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B2B marketers are spending more money on being found, according to the latest survey by MarketingSherpa. Some inbound tactics are attracting greater investment than others, though, and the bias is definitely toward web-based channels.

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If you have budget to burn on search engine marketing (SEM), analyzing site log files for highly converting keywords is the most popular approach to research. It’s also favored by companies with thinner budgets. Sifting through the same log files for frequent keywords is a favorite, as well.

The latest research from MarketingSherpa shows that 85 percent of companies with SEM budgets of above $25,000 a year look for highly converting keywords in their log files, with 54 percent of companies with SEM budgets of $10,000 and down using the same method. Fifty-four percent of both the big and small companies looked for frequent keywords in log files, and both chose internal site search analysis (46 percent and 30 percent, respectively) as the #3 technique.

Competitor site analysis and competitive tools were considerably less popular, particularly with companies that didn’t have large SEM budgets. And, social semantic mining is still in its infancy.

How do you do keyword research? Leave a comment, and let us know!

[Source: MarketingSherpa]

Whether search engine marketing is an important part of your online arsenal is beyond question. Google alone, with around two-thirds of the U.S. search market, warrants specific consideration. For IT manufacturers and solution providers, search engine marketing can be particularly challenging because competition is fierce for fairly specific search terms — both for products and vendors and for the IT issues that you seek to resolve for your clients. The latest research from MarketingSherpa reveals the priorities of search engine marketers.

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Okay, maybe it’s not that easy. There are some serious benefits to paid search advertising with search engines, such as predictability and control. And, it’s easier to measure your paid search marketing ROI. But, the quality of the leads that come to you this way aren’t nearly as high as those that come via search engine optimization (SEO).

According to the latest study by MarketingSherpa, SEO was responsible for both the highest quality and quantity of search engine-driven leads, with shares of 30 percent and 37 percent, respectively. Paid search on Google did post a noticeable 32 percent of leads by quantity, but it was only good for 16 percent by quality. Meanwhile, paid search on the other major search engines resulted in only 6 percent of leads by quality, compared to a similarly meager 9 percent of high-quantity leads.

Commit to a solid SEO strategy (which can be helped along considerably by blogging), and you’ll earn stronger leads in greater quantity.

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[Source: MarketingSherpa]

There’s more to online marketing than banner and text ads. The latest study from MarketingSherpa estimates that paid search is good for 21 percent of online marketing spending and is topped only by the company budget, which picks up 27 percent on average. Social media is clearly no longer the object of dabbling, securing 11 percent of the online marketing budget: beating out search engine optimization (SEO) at 10 percent, online display advertising at 6 percent and other online marketing at 6 percent. But, social media marketing still hasn’t caught up with e-mail marketing, which claims 19 percent of the marketing budget.

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[Source: MarketingSherpa]