160 Crucial Digital Marketing Software Statistics: 2024 Data Analysis & Market Share

The pandemic changed the landscape of marketing significantly. Awareness of digital marketing software statistics, especially during these times, helps you understand how the market has changed, allowing you to make informed marketing strategies post-COVID-19.

Note that in a 2021 worldwide survey, 48% of respondents said their digital engagement strategy and workplace strategy had completely changed last year. (Salesforce, 2021a) Marketers then expect 40% of their events to go virtual in 2022 and 30% hybrid. (Salesforce, 2021b) As such, 82% of marketing organizations have been adopting new policies around remote work. (Salesforce, 2021a) To improve your marketing strategies in the new world, you may explore the following digital marketing software statistics listed on this page.

State of Digital Marketing Statistics

Digital marketing statistics 2022 show shifting trends from when COVID-19 hit the world. While 67% of small business owners set revenue growth as their goal, 35% of digital marketing leaders worldwide said it would be challenging to build more synergistic relationships to communicate digital marketing visions better due to the long-term impact of the pandemic. (AWeber, 2021; Gartner, 2021)

• In 2020, when markets were hit hard by the pandemic, internet advertising spending in the United States rose by over 12%, reaching $140 billion. The expenditure is expected to further grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5%, reaching $200 billion in 2025. (PwC, 2021b)
• In 2021, the US had the fastest growing digital advertising market worldwide with an annual growth rate of 38.3%, followed by a 33.4% growth rate for the United Kingdom. (Arda, 2021)
• 60% of customer interactions have taken place online. (Salesforce, 2021b)
• 84% of marketers adjust their marketing strategies and tactics based on customer interactions. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• 78% of marketers said they have changed or reprioritized metrics due to the pandemic, with the most significant year-over-year increases seen in customer referral rates, customer acquisition costs, and content engagement. (Salesforce, 2021b)
• Digital marketing leaders said delivering personalized experiences has become a growing issue, receiving concern from 8% more marketers than 2019 figures. (Gartner, 2021)
• However, they need to be careful with ads as 40% of survey respondents agreed that it annoys them when they receive online ads based on their search history. (Kunst, 2021)
• In terms of work, 69% of marketers said the pandemic made it harder to collaborate. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• 75% said the pandemic has permanently changed the way they collaborate and communicate at work. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• 78% of marketing organizations have implemented new work collaboration technology. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• 85% and 82% of marketers said they use video conferencing and channel-based collaboration, respectively. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• In the second half of 2020, the global ad fraud rate for desktop display ads optimized against fraud was 0.8% and 11.7% for non-optimized desktop display ads. (Youmark, 2021)

B2B Digital Marketing

Early in 2020, the 214 largest digital marketing solutions SaaS companies served 487 million customers, employed 19,000 people, and raised a combined revenue of $1.9 billion. (Latka, 2021) B2B Marketing is changing fast. 

• A 2021 survey of B2B marketers in North America found that 21% had a centralized content marketing group working across multiple brands or product lines. A small or one-person team managed more than half of B2B content marketing. (Content Marketing Institute, 2022)
• In a 2021 survey of B2B marketers in the US, it appeared that B2B product marketers focused their spending on traditional advertising and were expecting to raise spending by 1.34% in the following year. Meanwhile, digital marketing spending is seen to increase by 12.55%. (The CMO Survey, 2021)
• Almost a third of B2B SEO professionals will focus on content production, and a quarter intends to focus on lead generation. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• B2B marketers use an average of 12 customer data sources, and for them, account-based marketing (ABM) programs added another line item during the pandemic. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• Meanwhile, in terms of budget allocation, 19% of B2B SEO professionals are not likely to allocate funds to digital PR. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Nearly half of B2B SEO pros are likely to use their website to generate new business, with 30% likely to use a dedicated sales team to generate new leads. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Over a quarter of B2B SEO pros are likely to consider MQLs as a top metric. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Meanwhile, 19% of B2B SEO professionals think links are important factors, and 39% think Core Web Vitals is an important emergent factor. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)

B2C Digital Marketing

B2C seems to attract more entrepreneurial talent since B2C SEO pros tend to have their own business.  (Search Engine Journal, 2021) Nevertheless, B2C pros may need to share some more information with customers as 76% of customers are expecting consistent interactions across departments, but 54% feel like departments do not share information. (Salesforce, 2021a)

