Nicole Wagner, the Internet Director at Stevens & Tate Marketing/Endora Digital Solutions, has put together a list of nine tips on how to best use search engine marketing in the B2B Marketing world:

1. Know your sales cycle
In general B2B sales involve a higher price point and often require several individuals that need to evaluate a purchase decision. As a result your customers will tend to visit your website multiple times prior to making a sale. You need to determine where they are at in their sales cycle and how you can best communicate to them at that point. Developing different search engine marketing terms based on this cycle and driving users to pages that offer the information they need to keep your audience engaged with your company.

2. Determine how you want to be found
Like any search engine marketing program you need to start off with what you need to be ‘searched’ on. There are two types of keywords to focus on: Educational keywords and Actionable keywords.

Educational keywords are ones where people are still in research mode and need to learn about your product and services. Focus on the general terms that explain your product and services for this group and do not focus on hard sales when developing your ads.

Actionable keywords would be branded terms centered on your product or service line and words that indicate purchase intent. Don’t be afraid to put a special offer in these ads.

3. Direct them to the best information for them
When your reader is still in research mode you want to make sure you are directing them to the most helpful information for their needs. Don’t be afraid to direct your ads to internal pages on your website. Offer easy navigation to allow your user to find what they are looking for.

When a reader is searching on one of your actionable keywords then you want to direct them to points of conversion on your website. Develop custom landing pages that focus on the specific product/service they are interested in and have a strong call to action to drive a conversion. For example ask for contact information to follow up or even ask for the sale.

4. Filter out the consumer
If the keyword will be used for a paid search campaign, make sure the Title, Description and Display URL provides B2B messaging to filter the consumer audience. Try to be as specific as possible and omit any words that can be confused with consumer-based terms with a high search ratio.

5. Use your money wisely
Some keywords are more competitive than others. Often there are 100-250 companies bidding for a specific keyword. While a keyword may be very targeted for your market, if one click on that keywords is eating up your whole budget for the day then maybe you need to pause that word and see if some other, more less expensive words, can pull in the traffic you need.

6. Start a conversation
Start a conversation with your B2B visitors. Download a white paper. Subscribe to an Email Newsletter. Watch an online demo. Somehow get them in the sales pipeline.

7. Consider a PPC or SEO Audit
If you perform your search engine marketing campaign in-house, a paid search audit or search engine optimization audit can be a fantastic way to validate your work but also identify where opportunities may exist. Consider the expression “can’t see the forest for the trees”.  Sometimes we become too involved in the details to look at the search engine marketing campaign as a whole.

8. Measure
Track your visitors, leads, quotes and sales and source them back to your campaign. Track your inbound calls and source them back to your campaign. You can use Google website analytics to track what clients do once they are on your website. Once they become a lead and you begin a conversation with them find out the ways they used search to get to that point. Don’t be afraid to ask. The more you learn the better your campaigns can become.

9. Offer Interaction on your Website
You are spending all this money for your PPC program and what is it getting you? By offering points of interaction throughout your website you are able to determine what your reader is most interested in and engage your reader to interact with you. Offering white papers, blogs with comments, surveys, polls and other forms of action where the client is asked to engage with you website helps to draw out more information regarding this person to help you make them a qualified lead.

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