Minding Their Business: B2B Execs Prefer Paid Search and Video

Business-to-business companies are catering to a growing crop of decision-makers who are turning to the Internet for purchase information according to data from Marin Software. The average cost per click in the B2B paid search space increased 29 percent from Q4 2010 to Q4 2011.

According to additional data from Compete and Google, we’ll continue to see B2B companies duke it out in paid search. Their report cites 73 percent of U.S. B2B execs used an online search engine last June to conduct purchase research.

In addition, the study also revealed more reliance on video. Google and Compete polled more than 1,600 U.S. execs and tracked the online activity of U.S. Web users both to and from selected B2B websites. Between February 2010 and March 2011, B2B-branded YouTube searches doubled.

Recently, Yelp posted a video on its business blog of SMB advertising success stories. Time will tell if we’ll see more brands using video content to share product-specific information, demos and testimonials.