This Year's 58 Most Surprising Digital Marketing Statistics
October 5, 2020
Erin Ryan
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Billions of people around the world are online these days. In the U.S. alone, nearly 8 in 10 adults go online at least daily, with 3 in 10 indicate that they’re almost always online, according to the Pew Research Center.
Arguably, getting digital marketing right has never been more important. With that in mind, we’re revealing some of the most eye-opening digital marketing statistics for 2020.
Email Marketing Statistics
Whether newsletters or automated sequences, email marketing is a critical component of any digital marketing strategy. Check out these stats to see why.
Email marketing has a return on investment (ROI) equivalent to about Ł42 ($53) for nearly every Ł1 (about $1.30) spent. - Data & Marketing Association, U.K.
Subject line alone accounts for 47% of opened emails. - Invesp
Emails with subject lines of only 4 words had the highest open rates, while the highest click-through rates and engagement were emails with subject lines of 7 words. - Marketo
Welcome emails are opened 4 times as often and clicked through 5 times more than other email campaigns. - Invesp
Email newsletters are the highest-performing content for getting and nurturing leads in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space and second to in-person events for converting leads. - Content Marketing Institute
When learning about a product or service, 72% of buyers prefer video content. - Social Media Week
Websites with video content see users who spend 88% more time browsing. - Social Media Week
By 2022, online videos will generate 82% of all consumer traffic on the web. - Social Media Week
Video is the content preferred by 59% of executives. - Social Media Week
Use of interactive video leads to positive results for 83% of marketers, with 90% of interactive videos viewed all the way through. However, only 2% of marketers currently use this video style. - Social Media Week
If you don’t have a content strategy in place, you’re missing out. Here are a few content marketing ROI statistics to consider when you’re building yours.
When compared with traditional marketing, content marketing delivers 3 times the number of leads and costs 62% less. - Demand Metric
Content marketing is actively invested in by 70% of marketers, with 60% indicating it is a very-to-extremely important part of their marketing strategy as a whole. - HubSpot
When it comes to blog posts, listicles earn 2 times more shares and traffic. In second and third place? Guides and how-to articles. What’s more, headlines of 14-plus words work best at increasing traffic, backlinks and social shares. - SEMrush
Marketers sees these factors as the most important when creating content:
Image/video (35.8%)
Narrative (34.1%)
Calls to action (21.7%)
Captions (8.3%)
- Buffer
B2C marketers create content to cater to varying audiences, with most content developed to generate brand awareness and interest.
41% for 2-3 audiences
28% for 6 or more audiences
26% for 4-5 audiences
5% for 1 audience
Additionally, the most popular organic content distribution channels include:
Social media (93%)
Company website or blog (85%)
Email (79%)
Influencer or media relationships (39%)
Speaking engagements or events (37%)
Guest posts or articles in other publications (31%)
Other (11%)
- Content Marketing Institute
Marketers measure content performance using the following key performance indicators:
There are nearly 4 billion active social media users. So how do you reach them? Here’s what you need to know to build your reach.
For the first quarter of 2020, on average people spent 2 hours and 22 minutes each day on social media and messaging apps. - GlobalWebIndex
Most marketers use social media for content distribution, specifically 94%. - SEMrush
Forty-two percent of internet users take to social networks to research a brand, and 21% have discovered a new brand based on a recommendation on social media. - GlobalWebIndex
Social media videos help 64% of online buyers make a purchase decision. - Omnicore
Snapchat users are more likely to impulse shop, to the tune of 60%. - Snapchat
Facebook delivers the best content marketing results and is the top organic and paid social media platform in B2C. - Content Marketing Institute
Paid media is a way to quickly drive conversions and brand awareness. Take a look at these online advertising growth statistics and consider how your social and paid media strategies compare.
Facebook offers the highest ROI of all social channels, with marketers indicating a Facebook Business Page, Facebook advertising and Facebook Groups as the top 3 most valuable platform features for hitting their goals. Google Paid Search offers the second-highest ROI. - HubSpot
Marketers see advertising on Amazon as an opportunity for growth, with display advertising as the most popular format. What’s more, 60% of digital marketers are increasing their Amazon ad budget. - Marin Software
Most marketers (84%) plan to or currently use responsive search ads on Google, estimated to generate up to 10% more clicks and conversions when used with expanded text ads. - Marin Software
Shoppable ads and images are growing in paid search and paid social, 65% and 62% respectively. - Marin Software
Among marketers polled, 86.5% indicated that pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns help with search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, including helping to identify target keywords. - Databox
Costs-per-click for keyword bidding across industries averaged as follows:
To get eyes and traffic on your pages, you need to rank on search engines. Here are a few digital marketing stats about how you can do that and why.
