The fine folks at Business2Community have compiled a fantastic list of 83 newish statistics from across the digital marketing world. It’s definitely worth taking some time to read through some of their findings and their related studies. They stem from a variety of sources, including Social Media Today, B2B Marketing, eMarketer, Smart Insights, Fast Company, and others.
Here are a few that piqued my interest, with my thoughts:
YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network. (Fast Company)
YouTube can be so powerful! We need to share our customer stories or product overviews in short, digestible (2-3 minutes, tops) videos that are easily shareable. For a bigger results, craft several related stories into a playlist.
B2B marketers who use Twitter generate, on average, twice as many leads as those who don’t. (Social Media Today)
I’ve found Twitter to be enormously valuable to driving thought leadership efforts, especially by engaging user groups, analysts, and industry publications. I haven’t seen it connected to lead data, but I’d love to hear an example.
62% of B2B marketers rate blogging as an effective content marketing tactic. However, 79% of best-in-class marketers rank blogs as the most effective tactic, while just 29% of their least effective peers concur. (FlipCreator)
There’s certainly some confirmation bias at work here! Obviously, if you’re investing the time in blogging, you’re more likely to rate it as an effective tactic. But the other content marketing stats in the study tend to also support the value of blogging – and my experience bears it out. See The Big Data & Analytics Hub.
Though more than 90% of marketers now use content marketing, just 42% of B2B marketers and 34% of B2C marketers believe they are effective at this. (e-Strategy Trends)
I believe this. “Content marketing” as a trend has begun to gain traction in the last couple years, though realistically, it’s always been a best practice. (That’s a story for another day.) If you replaced “content marketing” with “story telling,” how would the results look?
Mobile matters. A lot. In 2013, 62% of emails were opened on a mobile device (48% on smartphones and 14% on tablets). (Heidi Cohen)
This. I check my personal email most often from my smartphone, and I cringe/complain when things appear poorly formatted (or worse, unintelligible). We’ve got to make it standard procedure to make emails (and web pages, for that matter) “work” on mobile devices. That may involve retooling design to strip out fancy graphics, and it should definitely involve testing before sending.
The top 4 positions, generally those considered to be “above the fold”, receive 83% of first page organic clicks. (Brent Carnduff)
We know that positioning content “above the fold” is important, but it’s good to remind ourselves why. SEO takes a lot of work, and we should keep it in mind with every content piece we develop. As you’re writing a blog post or web page, which search terms should send people there? Getting above the fold isn’t always possible, so pick your battles to those most important to your brand.
54% of B2B buyers begin their buying process with informal research about business problems; nearly 80% of the time spent researching is done [on]line. (B2B Marketing)
When a software solution demands a high price tag, we’re not going to have an “add to cart” option on product pages. The buying process is longer and requires more people and opinions. But long before a potential customer ever raises their hand, they’re out there, quietly researching. And if our content isn’t readily available and relatable, they’ll head to a competitor’s site. Make sure your content uses the terms they’re searching, and speaks to the business problems they’re facing.
Skim through the entire B2Community list and let me know the stats that caught your eye. Which ones might affect your plans? How?
Vesely Creative 