List of Digital Marketing Statistics

Digital Marketing Channels Used by Businesses

• 70% of small businesses use social media, more than any other digital marketing channel (Small Business Marketing Survey, 2017).
• Social media is the top digital marketing investment priority for 28% of small businesses in 2017, ahead of websites and SEO (Small Business Marketing Survey, 2017).
• Over half of business-to-consumer (B2C) companies use traditional media to advertise: 67% use print, 59% use television, and 52% use radio (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).

Top Marketing Demands and Priorities

• 34% of enterprise marketers identify brand awareness as the top marketing priority for their company, ahead of customer loyalty (32%) and ROI (19%). (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016)
• 22% of enterprises prioritize television as the top marketing channel in 2017 (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 38% of enterprises hire an agency for television advertising, more than any other marketing medium (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).

Digital Marketing Spending Habits

• In 2016, 41% of companies spent less than $10,000 on advertising and marketing (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2017).
• 36% of companies planned to increase their spending on advertising and marketing by 11-30% in 2017 (Small Business Marketing Survey, 2017).

Experience Working With Marketing Agencies

• 84% of enterprises have hired a marketing agency (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 80% of small businesses have hired a digital marketing agency or consultant (Small Business Marketing Survey, 2017).
• More than three-fourths (77%) of enterprises have a marketing agency of record (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).
• Communication (18%) and project management (17%) are the top challenges of working with a marketing agency (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).

Size & Responsibilities of In-house Marketing Resources

• Over 80% of enterprises have an internal marketing team of at least 10 employees (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 86% of small businesses have marketing teams of fewer than five employees (Small Business Marketing Survey, 2017).
• 61% of businesses have 5 or more employees involved in creating and distributing emails for email marketing campaigns (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).

Favored Digital Marketing Tools & Software

• Three-fourths (75%) of enterprises use web and marketing analytics tools, making these tools more common than any other marketing software (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).
• One-fourth of enterprises (25%) rely on CRM software for marketing, compared to 22% that rely on web and marketing analytics (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).

Email Marketing Efforts & Priorities

• Over half (53%) of businesses use a digital marketing company for help with email marketing (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).
• Businesses mostly invest in email marketing for brand-building (47%) or lead generation (42%) (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 40% of businesses struggle with targeting and segmenting – more than other email marketing efforts (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 60% of businesses use social media to capture email addresses and build subscriber lists for email marketing (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 80% of marketers believe their companies’ devote enough resources to email marketing (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 70% of businesses say personalization is a key part of email marketing (Email Marketing Survey, 2016).

Content Marketing Goals & Plans for Improvement

• 18% of content marketers say “brand story” is most important to document in a content marketing strategy (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 52% of companies meet weekly to discuss the state of their content (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).
• Content marketers plan to improve their content by optimizing it for easy interaction across all devices (26%), creating more original content (24%), and including more visuals (21%) (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).

Most Popular Content to Create for Content Marketing

• Nearly three-fourths of companies (74%) create infographics, product reviews, and research/original data (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).
• Research and original data (18%) is the content that performs best in terms of meeting a company’s main goal (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 89% of content marketers say there’s a link between the amount of content produced and the effectiveness of content marketing (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).

Content Marketing Metrics & Distribution Habits

• 32% of companies care the most about sales metrics (the number of people consuming content) when tracking content marketing efforts (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).
• Business-to-business (B2B) companies (42%) are more likely to do content marketing than B2C companies (33%) (Enterprise Marketing Survey, 2016).
• Companies most frequently use paid ads (71%), organic social media (70%), and traditional marketing (69%) to distribute and promote content (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).
• 85% of content marketers agree that paid ads are more effective than organic efforts for distributing content (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).

Content Marketing Investment

• 53% of companies hire an outside agency for help with content planning and creation (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).
• HubSpot is the most popular content marketing tool, used by 41% of content marketers surveyed (Content Marketing Survey, 2016).

Consumer Behavior & Media Consumption

• 52% of consumers use social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube) on a daily basis (Public Relations & Brand Perception Survey, 2017).
• 86% of consumers spend at least 1 hour a day consuming media (Public Relations & Brand Perception Survey, 2017).
• Consumers are most influenced by referrals from friends or family members (40%) when making low investment purchases (Public Relations & Brand Perception Survey, 2017).
• Consumers are most influenced by online product reviews (49%) when making high investment purchases (Public Relations & Brand Perception Survey, 2017).

Public Relations & Reputation Management

• Consumers have a negative perception of brands that are featured negatively in the press. For example, 46% of consumers that identified United Airlines as a brand with negative press coverage also have a negative perception of the United Airlines brand (Public Relations & Brand Perception Survey, 2017).
• Public relations strategies directly impact long-term brand reputation. For example, 30% of consumers will no longer invest in United Airlines seven months after witnessing the company’s PR crisis (Public Relations Crises & Brand Reputation Survey, 2017).

About the Author

Jenna Seter Senior Business Analyst & Marketer, Clutch

Jenna is the Senior Business Analyst who leads Clutch’s growing coverage of public relations firms and branding agencies. She also contributes to the Clutch Marketing Team by issuing surveys and writing multi-series articles related to PR, branding, web design and more.
Jenna is originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from Boston College with a degree in International Studies and Economics, and a minor in Hispanic Studies. She enjoys playing field hockey and soccer and loves to draw in her free time.

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