This piece has been updated for 2020 (21/11/2019)
Marketing statistics have always intrigued me. They provide some level of validation for the question we’re always trying to answer: what, where, how, and when do we try to weave our brands into the lives of our target audiences?
As we reach the backend of 2019, I hope that some of the statistics below will help you pick out a few key insights to assist your 2020 planning.
Top Level Stats
45% of organisations do not have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy (Smart Insights, Managing Digital Marketing Research Report, 2019)
While this is concerning, it’s also valid. Many businesses I see are embroiled in a “tactics storm”, in which they’re running multiple, disconnected tactics in a scramble to generate results. Because of this, the customer experiences a disjointed brand experience. Failing to plan, is planning to fail. Have a strategy, and by all means test your tactics, but make sure they are contextually specific to the target market and are targeted properly.
B2B Marketing
45 per cent of respondents with less than three years of ABM experience in their organizations are seeing at least double the ROI from ABM. That number skyrockets to 80 per cent of companies with three years or more ABM experience. (ITSMA, New Report Shows ABM is Driving Greater Customer Success)
Account-based marketing is growing in popularity as more marketers experience the incredible results it can. Targeting decision-makers and influencers at ring-fenced accounts seem rather straightforward and obvious, but it can be quite tricky to understand and outline how these organisations make decisions. Not to mention plotting out a map that adds real value to different stakeholders at different stages of the buyer's journey. Done well, ABM can be a hugely successful approach for your business to take, especially in the B2B space.
Content Formats
81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool — up from 63% over the last year (HubSpot, 2019)
This isn’t all that surprising. On-the-go information is a trend that’s emerged with ease-of-access to the internet, the price drop in mobile data, and the consumer need to be properly informed before making decisions. To harness this consumer need, consider serving contextual videos to users during their research process, as this strategy greatly assists with moving the customer towards your brand, and away from competitors.
When creating video content, you need to add value to the audience that watches them. Take a step back, move away from selling, and ask yourself: did that content actually add value to the consumer’s decision-making process?
E-commerce
...we estimate that global eCommerce will rise 20.7% in 2019 to $3.535 trillion (Global Ecommerce 2019)
E-commerce growth and confidence in online purchasing continues to push forward at an incredible rate, even if 2019's numbers are expected to be lower than 2017 and 2018.
Social
90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers use social media (US Social Media Users, by Generation, 2019, eMarketer)
As younger generations gain additional buying power, social media will become increasingly important. Many marketers are already shifting their budgets to address this.
Social media advertising will see a 20% in ad spend boost in 2019 to account for 13% of all global spend. This will see social media overtake print ad spend the first time, according to Zenith Media’s Advertising Expenditure Forecasts. (Social media ad budgets continue to grow at 'expense of print', up 20% in 2019, The Drum, 2019)
Mobile
80% of mobile users are more likely to buy from companies whose mobile sites quickly address any objections or concerns they have. Make your sites easy to navigate. (38 Mobile Marketing Statistics You Need to Know, Business 2 Community, 2019)
It's no longer a question of if you need a mobile strategy. Users are increasingly consuming information and media via their mobile devices, and there are no signs of them stopping anytime soon.
Unfortunately, many brands are still falling short on mobile optimisation. It’s no longer good enough to be “responsive”. Content must be optimised for mobile, and where it’s applicable, designed for mobile-first. Failing to address this expectation could be detrimental to many brands:
46% of buyers said they wouldn’t purchase from a brand again if they had a disrupted mobile experience even once. (38 Mobile Marketing Statistics You Need to Know, Business 2 Community, 2019)
There were more than 3.8 billion email users in 2018 (Radicati)
Even with a growing focus on privacy, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to get your brand in front of your target audience. That is if you give them what they want. The DMA summarises how many marketers are offering email content that many people aren't interested in:
Marketers are out of touch with what customers want — they see a trustworthy reputation (38%) and exclusive content (29%) as the most effective for sign-ups, but consumers want money-off discounts (45%), free samples (35%), and free delivery (35%) (DMA, Marketer Email Tracking Study, 2017)
Providing content that people actually want, to segmented databases of opted-in contacts, will yield the best results. MailChimp's stat around segmentation proves this: “Open rates are 14.31% higher in segmented campaigns than in non-segmented campaigns (MailChimp, 2017).”
In conclusion...
The statistics chosen for this blog showcase the performance of a wide range of marketing tactics. It’s important to remember to stay contextual, add value to your customers, and ensure that when you set out to weave your brands into consumers' lives, you do so in a non-intrusive, value-adding way to yield the best results.
If you want to find out more about how these stats can be used to help define your marketing strategy, feel free to reach out to us.