Organic search is the highest source of traffic across industries, followed by direct traffic. - SEMrush
When evaluating SEO vs. PPC advertising, 70% of marketers say that SEO is more effective at driving sales compared with 30% for PPC. - Databox
Image SEO is on the rise as visual search, such as through Google Lens or Pinterest, is becoming more popular. At 36% usage, it’s on par with voice search. - Businesswire
Optimizing video content is also important. In fact, featured video clips on Google often contain the exact keyword in the title, 80% according to a recent study. - HubSpot
Get cracking on pillar content. A recent study showed that content with 3,000 or more words sees better results than articles between 901 and 1,200 words. Specifically, they earn 3.5 times more backlinks and 4 times more shares. - SEMrush
Prioritizing backlinks can pay off. The No. 1 reason why nearly 91% of pages don’t get any traffic from Google is that they don’t have any backlinks. - Ahrefs
We’d be remiss not to review mobile marketing and advertising statistics, since desktop has long since taken a backseat. In our on-the-go society, mobile functionality and responsive designs are critical. Here’s how people are using mobile in 2020.
Voice searches and mobile searches for images are growing. In fact, the use of “image search” via a mobile device increased more than 60% from 2016-2018, while voice search on mobile rose 27%. - Think with Google
Google data also showed that mobile searches with the term “podcast(s)” have increased more than 80%. - Think with Google
Ninety-two percent of mobile users share video content, and video viewing through mobile devices has risen annually by 100%. - Social Media Week
Simultaneous multidevice usage is reported among 85% of adults. - Social Media Week
When people have a poor mobile experience, they’re 62% less likely to be future customers. - Toptal
When comparing special offers on mobile versus print, people are 10 times more likely to use mobile ones. - Omnicore
Ad blocking on mobile devices has increased more than 60% since 2017, with 527 million currently using the technology. - CNET
Online users want intuitive designs that are easy on the eyes and perform well. That’s why UX can make or break you. Check out these advertising statistics related to the online user experience.
In 2020, projected global ecommerce sales with good UX is more than $5 trillion, with $1.42 trillion lost due to bad UX. - CareerFoundry
A majority of enterprise chief executives view UX as a competitive differentiator, 70% specifically. - UserZoom
More than $2 billion in sales are lost each year due to websites that are slow to load. What’s more, 88% of users who have a bad website experience typically don’t return, while 90% of people discontinue using apps that perform poorly. - Toptal
Source: CareerFoundry, The Trillion Dollar UX Problem: A Comprehensive Guide to the ROI of UX
Omnichannel Statistics
In an age where most people have a cell phone, a laptop, a tablet and more, being able to stop browsing on one device and later access another device and pick up where you left off makes the buyer experience easy and pleasant. Here are some omnichannel digital marketing stats to consider in 2020.
Omnichannel is becoming crucial for businesses. In fact, 83% of people say it’s important they have a seamless experience across devices. - Toptal
Omnichannel support could increase a company’s return on investment more than 100%. - Zendesk
Nearly 48% of omnichannel campaigns that employ text messaging are more likely to experience conversions. - Omnisend
Marketers using 3 or more channels in a campaign as opposed to 1 benefited from a 287% higher purchase rate. - Omnisend
Now that you’ve got the low-down on the year’s best marketing and advertising statistics, take a look at how you can improve your digital strategy.
If you’re like so many others who don’t have a set plan in place, you’re not alone — and we can help. Let our dedicated team of marketing specialists get to work strategizing how best to grow your brand across channels and delivering the results you want to see.
A prolific and versatile wordsmith, Erin crafts persuasive copy that entices and converts. Her repertoire includes SEO-optimized content, including blog posts, guides, content refreshes and website copy, as well as marketing emails, video scripts and landing pages, to name a few. In her free time, Erin enjoys gardening, yoga and riding around on her rusty but reliable beach cruiser, "Old Faithful."
