What’s working in digital marketing right now?
Good question. The past two years have changed a lot. Many businesses pivoted to respond to the pandemic, moving operations online. Many more have focused on digital marketing to reach their target audience, find leads, and make sales.
To help you navigate marketing as it is now, we created this page. Here, you’ll find up-to-date, relevant stats from the last 30 months. Every stat comes from a reliable source and study to give you the clearest picture of modern marketing.
We cover social media marketing, email marketing, and more. We’ll start with a major trend…
Influencer Marketing Statistics
For a long time, influencer marketing was the preserve of big brands that could afford to collaborate with famous celebrities. But the rise of social media has levelled the field, allowing businesses of all sizes to market through influencers.
Instagram and YouTube started the trend. The arrival of TikTok made it ubiquitous. Businesses of all sizes now pay influencers to market their products. This makes sense, since the stats below show consumers trust influencers more than brands.
Now let’s look at some stats!
How much is the global influencer marketing market worth?
The global influencer marketing platform market is expected to grow from USD 5.5 billion in 2019 to USD 22.3 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 32.4% during the forecast period. (GlobeNewswire, Jan 2020)
How many marketers use influencers to promote brands?
93% of marketers have used influencer marketing in their campaigns. (Socialpubli, 2019)
How does influencer marketing perform compared to other digital marketing tactics?
- 42% of marketers think influencer marketing provides the best return on investment compared to SEO, paid media ads, and email marketing. (Socialpubli, 2020)
- 72% of marketers agree that influencer marketing provides higher-quality customers. (Influencer Marketing Hub, Aug 2022)
More influencer marketing statistics:
- The number of influencer marketing-related companies grew by 26% in 2021 to 18,900 worldwide. (Influencer Marketing Hub, Aug 2022)
- 90% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is effective. (Influencer Marketing Hub, Aug 2022)
- Between 2020 and 2021, the market size of influencer marketing grew by 42%, from 9.7 billion USD in 2020 to 13.8 billion USD in 2021. (Collabstr, 2022)
- 8 out of 10 consumers have purchased something after seeing it as a recommendation by an influencer. (Rakuten Marketing, 2019)
- 4 out of 5 brands use Instagram for influencer marketing. (Influencer Marketing Hub, Aug 2022)
- Micro-influencers have better engagement rates than mega-influencers across all major platforms. (Influencer Marketing Hub, Aug 2022)
- In 2021, 21% of marketers used influencer marketing as a channel to distribute and promote their content. (SEMrush, 2022)
- 94% of influencers offer paid content services to brands on Instagram, while 64% offer their services on TikTok. YouTube is the 3rd most popular platform for influencers, with 19% using it to collaborate with brands. (Collabstr, 2022)
- Brands spend 48% of their influencer marketing budgets on Instagram, 46% on TikTok, and 6% on YouTube. (Collabstr, 2022)
Video Content Marketing Statistics
The internet is fast-paced – the average user’s attention span is only 8 seconds!
That being said, video content – which is more engaging and appealing to consumers – is becoming increasingly important. Adapting to it takes effort, but the payoff is worth it to most (if not all) brands.
Wondering if video content is essential to your digital marketing strategy? These statistics give a clear picture of the state of the market.
How much do marketers spend on video content marketing?
- In 2019, Australians spent 640 million USD on digital video ads. This increased to $712.4 million in 2020. (We Are Social, Jan 2021)
How do consumers respond to video content?
