April 7, 2005

New research has revealed B2B decision makers look at business-to-business sites as the most relevant and most useful media source for finding business and work-related information, well ahead of offline information sources.

According to a poll from the UK Association of Online Publishers (AOP), 24% of business decision makers agreed that B2B websites are the most useful source of information.

This was well ahead of print business publications (14%), national and regional newspapers (4% each), web portals such as MSN, Yahoo and Wanadoo (3%), and exhibitions (3%).

Other B2B online media products such as email newsletters and alerts were listed by 6% of business decision makers as being the most useful source.

Meanwhile, 39% of the 300 business decision makers interviewed by telephone in January 2005 said that search engines such as Google were the most useful source for finding information relating to their work.

The report also revealed that decision makers actively respond to advertising on B2B websites, with eight out of 10 (83%) saying they have taken action as a result of seeing advertising on a B2B website.

More than half (54%) had bought a product online or offline as a result of seeing advertising on a B2B website.

Alexandra White, director of AOP, said: “These findings prove beyond doubt the effectiveness of using B2B websites for targeting business professionals. Not only do they spend almost an hour per day online for work purposes, they are also very responsive to the marketing messages that accompany quality, branded content online.”

In addition, 71% had clicked on an advertisement to find out more, 64% visited a client website for the first time, 53% requested further information or a quote, 47% registered with a client website.

Interestingly, 31% said they had remembered an advert and responded later, suggesting that B2B websites are a strong medium for branding as well as direct response.

The research found that users spend, on average, almost an hour per day online for work purposes. Nearly two-thirds (64%) find B2B websites a trustworthy source of information, while 63% believe that B2B websites provide a modern environment for a company to advertise, and more than 50% use these sites to research and inform business decisions.

In terms of usage, the findings showed that 75% of business decision makers use B2B websites to keep up to date with news in their sector, 71% use them as a technical reference source, 62% use them to review products and suppliers and 61% use them to review and analyse competitor activity.

Looking forward, 70% of business decision makers said they expect their usage of B2B websites to increase over the next two years.

The report entitled “The role of B2B websites”, was carried out by research firm Ipsos.

Source: Net Imperative