Digital Marketing: Statistics and Trends for 2021

Digital Marketing Statistics and Trends for 2021

With the marketing world constantly changing, it can be hard to keep up with all of the latest trends and statistics. However, staying in touch with how marketing is evolving can be critical to the performance of your business. 

We've done some of the legwork for you by compiling a list of the most interesting and relevant content, social media, email, CRM, and other compelling digital marketing statistics, to help you stay ahead of the game. 

Content Marketing Statistics

Social Media Marketing Statistics

Email Marketing Statistics

SEO Statistics

Mobile Marketing Statistics

 


 

Content Marketing Statistics

 

“Content marketing is really like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date.” — David Beebe, Founder & CEO, Storified Hospitality Group

  • 56% of businesses reported that they plan to increase content creation spending (Content Marketing Institute)
  • 90% of all marketers use content marketing to generate inbound leads. (Content Marketing Institute)
  • 72% of marketers say content marketing increases leads and engagement. 
  • 92% of marketers and businesses report content as a valuable business asset. (Content Marketing Institute)
  • 27% of businesses say that the biggest challenge faced by them when creating their own content is the lack of data. (Data and Marketing Association)
  • More than 16 blog posts a month on average result in around 3.5 times more traffic. (HubSpot)
  • 98% of senior marketers believe having a content strategy is important for their success, but only 55% have a documented strategy. (2017)
  • 75% of readers want articles they read to be under 1,000 words. (BuzzSumo)
  • 72% of marketers target content based on audience personas or customer profiles. (Contently)
  • 57% of marketers claim custom video is still the hardest type of content to produce. (Contently)
  • 83% of marketers prefer article and video content formats the most, despite the hype for flashier content formats like podcasts and infographics. (Contently)
  • 50% of brands believe that paid content distribution is critical to their success. (Contently)
  • 63% of Companies are outperforming competitors with help from marketing automation.

 

Social Media Marketing Statistics

“Social media marketing is about creating content that brings your audience together as a community and inspiring authentic conversations while increasing your brand's awareness.” — Krystal Wu, Social Media Community Manager, HubSpot

  • In 2021, around 82% of the New Zealand population were active social media users. This is up by 110,000 users since the previous year. 
  • Around 97% of the population in New Zealand were active mobile social media users in 2021
  • Social media in New Zealand is dominated by YouTube and Facebook, with 87% and 83% of the population claiming to use each platform respectively. WhatsApp users were around half of this figure, with 40% saying they used the messaging service.
  • In New Zealand, total revenue for from social media was $132.6M in the 2020 financial year, up by 10.2% year on year, making social the leading channel for growth. 
  • Globally, over 3.6 billion people use social media and the number is only projected to increase to 4.41 billion in 2025. (Statista)
  • The top social media networks ranked by the number of active users are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. (Statista)
  • Facebook still reigns as the most used social network in the world. In Q3 2020, the network reported over 2.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs). (Statista)
  • The largest demographic on Instagram globally is women aged 18–24 years old. (Statista)
  • In Q3 2020, Twitter reported an average of 187 million monetizable daily active users (mDAUs), up 29% globally year on year.
  • 96% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for organic content distribution and 83% for paid social, making it the top most-used platform in both content distribution types.

 

Email Marketing Statistics

"Only the companies and brands that create human connection are going to succeed. This is extremely true with email. You might get short term benefits from very promotional content, but honest, human, and personalized content creates a following for the long term."

— Henni Roini, Marketing Manager EMEA at HubSpot

  • There are 3.9 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.3 billion by 2023. (Statista, 2020)
  • Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
  • 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
  • 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
  • Mobile opens accounted for 46% of all email opens. (Litmus, 2018)
  • Apple iPhone is the most popular mobile client for reading emails with 29% of all opens occurring on this platform. Gmail is a close runner-up at 27% (Campaign Monitor, 2018)
  • 35% of marketers send their customers 3-5 emails per week. (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)
  • Campaigns sent by Australia-based organisations in 2020 outperformed countries around the world in most key performance indicators - Open rate, click-through rate, and click-to-open rates were all significantly higher than the global average. (Campaign Monitor)
  • The unsubscribe benchmark for Australian brands is .2%, about double the global average unsubscribe rate. This is the only core metric where Australian marketers lagged behind worldwide performance. (Campaign Monitor)
  • In Australia, emails were opened and clicked on more frequently than in years past, a trend seen around the world that was influenced by COVID-19. Open rates grew from 18.7% to 20.6%, while click rates increased from 2.8% to 3.1%. 
  • Education earned an open rate of 34.3% , followed by Food & Beverages at 33.6% and Government & Politics 31%. Of the three, Australian Food & Beverage brands far outstripped the global average, more than doubling the benchmark open rate for their industry of 15.2%.

SEO

  • 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. (BrightEdge)
  • 0.78% of Google searchers click on results from the 2nd page. (Backlinko)
  • 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search. (BrightEdge)
  • 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps. (Sparktoro)
  • The top-ranking page gets the most search traffic only 49% of the time. (Ahrefs)
  • The average top-ranking page also ranks in the top 10 search results for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords. (Ahrefs)
  • 92.42% of keywords get ten monthly searches or fewer. (Ahrefs)
  • Around 8% of search queries are phrased as questions. (Moz)
  • Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%
  • The #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7%. (Backlinko)

 

Mobile

  • By 2022, mobile advertising will account for over 50% of ad spending and overtake desktop advertising. (Statista)
  • In 2021, Android remains the leading mobile operating system worldwide, owning a 72.72% market share. (StatCounter)
  • The vast majority of time spent on the internet is through mobile apps. In 2022, the daily time spent on mobile apps is projected to reach 227 minutes per day, up from 215 minutes in 2020. 
  • In January 2021, the Google Chrome browser was the leader in the mobile internet browser market, with a share of 62.43%. (Statista)
  • 75% of smartphone users expect to get immediate information while using their smartphone. (Think with Google, 2019)

“Ignoring online marketing is like opening a business but not telling anyone.”

— KB Marketing Agency

Do you know any interesting marketing stats or quotes? Let us know in the comment box below and we may add it to the list!

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