Digital Marketing Statistics from 2015 & Trends for 2016 – part 2

As promised, we’re back with the second part of our digital marketing statistics and trends article. If you haven’t read the first part, you can do so here.

In the next paragraphs, we will describe some interesting findings regarding social media and lead generation. Other categories, such as Lead Management, Email Marketing and Marketing Automation will be described in the third part of this article, which will be published soon.

Social media stats for 2015

If you want to increase your brand awareness in order to obtain higher conversion rates, let’s start by choosing the right platform according to the latest statistics presented by business2community:

Facebook Statistics

• “11.5 billion monthly active users” (Facebook Investor Report, November 2015)
• “72% of adult Internet users are on Facebook, 62% of the total adult population” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “Facebook continues to have the most engaged users. 70% log on daily, including 43% who do so several times a day” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “794 million users login daily via a mobile device” (Facebook Investor Report, November 2015)
• “91% of millennials (15-34 year olds) are on Facebook” (American Press Institute, March 2015)
• “Thursdays, Fridays, and weekends have the highest levels of engagement for posts” (Coschedule, 2015)
• “3pm earns the most clicks” (Coschedule, 2015)
• “1pm earns the most shares” (Coschedule, 2015)

Twitter Statistics

• “320 million monthly active users” (Twitter, December 2015)
• “23% of adult Internet users are on Twitter, 20% of the total adult population” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “38% of those on Twitter use the site daily” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “80% of active users use Twitter via mobile device” (Twitter, December 2015)
• “B2B performs 16% better during business hours” (Quick Sprout, 2015)
• “B2C performs 17% better on weekends” (Quick Sprout, 2015)
• “The best time to tweet is 5pm at the end of the workday” (Kissmetrics, 2015)
• “Midweek or weekends are the best days for retweets or click-throughs” (Coschedule, 2015)

LinkedIn Statistics

• “400 million registered users” (LinkedIn, December 2015)
• “Students and recent college graduates are LinkedIn’s fastest growing demographic” (LinkedIn, December 2015)
• “25% of adult Internet users are on LinkedIn, 22% of the total adult population” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “LinkedIn’s daily users increased from 13% to 22% between September 2014 and April 2015” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “The best days to post to LinkedIn are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with Tuesdays earning the most shares and clicks” (Quick Sprout, 2015)
• “Before and after the workday (7:30-8:30am and 5:00-6:00pm) are the best times to post” (Elle & Company, 2015)

Google Statistics

• “Only 9% of Google’s 2.2 billion users post content, but this still makes nearly 200 million active Google users” (Business Insider, January 2015)
• “13% of U.S. small businesses use Google ” (eMarketer, April 2015)
• “90% of people on Google will view but not interact with content” (Coschedule, 2015)
• “However, posting regularly on Google can be a valuable SEO strategy.”
• “Posting mid-morning (9-10am) will gain the most views (Fast Company, 2015)”

Pinterest Statistics

• “100 million users” (Venture Beat, September 2015)
• “31% of adult Internet users are on Pinterest, 26% of the total adult population” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “The proportion of Pinterest users who visit the platform daily rose from 17% in September 2014 to 27% in April 2015” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “67% of Pinterest users are under 40 years old” (Pinterest, September 2015)
• “Male Pinterest users grew 120% in 2015” (Pinterest, September 2015)
• “87% of Pinners have purchased a product found on Pinterest” (Pinterest, September 2015)
• “46% of users visit Pinterest at least weekly” (Buffer, April 2015)
• “The worst time to post to Pinterest is during work hours, and the best time is on Saturdays” (Coschedule, 2015)

Instagram Statistics

• “400 million monthly active users” (Instagram, 2015)
• “28% of adult Internet users are on Instagram, 24% of the total adult population” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “59% of Instagram users are on the platform daily, including 35% who visit several times a day. This 59% figure reflects a 10-point increase from September 2014 when 49% of Instagram users reported visiting the site on a daily basis” (Pew Research, August 2015)
• “90% of Instagram users are under 35” (Science Daily, June 2015)
• “15.5 million of Instagram’s users are teens” (Expanded Ramblings, 2015)
• “Posting a video at 9pm earns 34% more reactions” (Coschedule, 2015)
• “2-3pm and 8-9pm are the optimal times to post” (Coschedule, 2015)

You can also access other interesting social media statistics from 2015 by visiting oursocialtimes:

• “Instagram grew 50% in 9 months and is now bigger than Twitter”
• “Organic Facebook reach drops to 2% for most pages”
• “In June Facebook had more video views than YouTube”
• “Snapchat is growing at a rate of 56% a year”
• “Tumblr is still signing up 120,000 users… a day!”