• In terms of budget allocation, over a fifth of B2C marketing budgets go to advertising. (Salesforce, 2021a) 
• In a 2020 poll of B2C content marketers worldwide (mainly from the US and Canada), 23% indicated their B2C content marketing was handled by a centralized content marketing department that works across several brands or product lines. (Content Marketing Institute, 2021)
• However, nearly a quarter of B2C SEO professionals plan to focus on digital PR, with 17% likely to spend most of their budget on this strategy.  (Search Engine Journal, 2021) 
• Also, nearly a quarter of B2C SEO professionals are likely to allocate most of their budgets to social media, and 21% might consider social media ‘likes’ as a metric. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• About 18% of B2C SEO pros are more likely to use CAC as a top metric (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Meanwhile, about 14% of B2C SEO pros use paid referral platforms (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 24% rate structure data as vital, while 18% think internal linking is a vital ranking factor. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Google Discover is considered by 25% of B2C SEO as an important emergent factor, while 17% think Google Passages are important as well. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 10% of B2C clients allocate a budget of $10,000 to $50,000 to SEO, twice the proportion of B2B that do the same. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)

Statistics on Digital Marketing Software and Other Technologies

Digital marketing technology is becoming widespread. According to 83% of marketers, meeting customer expectations depends on their digital capabilities, and their work will be more technology-driven after the pandemic. (Salesforce, 2021a) AI is especially taking center stage. 

• In a 2020 study of senior-level communications and marketing professionals in the US, 11.8% said the COVID-19 epidemic had slowed their use of new technology and data tools, and 6.1% of agency-based communicators felt the same. (Cision, 2020)
• 60% of marketers have fully defined AI strategies despite the fact that the gap between high performers and their underperforming competition persists. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• 41% of survey respondents saw an increase in revenue and improved performance due to the use of AI in marketing campaigns, and 38% created personalized consumer experiences through AI (Drift, 2021)
• McKinsey Global Institute estimates the impact of AI analytics on marketing and sales to reach $5.9 trillion annually. (Chui et al., 2018)
• 52% of survey respondents said marketing AI is essential to their success. (Drift, 2021)
• As such, 77% of marketers say now less than a quarter of their marketing tasks are intelligently automated to some degree. However, there are some 18% who have not intelligently automated any tasks at all. (Drift, 2021)
• Meanwhile, 80% believed more than a quarter of their marketing tasks will use AI in five years, while some 43% said they would be fully automated by that time. (Drift, 2021)
• Across all marketers surveyed, 89% said accelerating revenue is their team’s top priority, but only 8% adopted AI in marketing exclusively to reduce costs. (Drift, 2021)
• In a 2020 survey of marketing leaders in 30 countries, 69% expect 5G and the global expansion of the online population to impact their marketing significantly. Half the respondents especially named smart home technology. (Salesforce, 2020b)
• 17% were in the Scaling phase of marketing AI transformation, meaning wide-scale adoption of AI that consistently produces efficiency. (Drift, 2021)
• 19% are in the Humanizing phase, seamlessly integrating AI and human capabilities and reinvesting time and money saved into listening, relationship building, creativity, culture, and communities. (Drift, 2021)
• Regarding barriers to adoption of marketing AI, 16% chose fear of AI as a contributing factor, but 70% said it is a lack of education and training. (Drift, 2021)
• Only 14% have any AI-focused education and training. (Drift, 2021)
• Other significant barriers are lack of awareness (46%) and lack of resources (46 %). (Drift, 2021)
• In a 2021 survey, nearly 70% of UK respondents indicated having invested in optimizing their company website to improve digital marketing in 2020. (The CMO Survey, 2021) 
• 22.3% invested in machine learning and automation. (The CMO Survey, 2021)
• Jobandtalent was the leading digital marketing solutions software-as-a-service (SaaS) company with $323 million in annual recurring revenue as of January 2020. (Latka, 2021)

Leading Marketing Software

1. Moz. An SEO tool for marketing that lets users analyze keywords and keep track of their online ranking. Learn more about it in our Moz Review.
2. Marketo. A marketing automation tool with features for engagement tracking, email marketing, lead management, event marketing, and more. For more details, see this Marketo review.
3. ActiveCampaign. A small business marketing system offering automation, contact management, campaign organization, social media monitoring, and ecommerce support. Check out this ActiveCampaign review to learn more.
4. SendinBlue Email. A tool made primarily for email marketing comes with marketing automation, SMS support, and trigger marketing options. You can view its complete feature set in this SendinBlue Email review.
5. SharpSpring. An email marketing platform that comes with lead nurturing, call tracking, and customer behavior tracking functionalities. Read more about its functionalities in our SharpSpring review.

Digital Marketing Statistics by Channel

Some 90% of marketers say their digital engagement strategy has shifted since before the pandemic, and 89% say their marketing channel mix has changed. (Salesforce, 2021a) Still, small business digital marketing statistics are still shifting, and SEO is becoming ever more vital. 

