Here Are 9 Eye-Opening Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

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Instagram and Snapchat continue to heat up in the digital marketing world. Check out the gaudy numbers those social players are pulling as well as six other stats from the space in the last week that we found particularly interesting:

1. New York researcher eMarketer said today that 32 percent of U.S. companies with 100 employees or more will use Instagram for marketing this year. That number will increase to 49 percent next year before jumping to 71 percent in 2017. What’s more, eMarketer said, Instagram may be more popular with marketers than Twitter in two years.

2.  CEO Evan Spiegel and his team forecast that Sponsored Selfie Filters—a new ad unit from Snapchat—will reach up to 16 million viewers a day, BuzzFeed reported. The ad purchase will cost a maximum of $700,000 per day.

3. According to Fast Company, Snapchat earlier this year discovered that between 60 percent and 70 percent of users stopped watching its video ads after just three seconds. Coca-Cola, however, has evidently cracked the code by simply making content tailored for the app. Working in concert with Snapchat, the magazine reported that the soda giant is getting a Snapchat video completion rate of 54 percent for 10-second clips.

4. Twitter has started offering Conversion Lift, which helps brands measure the effectiveness of Promoted Tweets, enabling them to better target ads. Referencing Conversion Lift data, the San Francisco tech company claimed that people who see Promoted Tweets are 1.4 times more likely to interact with a brand than those who don’t see an ad.

5. Millward Brown polled more than 13,500 multiscreen viewers—i.e., people who own a TV and either a smartphone or tablet—in 42 countries on what they think about video advertising. The researcher found that the average consumer between the ages of 16 and 45 watches 204 minutes of video a day, split equally between TV and online. Indeed, the tube and digital video are now on equal footing for both Gen Y and Gen X consumers. What’s more, 45 minutes of the average online viewing time is done on a smartphone, while desktop accounts for 37 minutes and tablet for 20 minutes.

6. The aforementioned eMarketer study also found that 88 percent of U.S. companies will utilize at least one social-media network for marketing this year.

7. P.F. Chang’s is running a user-generated content effort around National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October called #PFChangsPink. The brand saw a 1,300 percent bump in UGC from the goodwill initiative in its first eight days.

8. During last week’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton’s Twitter handle got 293,696 mentions on the microblogging platform, besting challenger Bernie Sanders’ 278,405.

9. Mode Media, formerly Glam Media, said it has streamed more than 1 billion video views in the past six months. Mode.com’s channels include Glam (women’s lifestyle), Brash (men’s lifestyle), Bliss (health and wellness), Tend (parenting), Foodie (recipes and restaurants), among others.

Bonus stat: So far in 2015, only 14 percent of initial public offerings have been done by tech companies, per a Wall Street Journal article citing stats from Dealogic.

H/T: AdWeek.

Why Video is an Effective Digital Marketing Component

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Marketers are getting increasingly aggressive on the digital front. They are implementing innovative techniques to make their offerings more visible and appealing to the masses. To this end, it is time we seriously consider video as a new medium.

According to a blog quoting a comScore report, 64% of the visitors may purchase a product after watching a relevant video, while a Forbes survey reveals that 75% of executives watch videos

1. Classifying viewers

Your viewers are not going to be all of the same age and with similar interests. Your offerings, however, must be relevant to all – from fresh graduates to the veterans. So, you cannot expect one video to strike the same chord in every viewer’s mind. The trick is to understand the preference of different sections of your audience, and create different videos to target them simultaneously.

2. Getting a great videographer

A skilled videographer, who understands your requirement, is going to be your best friend in making appealing videos for your digital marketing activities. A good videographer can:

  • Capture and highlight the aspects of your offerings that your target customers should know and understand
  • Advise what kind of video you need – brand story, company introduction, customer testimonial, product demo, etc.
  • Make the video uniquely related to your offering by including actors or real people, animation or real videography, or a combination of various suitable components
  • Tell a story from the emergence of problem to its solution, and the result in the short video

3. Utilize social media to the fullest

For a successful video-based digital marketing campaign, presence on YouTube and other digital media is essential. The post says that 91% of the video snippets displayed on search result pages are from YouTube. Share your videos through Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media, with backlinks to your website brand page. Similarly, your website should offer links for sharing the video through various social media. By utilizing social media, you actually gain by leveraging every viewer’s reach.

4. Making a viral video

There is no particular trick to make a viral video. However, you can analyze all the popular viral videos to determine what makes people like them more than other videos. Presence of an influential personality is always helpful. Besides, most viral videos have an unusual or odd approach to story-telling. Focus on humor, children and/or animals, a tone; they are more likely to strike the right chord in your viewers’ minds. Besides, subtle reference to a current incident also works often.