Surprisingly, since only 150 marketers are using this channel, Tumblr’s active user-base grew 120% in the last 6 months of 2014 while Facebook’s grew by only 2%. Therefore, if you pay attention to the numbers (120,000 new user sign ups daily) the growth is phenomenal.

• “50% of devices on corporate networks will be mobile”
• “Instagram gets 50x more engagement than Twitter”
• “Gangnam Style has been viewed 2,182,109,637 times”

What we did was to:

• Choose the right social media channel in accordance with our clients’ buyer personas and their interests
• Focus more on Linkedin and Twitter and less on Facebook
• Post as often as possible to keep our clients up-to-date with all that is new and exciting

Social media trends for 2016

Do you have a social media plan for 2016? If not, you should consider maximizing your marketing efforts and approaching the right platform with the right tactics, because social media is now more powerful than ever.

Let’s take a look at the latest trends:

“Social as a discovery engine” (source: business2community)

This trend is actually great because it can generate new services such as “SEO optimization for social media channels”. This is especially relevant now when Facebook is testing its ‘Instant Articles’ feature which is set to be launched this year. This feature will allow publishers to post content without users having to leave the platform in order to read it.

“It’s Time to Sell on Social” (source: business2community)

It looks like this year Facebook, Twitter and other platforms will have a “Buy” button. This feature will have a huge impact on clients’ sales and from our point of view it will change sales processes entirely.

“Video Will Make Up A Majority of Social Networks” “Visual and video content are going to be key to successful social content strategies in 2016” (source: momentology)

According to this prediction, by 2017, 85% of the internet will be video. Beside videos, the focus will be on visuals (charts, photos and graphics) in order to trigger an emotional reaction.

“2016 is going to be the year of virtual reality and 360 video on social media” (source: momentology)

According to Travis Bernard, Social Media & Audience Development at TechCrunch, Facebook will adopt new content forms and creative storytelling especially since the consumer version of Oculus Rift is expected to be launched in Q1 of 2016. This is exciting and we’re sure that many people are looking forward to testing it!

“The Growth of Emoji Analytics” (source: socialmediatoday)

For the majority of us, emojis were not on our top list. But if we take into account the statistics, we can see an increase in their usage. That’s probably going to be the case in 2016 because they seem to be more appreciated by the audience than initially thought.

Lead generation stats for 2015

I’m sure that this is a great topic of interest for all of us, not to mention those who are struggling to develop a lead generation machine. In what concerns the top B2B statistics, Caroline Malamut wrote a brilliant article on Capterra’s blog:

• “94% of B2B buyers conduct some type of research online before making a purchase”. (Source: MarketingCharts)
• “More than 80% of B2B leads generated through social media are from LinkedIn.” (Source: Oktopost)
• “91% of B2B buyers never respond to an unsolicited inquiry.” (Source: No More Cold Calling)
• “60% of executives say that email is their best performing channel in regards to ROI.” (Source: Business 2 Community)
• “68% of B2B companies use landing pages to generate new leads for their sales teams.” (Source: MarketingSherpa via HubSpot)
• “The three most commonly used lead gen strategies are email marketing (78%), event marketing (73%), and content marketing (67%).” (Source: Demand Metric Research Corporation)
• “Improving the quality of leads generated and increasing the quantity of leads generated top the list as the most important lead gen objectives for businesses.” (Source: Ascend2)
• “75% of B2B buyers use social media to support their purchase decisions.” (Source:International Data Corporation)
• “About 96% of website visitors are not ready to buy.” (Source: Marketo)
• “88% of users leave the wrong information when filling out an online form.” (Source: Mintigo)
• “By 2020, 5% of sales will be driven by data collected through wearable devices.”(Source: Gartner)

What we did was to:

• Convert online traffic into leads using landing pages.

Lead generation trends for 2016

According to PrizmMedia here are some interesting trends for 2016:

“Exit Popups”

It’s a great way to prevent the users from exiting the website. You can insert a “subscribe to our newsletter form” or, if you have an e-commerce website, you can insert a promotional pop-up “if you buy now, you will have 10% off”.

“Built-in Analytics”

With the build-in analytics feature, you can access insights about your clients and then target them with paid ads.

“New Content Marketing Tactics”

For more information regarding this topic, please read part 1 of this article.

That was all on digital marketing statistics and trends for now. Hope you enjoyed going through this article and are already looking forward to reading the third part which we’ll publish next week.

Until then, never say never to digital marketing!