To stay on top of your game in the marketing world, you need to know exactly what your audience is looking for. But the goalposts are always moving. Technology evolves, new channels emerge, trends come and go.
Leveraging data to gain insights is going to be your number one tactic. By understanding the numbers and metrics across key channels like email, video and social, you can make more informed decisions that have a real impact on your marketing campaign performance.
But where are you going to find all this goldmine of data?
Enter, HubSpot. Our good friends over at the CRM-software giant have done the legwork, collating data from over 1,600 marketers across the world into one handy report. Not only that, but they’ve gathered insights and predictions from some of the industry’s leading companies and professionals in the field.
Read on for our 8 key stats highlighted from their report, the State of Marketing in 2022, so that you can start making data-driven decisions to prioritise the right strategies and achieve your goals this year.
> Download the full report here <
For the past few years, social media has been tagged as the top marketing channel and this year’s no different. It’s no real surprise, given the level of direct customer engagement opportunities available. To be more specific, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook are the top 3 social media platforms marketers are using in 2022.
We hope by now, most businesses have at least got social channels set up. Whether or not they’re using them in the right way, though, is another matter.
One of the most important things for brands to consider is which channel is right for their specific audience. For example, for B2B, LinkedIn is a no-brainer, whereas Instagram is a much more obvious choice for say a fashion brand. You need to listen and understand what your audience wants to see from you, rather than just create social content for the sake of it.
Staying with social media for a moment, this was an interesting stat to come out of the report. There’s a lot of discussion around best times to post, but across the board, the evening slot seems to be where brands are seeing most success, so it’s worth considering scheduling out-of-hours to get that engagement up.
What should you be posting, though? The report found short-form video content like TikToks and Instagram Reels are the most effective type of social media content right now, that’s funny or interactive. Not sure what type of content to create? Get started with our 28 video examples that work across the funnel to attract, engage and delight.
This isn’t exactly breaking news, but the share of mobile traffic rises year on year, and your business needs to take it seriously to ensure you’re not missing out on higher conversion rates. Your website needs to be optimised for all devices and designed with mobile first in mind – also consider tactics like A/B testing or HotJar to gather data around how users behave on your website and where they might be getting stuck. Users will bounce if it’s slow to load or they can’t click a CTA because it’s not displaying correctly. Don’t let little mistakes cost you conversions.
Search engine optimisation is still important. It’s always changing and it’s hard to keep up, but it’s vital that you do in order to keep ahead of your competitors. With 27% of total web traffic coming from organic search, the best way for your products or services to be seen is making sure you’re at the top of those search results. Anything past the first page may as well not exist from the searchers perspective. To get started with SEO, download our 12-step guide to becoming an expert.
Email marketing has changed significantly this year with the rollout of Apple iOS 15 (read more about that here). The core benchmark metric – open rate – essentially became null and void with enhanced privacy features skewing the figures for anyone using the Apple Mail app (the number one email client).
So what can you do instead? It’s important to rest your goals and KPIs with this in mind and arguably choose metrics that have a much more tangible impact on your insights. Something we found particularly interesting from the report was that only 12% of marketers are measuring Subscriber Lifetime Value. This metric can prove hugely valuable in actually telling you whether your audience is active, engaged and genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
Video isn’t going anywhere anytime soon! Across the board, social media channels are evolving to push more video content as it’s the clear winner for the type of format people want to consume the most.
Now more than ever, you need to think about where video fits into your marketing strategy. As always, consider what your overall goals and objectives are then pinpoint where video fits in. Fundamentally, there’s a role for video across every area of the customer journey, from awareness and engagement through to education, conversion and delight.
> Download our 28 video examples to attract, engage, convert and delight <
Gone are the days when you could simply churn out keyword-stuffed blogs and get found for all the wrong reasons. Search engines are too clever for that, and so are consumers. With so much content out there, people have more choice than ever, and they’re choosing things they find genuinely valuable.
So rather than just posting on social for the sake of it, or writing a quick blog just to keep it ticking over, you should invest more time and resource into building an effective inbound marketing strategy that makes sure the content you create ticks all the right boxes for your specific audience.
Whilst Instagram is the number one preferred social media channel by marketers, when it comes to paid advertising, Facebook comes out on top, proving the best value across B2B and B2C organisations. But that’s not to say you should put all of your eggs in that basket.
The platform has seen it’s fair share of controversy and challenges in recent years and it’s expected that it will continue to decline in popularity as younger generations move towards more dynamic channels. Whilst it’s still clearly worth investing in Facebook ads if it’s right for your brand, you should also consider other channels like TikTok and Pinterest for more tailored brand awareness and engagement.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The full State of Inbound Marketing in 2022 Report is packed with over 50 pages of valuable data that might just spark some new ideas for how you’re currently planning and delivering your marketing strategy.