DID YOU KNOW: 67% of leads in 2016 are generated by companies with an active blog?

As someone who has live through the digital age, and has been working in the world of social media for 7 years, I love a good statistic. I find that businesses who don’t stay as up to date as possible, tend to fall behind their competitors. I make it an important task of mine to stay as relevant as possible, and know the marketing statistics that are important to what I do.

Marketing is my speciality so I do my research, and find out the latest 2016 statistics. This allows me to provide social proof to those who might be doubting social media, and the benefits it can bring.

If, like me, you find Marketing statistics insightful, and important, please see a breakdown below of statistics on Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Mobile Marketing.

Content Marketing

When looking at 2016 content marketing statistics, I found it interesting to read that businesses and marketers are starting to lean towards more content-focused marketing. 76% of digital marketers said they will produce more content in 2016, and 51% said they are going to increase their content marketing spend.

Whilst 88% of B2B marketers are using content marketing as a part of their marketing strategy, only 32% have documented their content marketing strategy. LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform with 94% of B2B marketers using the network as a part of their strategy. Twitter followed behind with 87%, Facebook with 84%, YouTube at 74% and Google+ at 62%.

The most effective piece of content marketing used by B2B marketers is Infographics, with 63% of people using them, said they were effective. Surprisingly, only 51% of business owners said that content management was extremely important or “critical” to their customer journey. I can only see this increasing as we move into 2017 and beyond.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has been extremely important to my overall marketing strategy, and I have personally reaped the benefits of great email marketing. According to Econsultancy, 78% of their study believe that all email communication will be personalised in the next 5 years.

Email should not be discounted. It is 40x more effective at acquiring a new customer than Facebook or Twitter. Looking at personalisation; emails are 26% more likely to be opened if they have a customised email subject line.

Email has ranked highest in terms of ROI compared to other marketing strategies, and 78% of consumers rank email as the most preferred communication platform.

Don’t forget your social sharing buttons in emails. Emails that include them, have a 158% higher CTR (click through rate) than emails that don’t include share links.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing spend is at an all time high, and is predicted to grow 12.9% over the next year, making the internet the largest advertising medium in 2016 (overtaking TV).

Marketers said that email provides the best impact at 26%, followed by SEO at 17%, paid search at 15%, social media at 5% and display advertisement at 5%. We, as consumers are still wary of advertisement. 54% of internet users will not click on a banner ad because they do not trust them.

Video marketing is taking a huge step forward in 2016. 88% of businesses say that video is an important part of their digital marketing strategy, with a further 64% of businesses believe that video marketing has directly lead to an increase in sales.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has been a game changer over the last 5 years. It now plays as large a role in a purchasing decision as TV with 57% of customers saying they are influenced by positive comments about a brand online.

Within the next 5 years, dedicated social media marketing budgets are likely to increase from around 10% to 25%. Identifying ROI is one of the top three social media challenges, with 60% of marketers stating this.

A huge 80% of marketers identify “engagement” (likes, shares) as the most important metric for assessing social media marketing success. Audience size comes in second at 61%, followed by website traffic at 56%.

When looking at what tools are used to measure social media marketing success, 65% of businesses use native analytics provided by the social networks themselves. Social media management platforms like Hootsuite follow close second at 62%, with Google Analytics coming in third at 59%.

Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are said to drive the most referral traffic, whereas LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ drive the most engaged traffic. 58% of marketers say original written content is their most important form of social content. 19% say the same about original visual content (e.g. infographics). 10% say curation of others’ content is most important.

Mobile Marketing

By 2019, mobile advertising will represent 72% of all digital ad spending. Only 68% of companies have integrated mobile marketing into their overall marketing strategy. This will increase as we move to 2017 and beyond.

Google have said that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website they had trouble accessing on mobile, and 40% will head to a competitor instead. If this isn’t enough to make you think about mobile marketing, 83% of mobile users say a seamless experience across all devices is extremely important and 57% said they will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site.

Pinterest is the most mobile social network with 64% of its referred traffic coming from a smartphone, or tablet device.

I have shared a lot of great information above, so make sure you take your time to digest all of the statistics that are important to you, and your business.

Please click here to see the sources of the statistics shared above.