- 73% of consumers prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service rather than read a blog post, watch a webinar, or view an infographic. (Wyzowl, 2022)
- People are 2x more likely to share video content with their friends than other types of content, including blog posts, product pages, and social media posts. (Wyzowl, 2022)
More video content marketing statistics:
- 37% of marketers reported that video content formats brought their company the best results in their content marketing efforts in 2021. (SEMrush, 2022)
- In 2022, people watch an average of 19 hours of online video per week, a 5-hour increase from the 14 hours spent in 2019. (Wyzowl, 2022)
- Articles with more than three videos generate 55% more backlinks than those with none. (SEMrush, 2022)
- 88% of people have bought or downloaded a piece of software or app after watching a video. (Wyzowl, 2022)
- 70% of people say they bought from a brand after watching their video on YouTube. (Google, Feb 2020)
- Live-action videos are the most popular type of videos used by marketers (42%), followed by animated videos (33%), while 15% of marketers mainly use screen-recorded videos. (Wyzowl, 2021)
- 55% of marketers create all their marketing videos in-house, while 12% exclusively outsource video production to other companies or people. 32% use both in-house and outsourced talent. (Wyzowl, 2021)
- 62% of marketers use engagements like likes, shares, and comments to measure the success of their video marketing efforts. (Wyzowl, 2021)
Mobile Marketing Statistics
The average Australian owns 1.23 Internet-connected mobile devices. This makes mobile phones and tablets the surest way to reach your customers in Australia.
The same is true for the world as a whole; 92.1% of Internet users access the web with mobile devices.
Mobile accounts form a large share of web traffic, but is mobile marketing still effective with the increasing popularity of other digital marketing avenues? Let’s take an in-depth look at the this channel and its impact on the digital marketing industry to find out!
What’s the outlook for the mobile marketing industry?
- The global mobile marketing industry is projected to grow from USD 10.5 billion in 2019 to USD 25.0 billion by 2024 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.9% during the forecast period. (Marketsandmarkets, Jan 2020)
- Global mobile ad spend in 2019 stood at 234 billion USD and is projected to reach 495 billion USD by 2024. (Statista, Sep 2022)
How important is mobile marketing to modern brands?
- In 2021, retail m-commerce (mobile commerce) sales hit $359.32 billion, and this figure is expected to double by 2025 to reach $728.28 billion. (Insider Intelligence, Apr 2022)
- In 2021, digital mobile wallet payments accounted for 49% of online transactions worldwide, and this is projected to rise to 53% by 2024. (Statista, Jun 2022)
- In 2019, mobile accounted for two-thirds of e-commerce traffic. (SaleCycle, 2020)
- In the third quarter of 2019, mobile accounted for 94% of all Facebook ad revenues, a 2% increase from a year earlier. (Facebook, Oct 2019)
- In 2021, Spotify reported that 71% of all Black Friday Cyber Monday purchases happened on mobile devices and 29% on desktop. (Shopify, Dec 2021)
- 48% of small businesses have an app in 2022, an increase of 16% from just 32% in 2021. 27% of those without an app plan to build one. (Top Design Firms, Jan 2022)
How much do consumers use mobile devices?
- According to Shopify, more than two-thirds (70%) of millennials spend over 6 hours per week shopping online and prefer communicating with businesses on their phones through text messages rather than emails. (Shopify, Oct 2022)
- In 2021, the typical mobile user spent an average of 4 hours and 48 minutes per day using their phone, an increase of 6.7% from 2020. (Data Reportal, Jan 2022)
- Mobile phone users spend 92.5% of their time on their devices using mobile apps and the remaining 7.5% using web browsers. (Data Reportal, Jan 2022)
- In Dec 2019, 33% of Australians made an online purchase via mobile. This rose to 36.4% in Dec 2020. (We Are Social, Jan 2021)
- 93% of people use mobile internet to find local businesses. (Digital Examiner, Apr 2021)
More mobile marketing statistics:
- There are 5.31 billion unique mobile phone users worldwide, representing more than two-thirds (67.1%) of the global population. (Data Reportal, Jan 2022)
- In the second quarter of 2022, 58.99% of global website traffic came from mobile devices (excluding tablets). (Statista, Jul 2022)
- Mobile traffic is predicted to increase by 25% by 2025. (Smart Insights, Mar 2021)
- In Australia, 47.5% of web traffic in Dec 2019 originated from mobile phones, a 25% increase from Dec 2018. This later dropped to 45.2% web traffic from mobile phones in Dec 2020. (We Are Social, Jan 2021)
- The global viewability rate of mobile web video ads stood at 71.6% at the end of the second half of 2019 and had risen to 79% in the first half of 2021. (Statista, Jun 2022)
- Most small businesses (79%) outsource app building to an app development team or freelancer. (Top Design Firms, Jan 2022)
- 46% of small businesses with an app report being very satisfied with the app’s performance in relation to their goals. (Top Design Firms, Jan 2022)
- 37% of small businesses have apps for both Android and iOS devices, while 25% have only an iOS app and 35% have only an Android app. (Top Design Firms, Jan 2022)
Social Media Marketing Statistics
Most people in the world and Australia specifically use social platforms daily. While there, they love interacting with their favourite brands. This makes social platforms a profitable, useful channel for marketers.