• In the UK, a third of marketing leaders said that digital marketing contributed very highly to the performance of their companies in 2020. (The CMO Survey, 2021)
• In the US, 32.5% of respondents believed that the contribution of digital marketing to their company’s performance was very high. (The CMO Survey, 2021)
• 78% of marketers said they engage customers in real-time across one or more marketing channels. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• In terms of SEO, 38% of respondents reported that their clients think SEO is essential to marketing. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• SEO client budget is between $1,000 to $5,000 per month. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 35.1% tend to put a “Moderate” portion of their budget into SEO. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Meanwhile, 63% of leading UK companies said they used affiliate marketing, 58% used cross-linking, and 32% applied to retargeting of advertising. (BearingPoint, 2021)
• 44% of survey respondents said their primary marketing goal is to grow their audience, while about 30% said increasing web traffic is more important. (AWeber, 2021)
• In 2021, the US digital display advertising market was estimated to reach $92.53 billion, accounting for roughly 54% of total digital advertising spending. It’s predicted to hit 107.91 billion by 2023. (Skai, 2019)

Content Marketing

Among all SEO activities, content marketing takes the major share of the digital marketing budget, with Paid Media most likely getting “Most” of the digital marketing budget, while Content Marketing being more likely to get “All.” (Search Engine Journal, 2021) However, considering many companies’ sudden shift to remote work, the workflow becomes vital to effective content marketing. 

• In 2021, 82% of marketers expected to actively use content marketing, a 70% increase from the previous year. (Daniel, 2021)
• 47% of buyers look at three to five pieces of content before speaking with a sales representative. (Daniel, 2021)
• 17% of global marketers said content marketing is the most effective digital technique, followed by marketing automation, big data, AI, and machine learning. (Redfish, 2020)
• 60% of marketers currently use user-generated content, while 33% plan to use it. Some 61% currently use interactive content, while 30% plan to use it. (Marketing Charts, 2021)
• A 2021 poll of North American marketers revealed that 40% already had a written content marketing strategy. It was down from 43% last year. (Content Marketing Institute, 2021)
• Over a quarter of surveyed marketers will focus on content production, which aligns with content marketing dominating SEO budget allocation. (Search Engine Journal, 2021) 
• Of those who use content marketing, 93.5% said it was important or very important to their business. The most popular content marketing tactics are blogging, lead magnets, and SEO. (AWeber, 2021)

Email Marketing

Email marketing is said to be the most effective driver of sales, with 36.1% of respondents to a 2021 survey saying so. (AWeber, 2021) It is no surprise as, among US marketers, 67% use email marketing solutions as a tool to execute personalization across their channels. (Salesforce, 2020a) As such, email marketing software has become crucial to marketing. 

• 71% of small business owners commonly used email marketing as their digital strategy. (AWeber, 2021)
• Meanwhile, studies show 74% of marketers with increased engagement in personalized email messages. Meanwhile, personalized emails have six times higher transaction rates than non-personalized emails. (AWeber, 2021)
• 47% of entrepreneurs agree that email marketing is the best for customer retention because it lets them send personalized messages, engage in two-way communication, offer helpful content, and collect valuable feedback. (AWeber, 2021)
• In a December 2020 global poll, 22% of marketers said mobile optimization was the most difficult goal to achieve when optimizing an email marketing plan; retaining an engaged list was mentioned by 45% of marketers. (MarketingCharts, 2021)

Social Media Marketing

Every business needs social media marketing. In a 2021 survey, 23% of respondents named social media the most effective channel in helping businesses address challenges during the pandemic since most people started using social media while COVID-19 was spreading. (AWeber, 2021)

• Time spent on digital media in the US is expected to rise from 7 hours and 50 minutes in 2020 to just under 8 hours in 2022. (Cramer-Flood, 2021)  
• 89.6% of those who use social media marketing said it is important or very important to their business. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the most popular social media. (AWeber, 2021)
• 18.9%  percent of SMBs thought social media marketing was best at driving sales. (AWeber, 2021)
• Among worldwide industry professionals, 88% see higher exposure as a benefit of using social media for marketing, and 72% cite increased traffic. (Social Media Examiner, 2021)
• In another report, 72% of ecommerce professionals use Facebook for digital marketing activities (Catalyst, 2021)
• In a 2020 survey, 83% of respondents reported using social media as a digital channel for their marketing strategy, while 67% used search marketing, and 66% used videos or OTT. (Salesforce, 2020b)
• 72% of US retailers surveyed in 2020 used Facebook for digital marketing, 67% used Google, and 61% used Instagram. (Catalyst, 2021)
• In the UK, 19.35% of responding marketers said they would increase spending on paid social media marketing in 2022, while 18.75% will do the same with paid Google marketing. (Statista Research Department, 2021b)
• 5.3% of surveyed SEO professionals worldwide said their digital marketing budgets were dedicated to social media marketing. However, some 9.1% said none of their digital marketing budgets went to this channel. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• In February 2020, B2B marketers in the US were asked what marketing expenses comprised. At the time, 84.7% of B2B product marketers used social media, and 78.7% of B2B service marketers did the same. (Moorman, 2020)

Mobile Marketing

In 2021, 7.1 billion people worldwide had used mobile devices. It is expected to rise to 7.26 billion by 2022. By 2025, the number of mobile users worldwide could reach 7.49 billion. (The Radicati Group, Inc., 2021) Mobile marketing trends continue to shift post-pandemic.

