While each brand or organization’s online marketing strategy must be unique and tailored to their customers’ individual needs, it’s also important to stay on top of industry trends and insights.

These fast facts give marketers a bigger picture view and can help you prepare for upcoming trends, understand macro-level behaviors and align your strategy with best practices for better overall marketing performance.

[source: TopRank] These marketing insights span social media, search engine optimization, email marketing, mobile and more. We’ve tried to compile only the most recent and relevant facts available!

Social Media Customer Insights & Statistics

  • 46% of US small businesses feel they are being “sold to” instead of “spoken to” by other businesses. (Consumer Insight Group)
  • 27% of total U.S. internet time is spent on social networking sites. (Experian)
  • 85% of fans of brands on Facebook recommend brands to others, compared to 60% of average users. (Syncapse)
  • Women are more likely than men to regularly check out a brand’s social page. (Ipsos)
  • 51% of global internet users signed in to Facebook in the first quarter of 2013. (GlobalWebIndex)
  • Globally, 46% of consumers with a digital device used social media to help make purchase decisions. (Nielsen)
  • Social accounts for 1.9% of traffic to websites, compared to 41% for organic search. (eConsultancy)
  • Twitter traffic achieves a higher conversion rate (2.17%) than the average for all channels combined (1.6%) including organic and paid search. (eConsultancy)
  • Using Twitter during fundraising events can result in 10 times more money raised online. (MDG Advertising)
  • 71% of internet users are more likely to purchase from a brand that they are following on a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook. (MediaBistro)

Content Marketing & Storytelling Facts & Figures

  • 56% of those that support nonprofits on the social web confirm that compelling storytelling is what motivates them to take action on behalf of nonprofits. (Waggener Edstrom)
  • Per dollar, content marketing produces roughly three times as many leads. (Kapost/Eloqua)
  • People are most likely to interact with branded content on social media sites that contains pictures (44%), status updates (40%) and video (37%). (Performics)
  • 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content and are also more likely to buy from that company. (Custom Content Council)
  • Interesting content is a top 3 reason people follow brands on social media. (Content+)
  • 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them. (Custom Content Council)
  • Twenty percent of users’ time is spent surfing the Internet on content-led websites. (Content Marketing Association)
  • 60% of consumers are more likely to be on the lookout for products when looking at content marketing. (Content Marketing Association)
  • 70% of consumers say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company. (Content Marketing Institute)

Online Advertising Statistics

  • Participants in an eye-tracking study spent more time looking at the top sponsored results area on Google (2.8 seconds per search task, on average) than on Bing (1.9 seconds). (UserCentric)
  • 59% of consumers are influenced by online ads. (InMobi)
  • 72% of in-stream online video ads are watched to their completion. (Google)
  • 46% of smartphone owners have viewed a mobile ad and 64% of those have made a purchase as a result. (Hipcricket)
  • Brands using paid media on Facebook in addition to organic publishing efforts reach an average audience 5.3 times larger than with organic efforts alone. (Facebook)
  • Americans use an average of three screen combinations a day. (Google)
  • 1% of all US advertising spending is on mobile platforms, compared to 43% for TV and 29% for print. (BusinessInsider)
  • 88% of online display advertisers plan to buy in real-time in the future. (Google)
  • Twitter sees engagement rates from 1 to 3% on Promoted Tweets, with higher rates on mobile. (Twitter/ClickZ)

Email Marketing Insights

  • Email shows high engagement rates with an average of 3.75 pageviews per visit, and achieves the highest comparative conversion rate at 2.9%. (eConsultancy)
  • Spam averaged between 71 and 80% of all emails sent globally during the fourth quarter of 2012. (Commtouch)
  • The top reason US email users unsubscribe from a business or non-profit email subscription is that they receive too many emails. (Chadwick Martin Bailey)
  • For every 1,000 e-newsletter subscribers, nonprofits have 149 Facebook Fans. (M+R and NTEN)
  • 80% of daily deal email subscribers have purchased at least one deal in the last six months. (Constant Contact & Chadwick Martin Bailey)
  • Triggered email messages get 119% higher CTRs than “business as usual” messages. (Epsilon)
  • 91% of US online senior citizens use email. (Forrester Research)

Organic Search from the Consumer Perspective

  • Organic search drives 41% of traffic to B2B sites, of which Google accounts for 90%, while social contributes an average of only 5% of all traffic and leads. (eConsultancy)
  • 70-80% of users ignore paid ads on search engine results pages, focusing instead on organic results. (UserCentric)
  • In an eye-tracking study, the average time spent viewing organic results was much longer on Google (14.7 seconds) than it was on Bing (10.7 seconds). (UserCentric)
  • The rate of ‘not provided’ search terms has increased by 171% since its introduction and as of January 2013, accounted for one of every 2.5 visits from organic search. (eConsultancy)
  • 70% of customers pay under $1,000 per month for SEO services. (BrightLocal)
  • i in 2 consumers who visit Amazon in a month conduct an onsite search and are exposed to a search results page. (Compete)
  • $2.2 billion will be spent on search engine optimization in 2016. (BrightEdge)
  • 80% of searches on smartphones are spontaneous, and 44% of these are goal-oriented. (Google)
  • 53% of mobile searches on Bing have local intent. (Microsoft)
  • Searches with local intent account for about25% of all Google searches. (Chitika)
  • 20% of US online adults find Google most helpful when researching products or services, followed by 19% for Amazon. (Forrester Research)

Online Shopping & Customer Service Statistics

  • Six of every ten global respondents used the Internet for grocery shopping research. (Nielsen)
  • 83% of social media customer service users have walked away from a purchase after a bad experience. (Consumer Insight Group)
  • 37% of consumers who purchase online and pick them up in-store make further purchases in the store. (Forrester Research)
  • 46% of online customers expect brands to provide customer service on Facebook, yet only 23% provide it. (BufferApp)
  • Tablet owners are twice as likely as smartphone owners to purchase goods or services on their devices (38% vs. 19%). (comScore)
  • 44% of consumers always research products online before purchasing in-store. (eConsultancy)
  • 18% of consumers consult a shopping list maintained online or on a mobile device while shopping for groceries. (The Hartman Group)
  • 65% of mothers said when they find a product or brand they like, they are loyal to it. (Loyalty360)
  • 28% of US tablet owners and 56% of smartphone owners use their devices while shopping. (IAB)
  • 22% of consumers learned about the last product they purchased via the internet. (Forrester Research)
  • Urban consumers aged 18-34 with household incomes exceeding $150,000 spend twice as much online as the average US consumer. (Boston Consulting Group)
  • eCommerce accounted for 10.6% of US discretionary spending in Q1 2013, the highest share of any quarter on record. (comScore)