5. Monitor video performance

Regular and frequent releases are good, but you also need to monitor the performance of your videos. Some of the common performance parameters are:

  • Number and type of viewers
  • Time spent on a particular video
  • Number of views per viewer
  • Click-through rate

6. In-house vs. professional studio

Depending on budgets and other factors, you can choose to hire a video production company or have an in-house team for the production. Usually, large organizations have an in-house team for video production. However, you can rely on video companies to produce highly appealing and effective videos for your digital marketing campaign.

So, consider videos a vital component when you think of digital marketing. All you need is to take the first step to enter this domain with conviction in order to reap the benefits.

Why Video is an Effective Digital Marketing Component

H/T: Martech Advisor

2015 Digital Marketing Stats: The Good, the Bad and the Intriguing

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We look at the 2015 stats that show great leaps forward and hurdles still to be overcome for digital marketing

A decade or more ago, digital marketing, or internet marketing as it was more frequently referred to back then (see digital marketing Vs internet marketing), used to be a wild-west like frontier. Opportunities were everywhere, and there were also plenty of people getting it horribly wrong. In the past 10-15 years things have changed markedly, and in general things have been getting a whole lot better for digital marketers.

 

the good the bad and the ugly

 

Much like the past 15 years, 2015 so far has brought plenty of good news for digital marketers; increasing digital ad budgets, increased focus on content and SEO has given them plenty of opportunities to show their worth and marketers. The stats that have come out so far from various studies and compilations this year demonstrate this clearly. However, they also show there are problems with digital marketing that companies are still not overcoming. Big data has been a big trend for a few years now, but it is clear that many businesses are not able to turn data into insights effectively. Accurate measuring ROI remains a problem for many, whilst some are still failing to get tangible results from Social Media.

That’s why we thought we’d present some of the best and worst of digital marketing stats of the year thus far. The good show how fast digital marketing is growing and getting ever more effective, whilst the bad stats demonstrate the challenges that still remain.

All the surveys and research that generate these stats often throw up some interesting tidbits of data that are often fascinating. We thought that we’d add these intriguing stats into our compilation for good measure.

Good

  • Content marketing in 2015 generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Source)

 

  • Content creation and management now claim the second-largest share of digital marketing budgets. (Source)

 

  • 28% of marketers have reduced their advertising budget to fund more digital marketing. (Source)

 

  • 84% of top performing companies are using or plan to start using marketing automation by 2015. (Source)

 

  • 73% of B2B marketers use video as a content marketing tactic, and 7% of marketers plan on increasing their YouTube marketing.
    71% of companies planned to increase their digital marketing budgets this year (Source)

 

  • 78% of companies now say they have dedicated social media teams in 2015, up from 67% in 2012 (Source)

Bad

  • 62% of companies did not agree with the statement ‘we have the analysts we need to make sense of our data’ whilst 63% did not agree with the statement ‘we have a good infrastructure in place to collect the data we need’. (Source)

 

  • 70% of marketers were not confident in their companies ability to measure the return on mobile ad spend. (Source)

 

  • 52% of Americans think that most online shopping sites need improvement, whilst 79% of Brazilians2 and 87% of Chinese people think this. (Source)

 

  • 83% of consumers reported that they have had a “bad experience with social media marketing.” (source)

 

  • The top three social networks used by B2B marketers are LinkedIn (91%); Twitter (85%); and Facebook (81%). However, just 62% of marketers say that LinkedIn is effective, while 50% say the same for Twitter and only 30% of B2B marketers view Facebook as effective. December 2014 (source)

 

  • 20% of companies said Digital Marketing is very much separate from the rest of their marketing/advertising efforts, whilst only 14% said they were a ‘digital first organisation. (Source)

 

  • 91% of people have unsubscribed from company emails they have previously opted into. (source)

 

  • Only 8% of companies have an email marketing team, despite the fact it is often rated as the platform the delivers the highest ROI of any digital marketing tactic. (source)

 

  • Almost half–48%–of all emails are opened on mobile devices. Yet 39% of marketers say they have no strategy for mobile email, and only 11% of emails are optimized for mobile (source)

Intriguing

  • 15% of Google searches have never been searched for before. (source)

 

  • 60% of all Internet activity in the US originates from mobile devices and about half of total Internet Traffic flows through mobile apps. (source)

 

  • 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and 61% of those searches result in a purchase. (Source)

 

  • The most followed brand on Twitter is Facebook (source)

 

 

H/T: Smart Insights.