• World internet users reached 4.66 billion in January 2021, 59.5% of the world’s population, and 92.6% (4.32 billion) used mobile devices to access the internet. (DataPortal, 2021)
• There are growth opportunities due to the massive adoption of ecommerce via mobile devices during the pandemic. Mobile advertising revenue for FY2020 was $98.3 billion, a 13.4% increase from the $86.7 billion in FY2019. (PwC, 2021a)
• 69% of marketers used mobile messaging, and nearly two-thirds of organizations used audio media like podcasts and streaming ads. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• A survey of smartphone users between December 2020 and January 2021 in 11 markets globally found that almost one-third had received spam messages from organizations they had never contacted. (Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2019)
• Almost one-third of Android users received business messages via WhatsApp. Comparatively, 13% of iOS users reported receiving business communications from companies over WhatsApp. (Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2019)
• 13% of iOS users said Line is their preferred business mobile texting platform. (Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2019)
• Comparatively, 21% of iOS and Android users found company messages beneficial. (Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2019)
• Some companies send messages at inconvenient times, according to 25% of respondents. (Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2019)
• Gaming (68%) was the most popular app activity on mobile devices. Other uses included listening to music (67%) and using social media (63%). (Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2019) 
• Full-screen video advertising was deemed the most effective by 40% of app developers worldwide in a poll conducted in 2021. For app user acquisition, 30% said in-feed video advertisements and social video ads were the most effective ad types. Playable advertising ranked third, with 29% of app developers finding them effective. (AdColony, 2021)
• Mobile web display ads were at 15.24 seconds in 2020, and in-app display ads were 19.21 seconds. These are much faster than the desktop display ads of 23.24 seconds. (Integral Ad Science, 2021)
• The global viewability rate of mobile web display ads was 62.9% in 2020; almost 63% of display ads displayed on the mobile web were in view in the measured period. (Integral Ad Science, 2021)
• The global viewability rate of mobile web video ads was at 79% in 2021. (Integral Ad Science, 2021; Kaplan, 2021)
• Mobile advertising spending is expected to go beyond $339 billion by 2023 worldwide from $223 billion in 2020. (Zenith, 2021)
• The size of the global mobile marketing market was about $11 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $57.85 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 18%. (Nair, 2021)
• In 2021, mobile advertising was expected to account for 92% of digital advertising spending in China. Then came Mexico (88.5%) and South Korea (81.5%). The UK is the only European country in the list of top countries, at 76.2%. (Lima, 2021)
• A growth of $43 billion from 2020 to $65 billion in 2025 is expected of mobile banner ad spendings.  (Banner Advertising – the United States, n.d.)
• With $141 billion, mobile social media advertising will be the most expensive form of mobile advertising by 2022. Mobile banner advertisements come in second with roughly $128 billion, followed by search and video. (Digital Advertising – Worldwide, n.d.)
• Globally, there were 586 million monthly active mobile ad-blocking browser users in Q4 2020. At the same time, 257 million people used ad-blocking browsers on desktops. (Shankland, 2021)
• On average, 91% of internet users globally had used chat and messenger apps. Next were social media apps (88.5%) and entertainment and video applications (67%). (DataPortal, 2021)
• In the second half of 2020, the global ad fraud rate for mobile web video ads optimized against fraud was 0.3% and 6.9% for non-optimized mobile web video ads. (Youmark, 2021)

Influencer Marketing

The significance of influencer marketing grew once the pandemic hit. With the growing popularity of platforms like TikTok and Twitch, on top of the ever-popular YouTube, two-thirds of marketers currently use influencer marketing, while 27% plan to use it. (Marketing Charts, 2021)

