There's been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about the status of brands and branding.
As usual, Seth sums things up and adds some real value. Here's his summary (but go read the full set of ideas):
Big brands are dying.
Little brands are doing great.
Branding is a weird gig.
Update: Some more good thoughts from Boing Boing
Is search marketing an important aspect of online marketing for a company that is B2B? Of course it is. But in my experience more than a few B2B marketers don't think so.
They believe that high-ticket, long-cycle sales are the exclusive territory of their outbound sales staff. Apparently this was well proven at a recent NYC event for B2B Marketers. As MediaPost points out the panelists treated their audience to numerous myths and misperceptions, including this one:
MYTH: "People don't do searches for big ticket B2B products and services."REALITY: Let's go to Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. Below are tallies of searches conducted in Overture in September 2004:
*Enterprise asset management - 1,341 *Supply chain management software - 1,692 *Telecommunication infrastructure - 1,052 *Security management - 5,290 *Product life cycle management - 6,294 *Wireless solution - 3,409 *Document management services - 1,644
Okay, so these don't match the volume of searches for Ashlee Simpson. They do, however, represent qualified leads. Note that this is just for one search engine too.
The truth is that when people need to buy something - or learn about something (which they often do before they try to buy it) - they turn to search very early in the process. This is just as true for a Sarbanes Oxley compliance software as it is for a new digital camera.