Over at eMarketer, they’ve compiled some recent reports that suggest executives in business to business industries rely heavily on referrals and word of mouth, when making buying decisions.

If want to make Google richer without making any money yourself, then stop reading. You don’t need to worry about conversion rates or landing pages. But if you want to grow your own revenue using search engine marketing, then you must pay attention to converting your clicks into leads.

Fox Interactive Media has released findings from a study that looked at the growth and marketing power of online social networks.

Over 70 percent of Americans ages 15-34 are using social networking sites on a regular basis. The sites see a spike in traffic during primetime hours, which improves communication with family and friends along with building brand connections.

I came across some awesome benchmark data about B2B marketing budgets, courtesy of SiriusDecisions. (If you are not familiar with SiriusDecisions, you should be — they are doing some of the best research available on B2B marketing and sales.)

Content is critical for lead nurturing. Whether it is a case study, new research on some aspect of your industry, a how-to guide, or a whitepaper, content is what makes your lead nurturing programs work – and lead nurturing is what helps marketing drive more revenue to sales.

Strewn around my house are pens, coffee cups, calculators, USB memory sticks, and assorted swag from various companies I’ve met over the years. What is the purpose of all this stuff? Does having a leather portfolio with a vendor’s logo on it make me more likely to buy their products?

RainToday.com’s recent report "What’s Working In Lead Generation" got me thinking about the relationship of thought leadership to branding and lead nurturing.

In B2B marketing, all three serve the same purpose: to establish your company as a trusted adviser, so when a prospect is ready to buy, he or she will think of you and will want to speak with your sales reps.

Obviously, getting your site to rank highly in the search engine results and getting searchers to click through to your site is one of the first objectives of B2B search engine optimization. But that’s just the beginning. You still have to turn the visitor into a customer or client.

So I finally got a chance to catch my breath a bit and read some of the content on my “blogs I read” list.

The electronics and construction industries in particular should find the business to business search concept of Zibb.com useful, as Reed Business’ RB Search division delivers its first product.

Thanks to Jim Berkowitz and his CRM Mastery E-Journal for pointing me to the MarketingProfs article, Five Proven Ways to Waste Money With Pay-per-Click Advertising by John Grant.

BtoB Magazine points out some interesting findings in the DMA 2006 Response Rate Trends Report which includes data for more than 1,500 campaigns received in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

For B2B marketers e-mail marketing is one of the most successful tools for generating great results at the quickest possible time.

Many marketers believe generating more sales leads is the key to hitting revenue targets. That’s not always true. In fact, most companies need to do a better job managing and qualifying the leads (or more likely the inquiries) they already have.

Often lead generation programs seem more ready-fire-aim instead of ready-aim-fire. Mac McInTosh wrote a helpful article on, “Targeting Your B2B Lead Generation,” that I think provides some good tips and reminders.

Rick Tobin, a Senior Sponsored Search Analyst at Enquiro Search Solutions recently wrote an insightful post on his blog: Sponsored B2B regarding how to find the Real Cost of a sponsored campaign.

The biggest mistake made by marketers is to give mere inquiries to a salesperson.

Did you know your CRM might be naked? I never thought of it that way until I read this compelling e-book by Ardath Albee.

Would you like to be more visable and generate sales leads on a limited budget? Become a thought leader!

Complex sales cycles make the development of multi-modal marketing strategies critical.

When providing services such as Search Marketing strategies to large B2B tech firms you will find that there are several levels of management to please (this is the case for many large corporations).