SE's used to be a prime target for this kind of objective - rather than a 'get the herd' to the site mentality.
SEM was always just one part of the 'new media marketing mix' - but it was a big part. We are now concentrating on specialist sponsorship, advertising and opt-in mailing via niche portals and online publications.
I am on the point of relegating SEM to a 'complimentary' rather than 'core' part of this mix.
I would be very interested to know what others with similar B2B clients are thinking and the kind of mix being used....
I constantly see areas in B2B where keywords cost $2/click, but where ASPs are $5000-$10000 and acceptable CPAs are in the hundreds if not thousands of dollars. In those cases SEM is an insanely good deal because so few competitors have gotten educated about how to measure actions leading to a sale such that they can afford $2, $5, $10, $20/click charges and still make great money.
B2B SEM is going to be one of the big stories in 2004 in my opinion.
Just because a transaction does not finish on the web does not mean it doesn't start there! If a company is not ranked well for their keywords they will not be found while engineers and corporate purchasing agents do research! That means they may never get in front of their prospects.
There is a lot more traffic being done off the web than on, but the web still plays a critical role for those companies.
