Walk into any restaurant, café, or bar and you’ll more than likely see half of the patrons glued to their smartphones, tablets or other handheld devices.
The same goes for pretty much any public (or private) sphere you can think of—in fact, there’s a good chance you’re reading this very article on your own mobile device right now.
As such, it’s clear that the Internet has become an integral part of our lives — at home, at the office and on-the-go — therefore, digital marketing is of ever-increasing importance to any advertising campaign or business plan. To fully grasp the web’s influence, take a look at these incredible stats concerning different areas of the digital marketing spectrum.
The personal encroaching on the business world?
B2B buying can be heavily influenced by emotion, it seems. Business value is all well and good, but to a consumer, personal value packs twice as much punch in terms of their likelihood to buy. Indeed, 71% of users who see personal value in a product will be prepared to fork out their hard-earned cash, while 68% who see personal value will be ready to pay a higher price for the benefit. Emotional advertising is effective for a reason.
While the head should rule the heart in terms of a business approach, it’s important to remember that from the consumer’s point of view, the heart often has a hefty say in matters.
Social media: Overrated?
Social media – or anti-social media, as it may well be termed given how much it encroaches and diminishes our real-life interactions with our fellow humans—is well and truly king of the digital marketing domain. For well over 5 years, social media has been the most common online activity, and today, 78% of companies have a dedicated social media team. But is it worth it?
Well, perhaps not, if you’re only interested in financial ROI — but it does depend on who you are. For the bigger brands, less than 0.25% of new customers were generated via Facebook and less than 0.1% via Twitter. Furthermore, a measly 22% of consumers trust advertising emails they receive from companies, while even less (13%) trust ads found on websites. There’s more to marketing than just making sales, and while customer sentiment and loyalty may be more tricky to measure than financial ROI, they’re still extremely important — and social media is perfect for this.
Email marketing: Underrated?
The humble email seems to have fallen slightly out of favour with many online marketing companies, but the stats show that it’s still an incredibly valuable channel. While social media is deemed to be the giant in the online marketing business, there are actually three times as many email accounts as there are Facebook and Twitters users combined!
With 83% of marketing emails making it into the inbox of the desired customer and a whopping £28.66 return on investment for every pound spent, the email should not be forgotten as a strong weapon in your marketing arsenal!
Mobile marketing: Upwardly mobile or going nowhere fast?
After highlighting the benefits of email, it may be of interest to know that precisely one quarter of all emails are opened on a mobile device. 63% of all mobile phone owners currently use it to go online, and more than half of those use it as their main method of browsing.
However, 70% of users say they received unwanted marketing mails to their phone. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. This illuminative infographic highlights how rapidly mobile sales increased over 2014, especially in comparison to desktop sales.