Marketing is one of the fastest changing industries around. New tools, practices, and social conventions fly in and out on a week-by-week basis. What worked so well last year is practically unthinkable for next year. At the same time, some of 2014’s most powerful marketing strategies hadn’t even been thought of in 2012.
You could say that this kind of rapid development is true of other industries like medicine and technology. But I would argue that marketing has the unique advantage of being “workable.” A surgeon can’t, for example, just invent a new procedure to “see if it works.” Apple can’t release a new computer just because of a “gut feeling.” These industries are limited by slow-moving protocol.
Marketing in 2014 – Freedom to Do More!
But marketers do have the unique ability to test things out. Marketers have the freedom to try things that professionals in other industries don’t. While other industries are tied up by regulation and protocol, marketers have the freedom to go out and experiment every day.
If you’re excited about the freedom of marketing, I think these 20 statistics about marketing in 2014 will help get those creative juices flowing for your best year yet!
2014 Marketing Statistics You Can’t Ignore: HIGHLIGHTS
- Social media marketing budgets will double over the next 5 years.
- Nearly half of all companies have a content marketing strategy.
- B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads than those that don’t.
- 78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing.
- Videos on landing pages increase conversions by 86%.
- 52% of all marketers found at least 1 customer on Facebook in 2013.
- 65% of your audience are visual learners.
- Visual data is processed 60k times faster by the brain than text.
- Customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing – 89%.
- Inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads than traditional outbound marketing.
Click for image source. Infographic via WebDAM.
Where do you see marketing in 2014? Which statistics do you consider the power players here?