50 Marketing Stats and Trends To Inform Your 2021 Digital Strategy

In 2020, COVID-19 forced consumers and businesses to adapt to a sped up digital transformation. The businesses able to quickly adapt to changing trends in consumer behaviour will gain the lead in 2021. 

As you'll see, the following 50+ digital marketing statistics and trends will inform and excite those eager to embrace digital transformations.

So let's dive in!

Macro Digital Marketing Trends for 2021

There's now about 4.7 billion searches done on Google each day.

Of that, approximately 15% of daily searches are new to Google.

68% of online shopping experiences begin with a search engine.

39% of purchasers are influenced by a relevant search.

On average, 53.3% of all website traffic is organic search.

Yet 90.63% of web pages get no organic traffic from Google.

The more backlinks a page earns, the more organic traffic Google passes on.

Despite backlinks being one of the main factors for ranking in search results, only 66.3% of pages never even get 1.

Between 70-80% of people ignore paid search results, preferring organic results.

Similarly, other estimates suggest that 70% of Google search clicks are organic and 30% go to Google Ads.

SEO is on average 5.66 times more effective than paid search advertising. Users instinctively trust organic search results over Google's advertisements.

SEO drives over 1000% more traffic than organic (non-paid) social media.

Websites using advanced schemas saw an increase of search impressions, organic traffic and clicks by 30-50%.

Voice searches account for nearly 10% of all search volume.

Video leads as the number #1 media of choice for content strategy.

More than 27% of users are already using voice search while 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers use them daily.

Generally, 60% of smart phone users have tried voice search at least ones in the last 12 months. of that, 55% of teenagers use voice search on a daily basis compared to 9% of those aged 55-64.

The more social media shares a page has, the greater the chance it gets selected for voice search queries.

The average reading level for voice search was grade 9 and tended to be three to five keywords in length.

Google dominates 88.14% of global search, image, maps and video traffic. Bing takes a distant second place at 6.18% and China's nation search engine Baidu at 0.59%.

So be warned:

Ignoring Google's search supremacy and changing trends will leave your web presence in the dust.

The good news is we cover this next!

Important Google Trends for Marketing In 2021

The top 3 search results on Google get 75.1% of all clicks.

The first organic search result now gets 31.7% clicks.

And the first page of Google results takes 92% of all search traffic. (That's more than 9 of 10 google searches never going past the first page!)

Google acknowledged backlinks are one of their top 3 ranking factors.

The number of domains linking to a page appears to be the greatest factor in ranking on Google search for 2020.

Over 12% of search queries today display featured snippets.

Google now devotes up to 41% of the first page of search results on mobile toward its own internal properties. (Google Ads, Google Maps, Google My Business and what it calls "direct answers".)

Google's local "snack pack" can consume 33% of clicks, with 40% going to organic search results. Leverage both for maximum results.

Images were returned for 22.6% of Google search queries, and growing.

And video results appeared on at least 55% of Google keyword searches. Not surprisingly, 82% came directly from YouTube.

As if Google owning YouTube wasn't enough, YouTube holds the position of second largest search engine in the world.

Now here are more data-driven reasons to include YouTube in your 2021 digital strategy.

YouTube Marketing Trends for 2021

YouTube has 2 billion logged-in monthly users per month.

73% of US adults use YouTube; infact Pew Research declared YouTube the most popular online platform in America.

500 hours of video get uploaded each minute.

70% of what people watch came from Youtube's recommendation algorithms.

The top 10% of popular videos draw 79% of all views.

The number of likes, comments, views and shares a video gets, the higher the likelihood the video will rank in a search.

Youtube video views and 'likes' have a significant correlation with a video's rankings on search.

Youtube comments and video shares have a strong correlation with a video's rankings.

"Subscription driven" has a reasonably strong correlation with video rankings.

Today more than 70% of YouTube views are now on mobile.

And YouTube now drives 11.4% of all global internet traffic. (Netflix is #1 with 15%!)

Yet YouTube is only the fourth most-used platform for businesses... astonishing, isn't it?

But hang on a minute...

YouTube is just a video distribution channel and search engine. Marketing video is bigger than YouTube.

The following video marketing research paints a clearer picture of where you need to be to dominate the competition with content marketing for 2021.

Video Marketing Trends for 2021 

Blog posts that contain a video have a 53X higher chance of ranking on the first page of Google

And posts with video earn more backlinks while seeing a 157% boost in search traffic.

Video content is now 5 times more likely to drive a conversion than content alone.

Web pages with videos have a 53% greater chance of showing up on page one of Google.

43% of businesses say video has reduced the number of support calls they've received.

In Summary

1. Search behaviour is changing.
2. Users trust paid ads less than organic results.
3. Social media drives less traffic than organic.Voice search and home speaker use is growing fast.
4. SEO still has the best ROI for businesses that are online. 
5. Leverage Google's snack-pack and other digital properties for free.
6. YouTube has powerful potential for businesses and is still under-used.
7. Video is helping businesses lower costs, improving conversions and customer satisfaction.
8. Follow me on Twitter or reach out on LinkedIn for other actionable insights, strategies and more, today!