10 Online Marketing Metrics Critical To Your Campaign’s Performance

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When was the last time you conducted a thorough marketing analysis for your business? If your answer is, “I can’t remember,” don’t feel bad. Many business owners deprioritize marketing analyses in the face of more pressing needs.

The good news: There’s never a bad time to conduct a detailed marketing analysis that lays the groundwork for a comprehensive online marketing strategy.

As part of your analysis, you’ll need to pay attention to key online marketing metrics and digital marketing measurements that offer insight into how your online presence performs relative to the competition and what you can do to improve its performance.

If you want to learn how to improve your online marketing performance without breaking the bank, start with these 10 metrics.

1. Traffic Sources

While it’s important to keep track of your total visitor counts and other high-level traffic metrics, these data points don’t always provide the level of fine-grained insight necessary to adjust and shape your online marketing plan effectively.

For a closer look at your website traffic, pay attention to traffic sources. In Google Analytics, you can find this information in the Acquisitions tab.

Traffic sources can be broken down into four main categories: direct, referrals, search and social.

  • Direct traffic consists of visitors who typed your main URL into the search bar and navigated directly to your site.
  • Referral traffic comprises visitors who clicked external links to get to your site.
  • Search traffic consists of traffic generated by organic and paid search results.
  • Social visitors arrived through links embedded in your social media profiles and feeds.

Once you have a sense of where your traffic is coming from and how traffic figures change over time, you’ll have an easier time determining which areas of your online marketing strategy are working and which need tweaking.

2. Bounce Rate

Your website’s bounce rate is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors by the number of visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing just one page.

Bounce rate is a great proxy for overall interest in your website’s content and messaging. In most cases, lower bounce rates are better.

3. Time on Site

Time on site is another useful proxy for visitor interest. The longer your visitors spend exploring your website, the more likely they are to absorb information about your company and take meaningful action to enter your sales funnel.

Sophisticated digital marketing strategies focus on simultaneously reducing bounce rates and increasing time on site readings.

4. Conversions

Your website’s conversion rate is an absolutely critical measure of your online marketing plan’s overall effectiveness.

It’s important to note that website visitors can “convert” in many different ways including filling out a form with personal and financial information, signing up for a recurring membership, submitting an email address, completing an online transaction and more.

It’s your responsibility to define what “conversion” means for your business, measuring said conversions in Google Analytics or another marketing automation program such as HubSpot, and taking steps to boost your conversion rate.

5. Lead to Close Ratio

Lead to close ratio is another important metric that determines how effective your website and your online marketing ecosystem as a whole is to shepherd prospective customers through the buyer’s journey. It’s expressed as the total number of leads you generate divided by the number of sales.

6. Repeat Sales Ratio

Most businesses thrive on repeat sales. In fact, many service providers now focus on recurring sales models defined by weekly or monthly payments. If this describes your business, you’re no doubt focused on getting your repeat sales ratio as high as possible.Even if you follow a more traditional retail sales model that emphasizes individual, one-off transactions, repeat customers are critical to your profitability.

7. Cost per Lead

Your cost per lead is expressed as your total marketing outlay divided by the number of leads generated in a given period.

Lower costs per lead are generally better than higher costs per lead, but it’s okay to deviate from this rule during periods of heightened marketing investment.

8. Cost per Sale

Cost per sale is expressed as your total marketing outlay divided by the number of sales in a given period. It’s a great measure of the average cost of a single sale.

However, keep in mind that cost per sale measures discrete sales costs and thus isn’t equivalent to return on investment.

9. Average Customer Value

Customer value is a relatively complex measure of the total amount of value a given customer produces during their relationship with your company.

By extension, average customer value is the measure of the average customer’s value contribution. This metric is determined by a number of different factors, including transaction size, transaction frequency and the average duration of customer relationships.

10. Return on Investment

In many ways, your return on investment is the “ultimate” measure of your marketing plan’s effectiveness. It’s a measure of your total marketing investment relative to your total revenue.

Virtually every tweak, adjustment and new initiative you launch with respect to your online marketing strategy should have one overarching goal in mind, which is to boost your return on investment.

Therein lies the key to profitability and growth.

Learn How to Improve Online Marketing from the Experts

These 10 online marketing metrics aren’t the only digital marketing measurements that you need to keep in mind as you plan and deploy your digital outreach strategy. They’re critical to a comprehensive marketing plan.

If you can effectively track and measure your traffic sources, bounce rate, time on site, total conversions, lead to close ratio, repeat sales ratio, cost per lead, cost per sale, average customer value and total return on investment, you’ll find yourself well ahead of the curve.

H/T: Business2Community