A recent article in emarketer cites a study of senior-level search engine marketing executives who are not satisfied with how SEM is working for them. How about you?

As you plan for 2010, you should consider techniques and tactics that will help you get more and better B2B search results - organic, paid or both. You probably think I'm going to talk about landing pages, page URLs, meta descriptions, inbound links and other arcane tips. Nope. I will leave that to my colleagues, or at least to another time.

Today I want to urge you to use the "secret weapon" that will increase your search engine marketing results. It's called integrated marketing communications. Yes, boring, traditional marcom. Except that there is nothing traditional about web-centric, digital marketing communications the way we practice it. Everything is integrated, most of it is digital and all of it points to your web site.

So what makes this a secret weapon behind better search results?

During the budget crunch of 2009, many B2B marketers have chosen - or been forced - to cut back on advertising, PR, trade shows and all of the other marketing communications tactics, traditional and new, that keep their brand and their products in front of customers and prospects. They have relied on search engine marketing to find, attract, and engage potential customers.

That's a huge burden for SEM. Why? Let's look at an example.

A B2B marketer - a manufacturer - launches a seminar program as a "soft sell" to attract new customers with good information on hot topics such as safety and energy efficiency. Pretty good strategy for a down year. To promote the seminar series, they rely on paid search since budgets are tight. They get "OK" results. But paid search is a very passive activity. They are using good keywords to connect with B2B searchers who are looking for information about the topic, issue, technology or solution in the field related to the seminar. So they get good impressions. But then they promote a seminar and hope that searchers who weren't looking for a seminar will decide that they are interested. The results are disappointing.

How could this marketer improve search results? Be active, not passive! Promote the seminar series via online advertising and direct communications. Do more PR - not just a press release about the seminar, but also technical articles, expert opinion articles and customer success stories relating to the subject matter. They could do blog postings or updates on social media sites, especially if there are groups organized around the subject matter. Thought leadership tactics are ever-changing in the new landscape.

On their web site, in addition to pages about the seminars, they should add deep content (optimized, of course) about the topic, issue, technology, solutions...and use the seminars as a call-to-action on those web pages. That way they would complement their paid search with great organic results about the issue, and they would attract people to their web site who are looking for information, not just a seminar. Then they might convert some of them by offering the seminar after giving them good information.

We advocate that B2B marketers implement a strong strategic search program - paid and organic. But in the B2B realm we don't think people go from having no awareness or positive perceptions about a company or its products, do a search, click to a landing page and become a customer. That might work in some B2C cases, but not in B2B.

Search has gotten a lot of attention as the most measurable marcom tactic out there today. But search is a highly-used "portal" that is heavily influenced by all of the other tactics that build awareness and interest in a company or its products and services. It's the "last click" that gets most of the measurement, but there's a lot that goes on before that click to make a B2B customer or prospect connect with your brand or product or offer.

By cutting out other marketing communications tactics, you ask search engine marketing to do more than it is capable of doing. So if you are among those who aren't happy with your SEM results, put some effort back into your outreach program, with a well-balanced, highly-integrated marketing communications strategy.