…and branding is from Venus. Right? That's what quite a few B2B marketers still believe, says Ben Hanna in a post at Business.com's B2B Online Marketing blog. "Many diehard pros specializing in one or the other of these areas still struggle to understand, find value in, or even imagine, using search marketing to build or reinforce a brand message," he writes.

Well, it's time for such opposition to end, Hanna says. And to help bring about its demise, Business.com has written a whitepaper, "Building B2B Brands Through Search Marketing," he notes. Among the whitepaper's guidelines:

Understand where your brand is today. To build your brand with a target audience, you have to understand your starting point on three key dimensions:

1. How risky is the choice to purchase your product or service?
2. How strong is your brand presence on general search engines?
3. How strong is your brand presence on vertical search and directory sites?

Any B2B online-branding effort that involves search marketing "must include a presence across both general search engines and vertical sites that follows the path prospects are likely to take online in their search for solutions to business challenges," the paper explains.

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