There’s no denying the importance of digital marketing, alongside the considerably positive impact it can have on a business and its branding efforts. In today’s world, billboards, newspapers, television ads, and radio spots no longer cut it. To sell, a business needs to be active online. However, there are hundreds of different online marketing methods to choose from, and making the right choice remains a difficult process. The last couple of years have brought in exciting digital marketing trends, whereas others have quickly faded. In this article, we will cover several of the most important digital marketing statistics that you want to keep an eye on to ensure that you follow the latest trends and get a positive ROI on your internet marketing efforts. The main topics that we will cover include search engine optimization (SEO), social media, video marketing, cold-email marketing, and paid advertising.

Keeping up with SEO digital marketing trends in 2024

SEO For years, SEO has been one of the most impactful. To this day, search engines remain extremely important for discovering new products and services. However, in the last couple of years, most search engines have made significant changes to their ranking algorithms. Keeping up with these modifications is a tiring process that consumes both time and monetary resources. SEO is certainly not the most pleasant digital marketing technique but is essential to the online success of any website. Therefore, every once in a while, you need to read up on the latest SEO trends and make the required adjustments to your online presence. To better understand the importance of SEO, studies have shown that Google alone is responsible for roughly 94% of the web’s organic traffic. Yet, while many choose to purchase paid search results, few realize that doing so provides little to no benefit, granted that 80% of users tend to categorize paid search results as ads, thus completely ignoring them. Keywords When it comes down to keywords, research has shown that their potential for generating leads is unbeatable. In fact, 57% of B2B marketers have stated that their keyword rankings can generate more leads when compared to any of the other marketing strategies being implemented. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should ditch other digital marketing methods, but ranking for your keyword is certainly a goal worth aiming for. Speaking of keywords, ranking in Google isn’t enough. It’s important for keywords to rank within the first five top search results, granted that those websites usually receive 70% of user clicks. If ranking for the top five search results is too difficult, marketers should aim to rank at least for the first page, since most users never end up navigating towards the second results page on Google and . However, around 21% of users are bound to click on multiple links when navigating through the first page of their search results. Local SEO Recent digital marketing trends showcase that there is a growing importance for local SEO as well. Research has shown that 72% of users who carry out a local search end up visiting a store within five miles. Make sure to include all details needed about your local business, including the complete address, contact information, opening hours and, if possible, images. Doing so puts you in the 28% of purchases that result following a search for nearby stores.

Understanding the impact of social media on digital marketing

As you may already know, social media represents yet another important digital marketing resource for generating leads. A business does not exist in the eyes of the customer if it does not have a social media page where it can interact with prospective buyers and existing customers. Additionally, brand awareness efforts are likely to remain ineffective without a Facebook or Instagram page. Facebook With time, Facebook has become more focused on professional purposes (74% of users claim this), rather than facilitating communication between friends. As such, its potential for digital marketing has increased, since people continue to use it and are more receptive to business-owned pages. When carrying out your Facebook advertising efforts, keep in mind that blog posts longer than 1,500 words usually get 22% more likes, whereas using good, high-quality images to complement written text is bound to provide a 75-90% advertising effectiveness on the social media platform. Instagram Instagram is now the most popular photo-based social media app. It is no surprise that numerous businesses use it to market their products. As such, 60% of users discover new products using the platforms are bound to take some form of action after seeing a brand’s posts. Despite having tens of millions of users, Instagram’s popularity continues to grow with roughly 5% every quarter. With this in mind, if you sell a product that’s marketable through pictures, then Instagram is certainly a great digital marketing channel worth your consideration.

Is video marketing worth taking into consideration?

Definitely. It does depend on what niche your business works in, but videos have the potential of increasing product purchases by 144%. Additionally, it is also important to point out that not only do videos increase the likelihood of products being purchased, but 50% of users actively seek them out prior to visiting a store. For instance, nobody really cares about the stats of a new mobile device if they don’t know how it looks and works. During the last couple of years, the importance of social videos has also increased. Granted that 45% of people watch at least an hour of Facebook and YouTube videos on a weekly basis, it’s no surprise that 41% of marketers are planning to incorporate social videos into their marketing strategies. YouTube video consumption continues to grow, and the number of users is rapidly approaching one billion. As such, branded videos promoting a product or casually mentioning it can encourage more leads. In fact, 32% of YouTube users get to engage with branded videos.

Deciding whether email marketing should be a priority

For a while, email represented one of the main advertisement channels available online. To this day, companies throughout the world send out millions of emails, yet research has shown that many people see ad-based email as spam, thus ignoring it. To put things better into perspective, the average open rate for emails is situated at 18.16%, so there’s still enough potential for using this digital marketing strategy as well. An important factor worth taking into account is whether you simply want to send a catalog of products/offers, or are actually looking for responses from customers. This entirely depends on the niche that your business is situated in, yet research has shown that personalizing emails for customers can lead to a 100% increase in response rates. In other words, customers will respond regardless of whether they are interested in the offer or not, and each response can help strengthen your brand awareness. Here are several quick tips to take into account when designing your email marketing strategy:

• Sending a follow-up email can double and even triple the response rate;
• Make sure that your emails aren’t too long or complicated. People simply don’t have enough time to read everything. As such, emails written at a third-grade reading level encourage a higher response rate, similarly to emails that are situated under 200-250 words.
• While email automation is good for saving time and resources, it’s often best to avoid automating replies.
• 80% of email users tend to open new emails via mobile devices, so make sure to prioritize mobile device optimization for any emails that you send out.

The impact of paid advertising

In the past, most methods of paid advertising led to increased traffic, conversion rates, and overall brand awareness. Today, since the number of ads has skyrocketed, people have learned to ignore paid advertising and rather focus on organic search results for products they are interested in. This has also encouraged the increasing popularity of ad blockers, both on desktop and mobile devices. Research shows that 70% of people dislike mobile ads, whereas mobile ad blocking has increased by 90% during the last year. On the other hand, ad blockers are used two times more on desktop devices. However, this doesn’t mean that paid advertising has lost its place in the digital marketing niche. Rather, it now represents one of the many strategies you need to focus on. Despite this, 64.6% of users click on Google ads when they are correctly targeted for a product that they wish to buy online. Conclusion Based on everything that has been outlined so far, digital marketing trends are quickly changing, and the statistics are here to prove that. It has now become essential for marketers to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and invest time in finding the right marketing methods. However, the latest changes are somewhat beneficial from a financial standpoint, since pouring thousands of dollars into ads is no longer essential to the success of online businesses. Rather, a focus on smart marketing, backed by quality content and multiple communication channels, can have a highly positive impact on any marketing effort.

Manjunath Chowdary

Digital Marketing Expert, consultant, Mentor and
Director of KandraDigital Marketing
Solutions Pvt Ltd.