• The global influencer marketing market size has more than doubled to $13.8 billion in 2021. (Geyser, 2021)
• By 2027, the global influencer marketing platform market is anticipated to reach $370 million. An influencer marketing platform manages influencer relationships and performs analytics and reporting. (The Insight Partner, 2020)
• In a global 2021 poll of marketing agencies and brands, 38% said they spent 10-20% of their budget on influencer marketing, and 11% spent more than 40%. (Geyser, 2021) 
• A survey on Instagram influencer marketing found that 5.22% of influencers focused on beauty issues, making it the fourth most popular category in 2020. That year, 11.59% of Instagram influencers covered lifestyle. (Geyser, 2021)
• In a 2021 poll of internet users in major online markets, 53% said influencers were the best way to promote beauty or personal care items, and 45% said they best promote clothes and accessories. (YouGov, 2021)
• 43% of internet users globally follow social media influencers. (YouGov, 2021) 
• According to a 2020 survey, 89% of marketers use Instagram for influencer marketing. For YouTube, it was 70%. Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are also popular. (Trösch, 2020)
• Both pre-produced or live-streamed video content are popular, with at least 9 in 10 marketers planning to use it. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• 81% of surveyed marketing leaders worldwide said they used pre-produced videos as a digital consumer engagement tactic. (Marketing Charts, 2021)

Personalization Marketing Statistics

Digital marketing growth statistics show the increasing significance of personalized products and marketing. A survey shows that 63% found that increased conversion rates are the most vital benefit of personalization, while 31% said it’s increased ecommerce revenues. (Salesforce, 2020a) 

• A 2020 poll of marketers in the US and UK revealed that around 33% of respondents spend more than half of their expenditures on personalization, while 67% spend less than half. (Adobe, 2020)
• 26% of responding marketers said for every dollar they spent on personalization, they saw $3 to $5 in ROI. (Adobe, 2020)
• 78% of marketers were using personalization in e-mail marketing, 56% use it on websites, and 31% do so in mobile apps. (Salesforce, 2020a)  
• In a 2020 survey of B2B professionals worldwide, 93% believed personalization efforts on their websites paid off. Vermes, 2020)
• 46% use machine learning for personalization.(Salesforce, 2020a) 
• 60% said the digital content of their company was extensively personalized, and 27% said that theirs was very extensive. (Adobe, 2020) 
• 46% of UK and US marketers employed personalization to recommend products. Also, 46% use personalization in predictive customer service. (Adobe, 2020) 
• Meanwhile, 11% of consumers said that brands providing personalized experiences had a much stronger impact on them, while 8% said the impact was significantly negative. (Adobe, 2020)
• 30% of consumers consider seeing personalized content online as important. (Adobe, 2020)
• In a March 2019 survey of US internet users, 62% agreed to share their email addresses to companies in exchange for personalized offers, and 31% said they’d be willing to provide financial data for the same goal. (McKinsey, 2019)
• In the same survey, over half of internet users in the US indicated they signed up for personalized marketing communications from corporations; 19% claimed they did so frequently. Conversely, 16% never signed up for personalized communications. (McKinsey, 2019)
• In 2019, according to a survey of US internet users, over 90% of respondents received irrelevant marketing communications. Moreover, 44% of respondents stated they would switch brands if they offered better personalization. (eMarketer Editors, 2019)
• 46% of US marketers used machine learning or algorithmic personalization. From 2018 to 2020, triggered messages were used rather consistently. (Salesforce, 2020a) 
• 62% of US marketers indicated that inline content was the most popular personalization option, while in-page modifications came in second (40%). (Salesforce, 2020a) 
• 96% of marketing professionals in the US use personalization in the music, media, and movies sector marketing activities, while 95% use it in the gardening and arts & crafts areas. (Daniels & Einstein, 2019)

Search Marketing Statistics

In 2020, nearly half the online ad revenue in the US was generated through search advertising; about a third of the revenue that year was from online display ads. (PwC, 2021a) Meanwhile, the average SEO client allocates between $1,000-$5,000 per month on SEO. (Search Engine  Journal, 2021) SEO is crucial to ecommerce and marketing.  

• 36.3% of SEO professionals spent most of their time on keyword research, while 33.4% spend the most time on on-page factors.  (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 37% of ecommerce professionals focused on optimizing their PDPs for SEO across the online platforms they use for digital marketing. (Catalyst, 2021)
• 43.9% of SEO professionals reported keyword ranking as the most used metric to measure SEO performance, followed by page views at 32.8% while conversions are half as likely as keyword ranking to be used as a metric. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 64.6% of SEO professionals rate their results as more successful compared to the previous period, with 18% saying they were “a lot more successful.” (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 29% of agencies are likely to spend most of their digital marketing budget on SEO, while 27% are likely to allocate most of their time on local SEO. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 37.6% of SEO professionals consider budget cuts their greatest challenge, 34.8% say it is a strategy issue, while 32.9% say it is a lack of resources. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 24.6% of SEO practitioners globally claimed that content depth and accuracy was one of the most important elements impacting search rankings, while 32.8% highlighted on-page items like meta titles or descriptions. (Nanji, 2021)
• 37% of in-house SEO professionals believe on-page factors are important.  (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 75% of US marketers indicated in a survey that they invested in optimizing their company website to improve digital marketing, and 20.4% invested in machine learning and automation. (The CMO Survey, 2021)
• 59% of SEO clients who raised their budget “a lot” experienced their traffic to have “increased a lot.” However, 61.4% of SEO clients with stagnant budgets still saw increased traffic from “a little” to “a lot.” (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Unsurprisingly, 45% of SEO professionals said websites are the number one driver of new business. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 43.9% of SEO professionals say keyword ranking is the most used measure of SEO success; only 19.9% named conversions as so. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• The SEO activity least likely to receive a budget is digital PR. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 32.8% of SEO pros think meta titles/descriptions, H1 tags, and other on-page elements are the most important ranking factor, and 36.7% of SEO pros consider Core Web Vitals the most important emerging factor.  (Search Engine Journal, 2021)

