Guest post by Josh Wardini.
Digital channels now account for more than 50% of marketing budgets in most companies, and the shift of dollars from traditional, offline tactics to online is expanding. Although the fundamentals of good marketing practice rarely change, specific practices continually evolve.
To keep your business growing and competitive in the cutthroat world of online marketing, it’s vital to keep up to date with the changing benchmarks and trends presented in this infographic by Serpwatch that can help you plan a successful digital strategy.
Whether you’re utilizing SEO, social media, blogging, paid advertising, email marketing, or other marketing channels, it’s critical to adapt your strategy to current trends. Customers tune out generic advertising and expect brands to understand and cater to their preferences.
Keyword Rankings
Growing your website traffic organically requires a carefully crafted content marketing strategy and solid search engine optimization (SEO). This is one of the most basic but important digital marketing techniques.
Done right, “link earning” and on-page SEO can help your website or blog rank on the first page of search engine results through targeting specific keywords relevant to your business, products, services, and prospective customers.
Most searchers won’t scroll past the first page. They favor organic results over paid search ads. It is not surprising that over 40% of business revenue is generated by organic traffic.
Organic Search
To rank well in organic search, longer and more detailed content is generally better. The average Google first-page result typically contains about 1,900 words, so keep this in mind when planning your content strategy.
Local SEO
Ranking well on location-based searches is also becoming more vital. Studies show that 72% of consumers who do a local search follow it up with a visit to the store within five miles. It’s also interesting to note that 28% of searches for something nearby result in a purchase.
Mobile Search
More than 52% of all online traffic in 2018 came from mobile phones, up from just over 50% in 2017. The average search conversion rate for Google Ads is 3.48%.
Social Media
On Facebook, blog posts longer than 1,500 words often receive 22.6% more likes. The same is true for links shared on Twitter, with stats showing the blog post length receiving more tweets is also around 1,500 words.
Images are essential as well, as they account for 75-90% of Facebook advertising efficiency. But on Twitter, tweets with videos get six times as many retweets as those with photos. On Instagram, photos with faces get 38% more likes.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, accounts for 80% of B2B leads, compared to 13% from Twitter and 7% from Facebook. Publishing articles on LinkedIn can also help you rank higher on Google.
Video Marketing
Businesses using videos for product promotions can increase purchases by 144%. This is because almost 50% of Internet users check videos containing product- or service-related information before visiting a store. By 2021, video is projected to account for 82% of all online traffic.
Email Marketing
Getting segmentation right is crucial to email marketing success, with segmented email campaigns having 14.37% higher open rate than spray-and-pray emails. Email personalization can potentially double your response rate.
Paid Advertising
Buying text ads in search engines is still generally cost-effective, with 64.6% of people clicking on Google ads when they are shopping online. However, running ads on websites and other platforms must be done carefully.
81% of consumers have clicked away from a website due to a pop-up ad, and 72% have a lower opinion of brands using those ads. However, carefully implemented pop-ups or slide-ins (not obnoxious, not full-screen, easy to close) can be effective for purposes like email list building.
Marketing Automation
Spending on automation tools is expected to rise to $25,1 billion annually by 2023. Companies using automated lead management report positive results, seeing a 10% or more bump in revenue within 6-9 months of use.
Content Marketing
Content marketing generates three times more leads than paid search advertising. Companies that blog get 97% more links to their websites. Buyers often search extensively for product- or service-related information from vendors and third-party sources before engaging with a sales representative.
As a marketer or business owner, its vital to evolve along with your target market. What worked yesterday may not work today, and what works today may no longer work tomorrow.
Josh Wardini is the Co-Founder of Serpwatch.io. He started building his experience in all things Internet since the beginning of 2000. A novice but aspiring developer, he lives and breathes SEO and loves to explore how the World Wide Web works.