Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro CEO & President, unveiled findings from the latest Enquiro survey conducted with B2B purchasers. The presentation, which took place at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in New York, gives marketers data about influencing factors in business-to-business buying decisions.

The survey was conducted with over 1000 B2B buyers, and the objective was to discover how people research B2B buying decisions online and how this changes by role within a company and by purchase phase. How do people evolve from awareness, through research and negotiation phases to the actual buying decision? What is the balance between online and offline influences? Do purchasers use search engines, and if so, which search engines and why? Do they use specific B2B search engines? When do they refer to a vendor's site or an industry information site and what do they look for specifically?

From the study we can find that when it comes to business to business buying decisions, online influences such as vendor websites, search engines, and industry information websites are surpassing offline influences such as word of mouth and trade publications. Also, nearly 70% of of the people use search engines as a primary research resource, and Google remains the first choice for B2B purchasing research. In his meeting, Gord Hotchkiss showed how, "Vertical search becomes more important as buyers move through the sales funnel. In the researching phase, a purchaser is five times more likely to turn to a generic search engine for information." Hotchkiss added, "However, as the purchaser moves from researching to negotiating, that gap closes, where nearly a third will look to vertical search engines such as business.com or KnowledgeStorm."

Bill Barnes, Enquiro's EVP of Business Development, stated: "As a leading business information search engine, ZoomInfo is a stakeholder and natural partner in the research that we are conducting. They, along with others in the B2B vertical, will benefit from new data that is being released."
The B2B survey has been supported by MarketingSherpa which was also a partner for Enquiro's 2004 paper titled The Role of Search in Business to Business Buying Decisions. A newly added sponsor for this follow-up study is ZoomInfo.

The company helps B2B clients maximize their online presence through balanced marketing solutions. Its strategies are based on industry research and expertise in usability, and natural and sponsored search. Enquiro has also authored eye-tracking studies which have given marketers a greater understanding of user interaction with the major search engines and defined "Google's Golden Triangle." For more information visit http://enquiro.com/b2b-survey-2007.asp.