CTR and PPC Statistics

PPC advertising has a clickthrough rate of 11.38%. (Fishkin, 2019) It is ranked third by marketers in terms of driving leads: 17% of marketers drive leads through PPC, 24% do so with on-page website conversions, and 18% with email marketing. (FormStack, 2020)

• Google Ads CTR is 1.91% on average, while Bing Ads has 2.83% with a 48.2% greater conversion rate. (Storm, 2021) 
• Google Ads’ average cost per click ranges between $1 and $2, but Bing Ads’ average cost per click is less than $1. Still, Google’s ad network is larger than Microsoft’s. (Storm, 2021)
• Google Ads’ conversion rate is 3.75% on average, while Bing Ads’ is 2.94% on average. (Storm, 2021) 
• PPC was named one of the top three best channels for generating high-volume leads. (Formstack, 2020).
• In 2020, the average CTR for social media advertisements was 1.3%, up from 1.2% in 2019. (Salesforce, 2020a) 
• According to 38.7% of survey respondents, zero-click SERPs are the most serious threat to the SEO industry. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 40% of US marketers said that clicks are one of the most important criteria they employ when aiming for personalization, while 39% look at previously purchased products. (Salesforce, 2020a)

Statistics on the Use of Data for Digital Marketing

Understanding data helps you understand your customers or market too. The value of the global marketing data market in 2019 was $34.61 billion and was expected to grow to $52.26 billion in 2021. (OnAudience, 2020) Meanwhile, companies and their marketers are moving toward data-driven customer involvement. According to 78% of marketers, their customer involvement is data-driven. (Salesforce, 2021a) 

• In 2021, the largest marketing data market was expected to be the US, valued at $24.7 billion. Next was China. (OnAudience, 2020) 
• 87% of respondents in a 2020 survey of marketing technology decision-makers in the US said introducing a customer data platform improved overall marketing effectiveness; of the 87%, 24% said they saw significant improvement, and 63% said they saw some improvement. (Statista Research Department, 2021a)
• In a survey of ecommerce professionals in the UK and the US, 76% of the respondents were already leveraging real-time behavioral data to personalize user experiences on their ecommerce websites. (Yieldify, 2020)
• Data and analytics are budgeted for by 56% of ecommerce professionals, making it the most expensive ecommerce service. (2021, Catalyst)
• The most popular consumer data sources are currently known digital identities, such as email addresses and social IDs, followed by transactional data and declared interests and preferences. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• Since 2020, known digital identities, second-party data, and inferred interests/preferences had the greatest increases in popularity, while offline identities and anonymous digital identities have seen the greatest reductions. (Salesforce, 2021b)
• Offline identities, including postal addresses and anonymous digital identities, such as cookies and device IDs, experienced the greatest year-over-year declines in popularity. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• 36.7% of SEO professionals think Core Web Vitals will be the most vital factor in the coming years, while 25.4% consider structured data as another important emerging factor. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• Almost a quarter of those polled perceive the new third-party cookie changes to Chrome browsers as a threat that will affect the way data is acquired. (Search Engine Journal, 2021)
• 37% of marketers worldwide for media and programmatic said a lack of data scientists to examine data was one of the top three issues they encountered when leveraging data. (World Federation of Advertisers, 2020)
• US identity solutions spendings for marketing and advertising is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2024. (Curry, 2020)
• As part of their advertising and marketing operations, 61.9% of surveyed senior industry experts said they employed a cleanroom or other secured, shared environment as part of their data-sharing solution. These environments often analyze two or more first-, second-, or third-party data sets. (Winterberry Group, 2021) 
• The same survey found that 64.3% of respondents were currently collaborating with a third party to share first-party data for insights, activation, measurements, or attribution; 7.1% said they were not currently collaborating but used to in the past. (Winterberry Group, 2021) 
• Meanwhile, 61% of consumers believe they no longer have control over how their personal information is used. (Salesforce, 2021a)
• Increased conversion rates were the top benefit of personalization according to 64% of US marketers, while increased ecommerce income was the main benefit for 31%. (Salesforce, 2020a)
• In February 2020, US marketers reported that marketing analytics were employed in 37.7% of their projects to assist make educated decisions. (The CMO Survey, 2020)
• According to the survey, marketers in the United States spent $2.4 billion on data analytics, modeling, and segmentation solutions in 2019. (Winterberry Group, 2020)
• Industry professionals spent $2.9 billion on transactional audience data in 2019: demographic data cost advertisers spent $4.4 billion. $5.1 billion were spent on third-party data across digital channels, compared to $6.1 billion on terrestrial channels. (Winterberry Group, 2020)