How profitable is Social Media Marketing, exactly? Megaphone’s clients see ROAS of up to 19x on platforms like Facebook. But to get a clearer picture of what SMM can do for your brand, let’s take a look at the stats below.
How big is the social media marketing industry?
To understand the size and reach of Social Media Marketing, let’s look at statistics for Social usage and marketing.
- In January 2022, there were 4.62 billion social media users globally, equal to 58.4% of the world’s population. (Hootsuite, Jan 2022)
- At the beginning of 2022, 82.7% of the Australian population (21.45 million) had active social media accounts. (We Are Social, Jan 2022)
- There were 15 million Facebook users in Australia in early 2022. (Data Reportal, Feb 2022)
- In January 2022, YouTube ads reached a majority (90.3%) of Australia’s internet user base. (Data Reportal, Feb 2022)
- In February 2022, 30.2% of Australians used social media when looking for information about a brand. (We Are Social, Feb 2022)
- 4 in 10 working-age internet users visit social networks specifically to research brands and products they are considering buying. (We Are Social, Feb 2022)
- 22.6% of Australian internet users aged between 16-64 follow the social media accounts of the brands they buy from. (Data Reportal, Feb 2022)
How do businesses use social media for marketing?
How much do companies spend on social media marketing?
- $1.60 billion USD was spent on social media ads in Australia in 2019. This rose to $1.93 billion USD in 2020. (We Are Social Jan 2021)
- Australia is estimated to be the 5th largest social media advertising market in the world. (Statista, Jun 2022)
- Australia’s total social media advertising market size is forecast to grow to USD 2.7 billion by 2024. (Statista, Jun 2022)
How effective is social media marketing?
- 77% of consumers will choose a brand over the competition after a positive experience with a brand on social media. (Sproutsocial, 2021)
More social media marketing statistics:
- YouTube (78.2%) and Facebook (77.7%) are the most popular social media platforms in Australia. (Hootsuite, 2020)
- In early 2022, Australians spent an average of 1 hour 57 minutes per day on social media. ( We Are Social, Feb 2022)
- 14.8% of global internet users consider Instagram as their favourite platform, compared to 14.5% for Facebook. (GWI, Q3 2021)
- Australians spent an average of 23.4 hours per month on TikTok in 2021, the longest duration among all social media platforms. (Data Reportal, Feb 2022)
- In early 2022, 65.03% of web traffic referrals from social media in Australia came from Facebook, 13.53% from Twitter, and 7.91% from Pinterest. (Data Reportal, Feb 2022)
Email Marketing Statistics
A lot has happened in the last two decades to change the advertising market as we know it. Television and radio are no longer the central focus of marketers – mobile, social media, and influencers provide better marketing opportunities for many brands.
But through the past few decades, one channel persists. Email marketing is still extremely popular, both in Australia and around the world
But is email marketing still effective in the modern digital landscape? Is it outdated, or has it managed to deliver ROIs over time?
The stats below show email marketing may be the single most effective marketing channel today, returning $42 for every $1 spent. Let’s dive into this stat (and others) in more depth below.
How much is the email marketing market worth?
- The global email marketing market was valued at 7.5 billion USD in 2020 and is projected to reach a worth of 17.9 billion by 2027 with a CAGR of 13.3% during the forecast period. (Statista, Jul 2022)
What is the average ROI for email marketing?
- In 2020, email marketing had an average ROI of $36 for every dollar invested. Retail, ecommerce, and consumer goods industries had the highest ROI, with brands earning an average of $45 for every dollar spent. (Statista, Oct 2021)
How popular is email marketing?
