Juicy info on B2B web searchers

Its great to find good research on the dynamics of searcher's use of search engines, especially when it is specific for B2B. Here is a great report by MarketingSherpa and Enquiro:

How B-to-B buyers use Search (at the bottom of the article is a link to actual survey data/analysis by Enquiro)

Here are some take-aways:

• Google rules, preferred by 83% of users. This goes up with income/education, too.
• The first place on the web users go is search (64%), followed by going directly to a known manufacturer (19%).
• For equipment valued over $5,000, known manufacturers website are selected first 25% of the time. If you are a known manufacturer, that's a great opportunity to capture a sale.
  
• Even for equipment valued over $50,000, 11% of searching is done within in a week of a planned purchase (20% for $5-10,000). While this is not a majority, in my experience, they are the ones who can quickly be captured by having the right information and product available.
• 70% of searchers click on organic listings first, 25% on sponsored listings. This varied by search engine, but as most are using Google, that's what I'm watching (Google was 77%).
  
• The top listing got 27% of organic clicks, while the top sponsored listing got 51% of those who clicked sponsored ads. These just confirm the strength of being #1 on SERPs.
  
• The good news, if you aren't #1, is that the majority of users look at organic listings first (65%) and then 91% scroll down the page to see more results.
• More good news is that these organic-listing readers tend to select 'side ads' at a rate of 69%, which is more good news if you aren't #1.

This is great information to tune your PPC and SEO programs, targeting Google and top listings. However, the 'gold in the cracks' might be targeting the minorities in this survey. One agency, Cube management, recently reported how they found using Overture gave their client significant results at a lower cost than Google. While not true for every industry (mine is up to 16 dollars a click on Overture), it is a worth checking out, especially as sponsored listings were shown to be more effective on Yahoo in this survey.