Strategize with Digital Marketing Statistics

The pandemic has indeed brought significant changes in how marketers work and strategize. The new normal has brought more people online and subsequently drawn companies to invest more in digital marketing. The list of digital marketing software statistics gives you an idea of how much more crucial digital marketing would become to businesses.

Since numbers don’t lie, awareness of digital marketing trends would be vital to your decision-making in terms of marketing strategies post-pandemic. Where and how you put your money is critical to how much you will reap eventually.

Reference:

1. AdColony. (2021, July 8). App Install Marketing Survey — 2021 Edition. AdColony.
2. Adobe. (2020, May 26). Adobe Personalization 2020 Survey​ of Consumers and Marketers. SlideShare IOS.
3. Arda. (2021, December 15). How Has Digital Ad Spending Grown Globally in 2021? AdColony.
4. AWeber. (2021, March). 2021 Digital Marketing Report for Entrepreneurs & Small Business. AWeber. 
5. Banner Advertising – United States. (n.d.). Statista. Retrieved January 11, 2022, Banner Advertising.
6. BearingPoint. (2021). Digital leaders in the United Kingdom 2021. TalkRetail. 
7. Catalyst. (2021). The State of Ecommerce 2021. CatalystDigital; Catalyst and Kantar.
8. Chui, M., Manyika, J., Miremadi, M., Henke, N., Chung, R., Nel, P., & Malhotra, S. (2018, April 17). Notes from the AI frontier: Applications and value of deep learning. McKinsey & Company.
9. Cision. (2020, November). 2020 Comms Report. PRWeek; Cision. 
10. Content Marketing Institute. (2021). B2C Content Marketing 2022. Content Marketing Institute.
11. Content Marketing Institute. (2022). B2B Content Marketing 2022. Content Marketing Institute.
12. Cramer-Flood, E. (2021, February 4). US Time Spent with Media 2021 Update. Insider Intelligence.
13. Curry, A. (2020, September 3). Spend on Identity Solutions in the U.S. and Europe to Rapidly Grow — Winterberry Group. Winterberry Group. 
14. Daniel, K. (2021, July 12). The State of Content Marketing in 2021 [Stats & Trends to Watch]. HubSpot.
15. Daniels, D., & Einstein, N. (2019). The Value of Personalization Optimization for Retailers. In LiveClicker. The Relevancy Group. 
16. DataPortal. (2021, January). DataReportal – Global Digital Insights. DataReportal – Global Digital Insights; DataPortal. 
17. Digital Advertising – Worldwide. (n.d.). Statista. Retrieved January 13, 2022. Digital Advertising.
18. Drift. (2021, February 2). Revenue Acceleration. Drift. 
19. eMarketer Editors. (2019, June 15). Podcast: Why Everyone Wants Personalization, but Nobody’s Getting It. Insider Intelligence. 
20. Fishkin, R. (2019, August 13). Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click. SparkToro.
21. FormStack. (2020). The State of Lead Capture Report. Formstack. 
22. Gartner. (2021, April 27). Gartner Says 35% of Digital Marketing Leaders Believe the Biggest Challenges in 2021 to Come from Within Their Organization. Gartner. 
23. Geyser, by W. (2021, February 9). The State of Influencer Marketing 2021: Benchmark Report. Influencer Marketing Hub. 
24. Integral Ad Science. (2021, April). Media Quality Report H2 2020. Amazonaws; Integral Ad Science.
25. Kaplan, B. (2021, October 22). Tweet / Twitter. Twitter. 
26. Kunst, A. A. K. (2021, January 18). Statements on online marketing in the U.S. 2020. Statista.
27. Latka. (2021, October). The Top Digital Marketing Solutions SaaS Companies. Page 1. Latka.
28. Lima, G. (2021, May 6). Marketing digital na América Latina cada vez mais mobile. Líderes Digitais | Gabriel Lima. 
29. Marketing Charts. (2021, August 30). As the Marketing Mix Changes, What Digital Tactics Are Marketers Relying On? Marketing Charts. 
30. MarketingCharts. (2021, January 25). As Marketers Plan a Rise in Email Volume, Keeping Lists Engaged Proves A Challenge. Marketing Charts. 
31. McKinsey. (2019, April 1). The Art of Personalization— Keeping it Relevant, Timely, and Contextual. McKinsey & Company.
32. Mediakix. (2017, March 29). Instagram Influencer Marketing Is Now A $1.7 Billion Industry. Mediakix.