- In 2021, 54% of marketers used email marketing to distribute and promote their content. (SEMrush, 2022)
- 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
- More small businesses (64.1%) use email as a marketing channel compared to those that use Instagram (48.3%) and Twitter (47%). (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
What does the future of email marketing look like?
- Global email marketing is projected to be valued at 17.9 billion USD in 2027, up from a value of 7.5 billion USD in 2020. (Statista, Jul 2022)
- According to marketers, subscriber segmentation (78%), message personalisation (72%), and email automation (71%) are the most effective strategies for email campaigns. (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
More email marketing statistics:
- In 2020, there were more than 4 billion global email users, with 306 billion emails sent and received daily worldwide. (Statista, Sep 2022)
- In 2021, Mondays had the highest email open rates (22%), while Sundays and Saturdays had the lowest open rates at 20.3% and 20.5%, respectively. (Campaign Monitor, 2022)
- According to Mailchimp, the average open rate for email direct marketing across all industries in 2019 was 21.33%. (Mailchimp, Oct 2019)
- Only 13.33% of marketers send marketing emails daily, while 33% send weekly and 26% send multiple times per month. Another 13.33% send emails monthly. (Databox, Jan 2022)
Content Marketing Statistics
Gone are the days when ads used to be the only means of promoting your brand. Creating online content to build awareness and interest without explicitly making a sales pitch is extremely popular.
Why?
Because with content marketing, brands can maintain visibility in the market without running ads all the time. But is this strategy effective? Content marketing statistics reveal the performance of content marketing and how marketers can leverage it.
How much is the content marketing industry worth?
- In 2021, the global content marketing industry revenue was estimated at around 66 billion USD and is projected to reach 137 billion in 2026. (Statista, Mar 2022)
- The global content marketing industry is estimated to be worth 407.3 million USD in 2022. It’s forecast to reach a worth of 877.6 million by 2028, with a CAGR of 13.7% during the forecast period. (Absolute Reports, Apr 2022)
What are the most successful content marketing strategies?
- 45% of marketers reported that creating more content and posting more often helped the most with ranking content organically in 2021. (SEMrush, 2022)
- Long reads of 3000+ words get 138% more traffic than those with fewer than 500 words. (SEMrush, 2022)
- Marketers identified improving the quality of content (55%), SEO (46%), and creating more video and visual content (41%) as the top three tactics that made their content strategy successful in 2021. (SEMrush, 2022)
How important is content marketing to businesses?
- 58% of B2B content marketers said virtual events/online courses/webinars produced the best results for their content marketing in the last 12 months. (Content Marketing Institute, 2022)
- According to B2B marketers, content marketing is the most effective in creating brand awareness (80%), educating audiences (70%), and building credibility or trust. (Content Marketing Institute, 2022)
More content marketing statistics:
- 19% of marketers found their content marketing to be very successful in 2021, while 33% said it was moderately successful, 39% somewhat successful, and 9% unsuccessful. (SEMrush, 2022)
- The top three key content marketing goals for 2022 by marketers were to increase brand awareness (45%), attract more traffic to websites (37%), and generate leads (36%). (SEMrush, 2022)
- In 2021, 81% of companies with unsuccessful content marketing efforts didn’t have a documented content strategy. (SEMrush, 2022)
- In 2021, there was a 366% increase in searches for “How to create content for affiliate marketing.” (SEMrush, 2022)
- 53% of companies that didn’t have much success with content marketing in 2021 spent less than 5% of their marketing budget on content, while 73% with a very successful content marketing strategy spent between 10-70% of their total marketing budget on content marketing. (SEMrush, 2022)
- Posts with more than seven images get 116% more organic traffic than articles containing just text. (SEMrush, 2022)
- LinkedIn is the social media platform most frequently used for B2B content distribution (75%), followed by Facebook (69%) and Instagram (30%). (Content Marketing Institute, 2022)
SEO Statistics
When consumers search for brands online, they use search engines. Google is the biggest player on the market – but Facebook, Amazon, TikTok, and other platforms have become search engines in their own right.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a strategy businesses use to appear at the top of search results, increasing visibility and driving traffic. Increased visibility results in increased brand awareness and conversion rates.
