Online marketing in today’s time is different from that of a decade ago because of the fast paced technological changes we have all helped construct. Everyone is in a hurry, therefore, no one wants to stop and look at that billboard on the side of the road or read an advertisement. Therefore, marketing experts today have to work extra hard to devise strategies that not only attract people’s attention towards their brand, but also make the brand memorable.
In the marketing world, numbers play an important role. Numbers are not just digits when it comes to marketing, because behind every number and every statistics there is a back story. The story of which strategy is effective and which one is a waste of time and resources.
Following are some of the alarming statistics about digital marketing that every business owner and marketing professional should know about:
Smart
Phones
Nowadays, it is hard to find a person without a smart-phone in his/her pocket. As the number of smart-phones is increasing, lesser and lesser people are keeping tablets. It clearly shows the widespread use of smart-phones and the need for businesses to make their marketing campaigns more phone-friendly.
According to a survey conducted by Google in ten countries including the United States and Japan, more searches are made through mobile phones than through PCs. Furthermore, it is estimated that by the year 2019 smart-phones will account for 72% of the digital advertisement spending.
Video
Content
Video content is getting more popular. One aspect of the popularity of video is that it engages both visual as well as hearing senses of the audience which enables them to pay more attention. The other aspect is that it is easier for people to watch a two to three minutes of video rather than reading a whole article. These claims are supported by a survey conducted by Animoto that suggested that four times as many people would rather watch a video than read an article about a product or service.
Furthermore, you can double your search traffic by adding video thumbnails in your search results. People who show a keen interest in something choose to read about it and are in the minority, however, most people are uninterested and video is the best way to grasp their attention and make them interested. It is because even if people are not interested, they will at least watch a quick video about it out for boredom.
Personalization
In the age where every other brand and company is trying to grab people’s attention, where billboards are everywhere, where ads are flooding your apps and even YouTube videos; people are becoming selective.
People want to award their attention to something that resonates with them on a personal level; they don’t want to be left in the crowd. Keeping it in mind the importance of customized emails and ads is obvious.
Moreover, according to Marketing Magazine, 70% of young adults living in the United Kingdom believe that personalized marketing is important for customer loyalty.
Content
Relevance
Everyone knows the importance of SEO in digital marketing and a successful search engine optimization is accomplished through content that is relevant, informative and engaging. When asked about SEO tactics, 72% of marketing experts revealed that content relevance was the best SEO tactic.
SEO is not just about aiding the Google algorithm to find your website so that your company website can rank higher in the search engine result pages (SERPs), but it is more about providing a wonderful and convenient experience for visitors.
Content
Marketing
According to Forbes, 93% of B2B companies claim that content marketing is better at generating leads than traditional marketing. Content marketing is crucial for the success of a business in the sense that it is not only cheaper (62% cheaper than traditional marketing) but it also generates 3 times as much leads.
Content marketing is especially important for B2B companies as it helps in interacting with your customers.
Blogging
Blogging is a great tool of content marketing; therefore, the number of bloggers has increased 31% compared to the number of bloggers three years ago. An effective method is blogging daily and while doing so, your blogs need to be not only short, precise but also extremely relevant and informative. Statistics claim that 92% of companies that blogged multiple times a day won a customer through the blog. If you want to increase the effectiveness of your blog you can integrate it to other platforms e.g. you can link the blog to a YouTube video or a Slide-share presentation.
Social
Media
Around 90% of businesses believe that social media is the best content marketing strategy. It is hard to ignore social media platforms in your digital marketing strategies because of all the possibilities that they offer. Social media has the necessary setting and tools that help increase things such as brand awareness, consumer interaction, feedback, conversions, etc. all of which are good for business.
Social
Media Influencers
A social media influencer, if you are not already familiar with the term, is a person that has a strong following on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. but is not, in essence, a celebrity.
Social media influencers are known to have more active followers compared to celebrities and happen to increase conversions even for B2B companies. Therefore, Instagram influencer spending increased two folds in 2017.
Instagram
Stories
Speaking of social media, it was said in a Facebook Dublin that Instagram stories were not only bigger than Snapchat but are also growing faster than the Facebook messenger.
Search
and AdWords
It is estimated that around 90% of the people making searches made online are not sure about which brand to choose. It is a great insight which can be used by companies to one advantage. Ignoring what searches people are making online is a big mistake.
Search
keywords reveal a lot of valuable insights that can be used to create better,
more efficient, and targeted marketing campaigns. Therefore, AdWords and search
spending is still growing at over 20%.