33. Mobile Ecosystem Forum. (2019, January 3). Homepage – MEF. Mobile Ecosystem Forum.
34. Moorman, C. (2020). Report of Results by Firm & Industry Characteristics, page 94 to 95. CMO Survey.
35. Nair, A. (2021). Mobile Marketing Market Statistics: 2030. Allied Market Research. 
36. Nanji, A. (2021). The Most Important Search Ranking Factors According to SEO Experts. MarketingProfs. 
37. Omnisend. (2021, February 2). 2020 Ecommerce Statistics Report: Email, SMS & Push Messaging Insights For 2021. Omnisend.
38. OnAudience. (2020). Global Data Market Size 2017-2021. In PressMania. OnAudience.
39. PwC. (2021a). Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Amazon News.
40. PwC. (2021b). Outlook 2022: The US Digital Advertising Ecosystem. IAB.  
41. Redfish. (2020, February 4). 6 Steps to Designing a Digital Marketing Strategy That Works. Redfish Group.
42. Salesforce. (2020a, April). Realizing the Dream of 1-to-1 Personalization. Salesforce.
43. Salesforce. (2020b, May 19). Sixth State of Marketing Report Reveals Priorities and Challenges For a New Decade. Salesforce. 
44. Salesforce. (2021a). State of Marketing SEVENTH EDITION Insights and trends from over 8,200 global marketers engaging customers from anywhere. Salesforce.
45. Salesforce. (2021b, August 11). State of Marketing in 2021: 78% Report New or Reprioritized Metrics. Salesforce. 
46. Search Engine Journal. (2021). The State of SEO 2021. DMBoard. 
47. Shankland, S. (2021, May 3). Ad blocking surges as millions more seek privacy, security and less annoyance. CNET. 
48. Skai. (2019, April 1). Marketing Metrics: 2019 Marks the First Year That Digital Gets More Than 50% of Total US Media Ad Spending. Skai. 
49. Skai. (2021, October 27). Digital Marketing Snapshot. Kenshoo Inc. 
50. Social Media Examiner. (2021, May). Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2021. Tractionwise.
51. Statista Research Department. (2021a, February 22). CDPs impact on efficiency in the U.S. 2020. Statista.
52. Statista Research Department. (2021b, April 27). Digital marketing channels with increased investment in the UK 2021. Statista.
53. Storm, M. (2021, May 6). Bing Ads vs. Google Ads: Which Deserves Your Ad Dollars? WebFX.
54. The CMO Survey. (2020). The CMO Survey February 2020. CMO Survey.
55. The CMO Survey. (2021). UK Topline Report. In CMO Survey. London Business School.
56. The Insight Partner. (2020, August). Influencer Marketing Platform Market Report. The Insight Partner.
57. The Radicati Group, Inc. (2021, January). Mobile Statistics Report, 2021-2025. Radicati. 
58. Trösch, D. (2020, January 17). Instagram Influencer Marketing In 2020: What You Need to Know. Fourstarzz Media.
59. Vermes, K. (2020, June 18). Report: 93% of B2B Marketers Say Personalizing Content Has Boosted Company Revenue. KoMarketing. 
60. Winterberry Group. (2020). The State of Data 2020. Winterberry Group.  
61. Winterberry Group. (2021). COLLABORATIVE DATA SOLUTIONS: Data and Identity in the Era of Permission. In Wiland. Winterberry Group. 
62. World Federation of Advertisers. (2020). Programmatic, Data & Technology Global Survey & Report Wave 4. In Amazon News. World Federation of Advertisers.
63. Yieldify. (2020). Personalization After COVID-19. Hubspot.
64. YouGov. (2021, September 22). Celebrity endorsements: How impactful are they for telco brands? YouGov.
65. Youmark. (2021, April 19). Pubblicato il Media Quality Report di IAS: Italia al primo posto per viewability dei video su mobile e desktop. Diminuito il “brand risk” per i video su mobile. YM! 
66. Zenith. (2021, July 25). Advertising Expenditure Forecasts July 2021. Zenith.

By Louie Andre

B2B & SaaS market analyst and senior writer for FinancesOnline. He is most interested in project management solutions, believing all businesses are a work in progress. From pitch deck to exit strategy, he is no stranger to project business hiccups and essentials. He has been involved in a few internet startups including a digital route planner for a triple A affiliate. His advice to vendors and users alike? "Think of benefits, not features."