What SEO tactics are marketers using to optimise their digital marketing strategy, and what do the results look like? We take a look at the most important SEO statistics you should use to build your strategy in 2022.
What’s working in SEO today?
- The average first-page result on Google contains 1,447 words. (Backlinko, Apr 2020)
- URLs that contain terms similar to a keyword have a 45% higher click-through rate compared to URLs that don’t contain a keyword. (Backlinko, Oct 2022)
How effective is SEO marketing?
- Organic search provides the best results for B2B companies, generating 2x more revenue than any other marketing channel. (Bright Edge, 2019)
- The no.1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average click-through rate (CTR) of 27.6%. (Backlinko, Oct 2022)
More SEO statistics
- As of September 2022, Google held 92.42% of the total search engine market share, followed by Bing (3.45%) and Yahoo! (1.32%). (Statcounter, Sep 2022)
- In 2019, an average of 53.3% of trackable web traffic across industries came from organic search, while paid search only accounted for 15% of traffic. (Bright Edge, 2019)
- The no.1 organic result is 10 times more likely to receive a click than a page in the no.10 spot. (Backlinko, Oct 2022)
- The first 5 organic results on the first page of Google account for 67.60% of all clicks, while results 6-10 account only for 3.73%. (Zero Limit Web, Feb 2021)
- 71% of marketers identified using strategic keywords as their number one SEO strategy. (HubSpot State of Marketing Report, 2021)
- Over 50% of marketers measure the success of their SEO strategies through keyword rankings and organic traffic. (HubSpot State of Marketing Report, 2021)
Website Statistics
A brand website is essential to any digital marketing campaign. It acts as a one-stop shop where customers can find all the information they need about a business and its offers.
Well-designed websites allow brands to strengthen their online presence through multiple strategies such as mobile optimisation, SEO, content marketing, video marketing, and more.
How important is having a website, and what impact does it have as a digital marketing strategy? Let’s take a look at the hard stats and find out!
What percentage of businesses have websites?
- In 2019, 59% of Australian small businesses did not have a website. Reasons given for not having one were that 44% felt their business was too small, 30% felt it was too expensive to build a website, and 17% didn’t have time to build or manage one. (GoDaddy, 2019)
How important are websites in digital marketing?
- 50% of consumers believe that website design is crucial to a business’s overall brand. (Top Design Firms, Apr 2021)
- 58% of smartphone users prefer companies whose mobile sites remember who they are and their past behaviour. (Google/Ipsos, 2019)
How can I improve my website’s UX?
- Decreasing mobile site load times by just one-tenth of a second led to a significant increase in conversion rates. (Deloitte, 2019)
- 73.1% of web designers believe that a non-responsive design is a top reason why visitors leave a website. (GoodFirms, 2021)
- 42% of people will leave a website because of poor functionality. (Top Design Firms, Apr 2021)
- When asked what visual elements they value on a company website, 40% of consumers said images, 39% said website colour scheme, and 21% said video. (Top Design Firms, Apr 2021)
More website statistics:
- By 2021, there were 1.88 billion websites online. (Statista, Aug 2021)
- 50% of smartphone users are more likely to use a brand’s mobile site while browsing or shopping on a smartphone because they don’t want to download an app. (Google/Ipsos, 2019)
- 63.3% of all website visits in 2019 originated from mobile devices, which increased to 68.1% in 2020. (Perficient, Mar 2021)
Final Thoughts
The digital marketing landscape is forever changing, and studying its trends over the years is crucial to a successful marketing strategy.
Statistics are the easiest way to understand the market’s trajectory and how to prepare for today and the days to come. They also reveal the mistakes to avoid and the best practices to adopt for a foolproof strategy.
Want to learn more about what works for marketers in 2024 (and beyond)? Consider talking to Megaphone: Australia’s #1-rated marketing agency.
We drive over $100,000,000 in revenue for our clients each month. If you want to know what’s really working in the field – and in your specific industry – today, book a free consultation and find out today.
(Consultations are worth $1,200 and are limited. Book yours now to avoid disappointment!)
