I bet you did too. But times have changed. The internet transformed the way consumers and sellers, buyers and suppliers connect. And today, the buyer is in the driver's seat.

Do your sales reps complain that decision makers won't take their calls? In the old days, (yes, just five short years ago), you met at a trade show, enjoyed lunch together, maybe played a round of golf, and the next time your good pal (the buyer) was ready to send out an RFQ or RFP, he sent it to you (his friend).

Well, today's buyers prefer to remain anonymous. And you know what that means? It reduces personal selling opportunities and shifts the emphasis to providing information online.

The Internet, with all its hype and promise, convinced many business owners that reaching the commercial or industrial buyer would be faster and easier than ever. Forget warm and fuzzy relationship-building. The World Wide Web is more like a wildebeest!

You thought you'd kept pace. I mean, you paid good money for a professional, attractive Web design, didn't you?

Consider this: Five years ago, there were 30,000 domain names registered per year. Today, there are over 30,000 domain names registered per day! And that figure increased while I write, no doubt.

If you leapt headlong into an online marketing endeavor without a solid and practical understanding of

Buyer behavior and expectations

Website usability and best practices

Search engines and site optimization

Tracking and measurement

…then you might end up watching your marketing dollars evaporate into cyberspace and your sales reps looking to go work for your competitor.

Companies worldwide struggle with the Internet evolution. But their only difficulty isn't with getting found on the Internet. Business and professional users have a hard time finding needed data through general search. According to Outsell's 2006 Study, business users reported a 31.9 percent failure rate when researching topics on major search engines.

Convera, in another recent study, shows that professionals in virtually every industry cannot find important work-related information on the major search engines. While frustrating for B2B, this situation represents a significant opportunity for vertical search engines (VSEs).

The Internet continues to emerge as a potent tool in the B2B buying process, and vertical search engines grow in importance as the Internet becomes more unwieldy.

Unfortunately, while industrial buyers are shopping on the Internet, suppliers often are missing the sale, according to a 2005 ThomasNet-Google sponsored survey on industrial buyer behavior. I review dozens of industrial websites each week, and this assessment holds true today.

While an increasing number of industrial buyers are turning to the Internet and bypassing traditional offline sources such as distributors' catalogues and sales reps, these buyers are likely to find the information lacking. According to the study:

70% of buyers expect to find detailed information on product applications and uses, but only half of all sellers' sites (53%) provide it

58% seek computer-aided design (CAD) drawings and plans, but only a minuscule 13% of sellers make them available online

74% expect to find product prices, but only 23% of company websites offer them

67% want to see shipping information and costs, but fewer than 17% of suppliers provide this with their sites

While 55% of industrial suppliers say they devote a major portion of their marketing budgets to their companies' websites, they pay far less attention to building buyer awareness and driving online traffic to them.

"Industrial buyers - like customers everywhere - increasingly rely on the Internet to research and purchase products and services. This study confirms the tremendous opportunity that still exists for industrial suppliers to find and engage customers online," said Patrick Keane

Product Marketing Director for Google.

So how do commercial and industrial enterprises connect the dots between having the right information their buyers want and being found for their core products and services?

Companies need a two-pronged strategy.

#1 - A professional website designed for users and search engineers (aka SEO).

#2 - A search marketing strategy designed to drive traffic to a website through incoming links (aka SEM).

Vertical search engines help streamline the research process for business users (visitors) and a well-designed site with detailed product information, application notes, pricing and shipping details creates a user-friendly experience.

Remember that the Internet is, first and foremost, all about turning a visitor into a friend.