Social media marketing statistics give you detailed knowledge of different platforms’ strengths and weaknesses.
Knowing what works and what doesn’t, and discovering buyer behavior as it relates to social media, are all essential to creating strong, strategic campaigns that will successfully drive results.
This knowledge is important, but it can also be a little chaotic to try to track down for each individual platform. We are here to help with that!
In this post, we’ve compiled 36+ relevant social media marketing statistics that will help you shape and optimize your campaigns for maximum success.
Most brands understand that social media marketing can benefit them. This is a great start, but this is also an exceptionally broad and relatively vague statement.
“Social media can help you” doesn’t tell you nearly as much as “TikTok is skyrocketing with Gen Z audiences” or that YouTube is an effective search engine, making it easy for you to connect with your audience.
Details are what your marketing efforts need to improve your results.
To keep things extra easy to read, we’ve divided the social media marketing statistics you need to know into relevant categories, and will explain how to leverage some of this information to optimize your campaigns!
Let’s start with general social media marketing usage statistics.
General Social Media Usage Statistics
It’s important to understand how social media is consumed in general, and these all-encompassing social media marketing statistics can help with that.
- 50% of the total global population uses social media, which amounts to over 3.8 billion people, as of 2020. This is a 9.2% increase compared to 2019.
- Last year, users spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media daily across multiple devices.
- In 2019, 48.2% of Baby Boomers, 90.4% of Millennials, and 77.5% of Gen X were active social users.
- Millennials spend approximately 2 hours and 38 minutes daily on social media sites, while Gen Z is logged on for 2 hours and 55 minutes on average daily, having a higher average daily usage.
- Facebook usage is declining in teens, with 51% of teens saying they use the platform (as compared to 71% in 2015). Many of these teens are on other platforms, particularly TikTok and Instagram.
- According to Adobe, social media is the most relevant advertising channel for 42% of all Millennials and 50% of Gen Z.
Social Media & Buyer Behavior Statistics
Social media is all about the long-term, relationship-building opportunity brands should leverage to better connect with their target audience.
Pinterest aside, these platforms aren’t all about directly selling to your customers.
That being said, we know that all social platforms have exceptional sales-driving abilities, and these statistics can help you understand how to take advantage of those and optimize your campaigns accordingly:
- 54% of people browsing on social use the platform to research products they’re intending on purchasing, making it important to regularly feature information about your brand and product on the appropriate social channels.
- 27% of internet users say they find new products through paid social ads, proving that these can be used to boost your reach and connect with new audiences.
- 52% of online brand discovery happens in public social feeds, so optimizing your content for high-engagement, with relevant hashtags, and with boosted posts can make a huge difference.
- 43% of all internet users will get on social media when researching things to buy or browsing for new purchase ideas. Pinterest and Instagram are currently the leading platforms for organic product discovery and research. Which leads us to our next statistic:
- On Pinterest, 75% of Pinners are “very interested” in discovering new products, which is 20% higher than the 55% of users on other social platforms who expressed the same thing. Partially as a result of this, retail brands see a 2x higher ROI on ad spend on Pinterest compared to other social platforms.
- 13% of social media users say that a “buy” button (like CTAs on ads, or Shoppable posts on Instagram) would increase their likelihood to purchase on social. You can learn about the psychology and practicality about this here in our post about CTAs.
- 80% of people who have watched a YouTube video during their buying journey watched said video early on. This means that YouTube is a great platform for brand discovery, and targeting users who are early in the funnel (ie looking for “do I need a blender” or “best blenders” and not “how to clean a blender”) is more effective at driving sales from new customers.
- 70% of what people watch on YouTube is determined by the algorithm. This is true for all platforms, but was most surprising on YouTube because it’s the second most-used search engine after Google. Optimize your posts correctly with keywords and encourage engagement such as likes and subscribes.
Social Media Video Statistics
We’ve known for a while that video is incredibly important on most social media marketing channels. Some brands have still been reluctant to invest in creating video, which is understandable considering that it takes more time than snapping a picture or uploading an announcement. Still, there are plenty of tools you can use to create high-performing video (check out our post about Instagram here), and these statistics prove that you really need to be using video for your channels:
- 90% of internet users watch video online at least once per month, and they often watch video on social.
- Social video ads are projected to account for one-third of social ad spending in the entirety of 2020.
- Video on Instagram drives more engagement than other posts. The average engagement rate for videos on Instagram is 1.87%, while the average engagement rate for photo posts is 1.11%.
- 85% of video is watched on Facebook without sound, and this trend follows through on other social platforms. It’s essential to use closed captions and subtitles. You can learn more about how to do this here.
- 60% of people asked in a recent study said they watched at least one video on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram in the past month.
Social Media Advertising
Advertising on social media can be incredibly lucrative and high-performing. (You can see specifics about Facebook here, Pinterest here, and Instagram here.) Aside from platform-specific statistics, these are the social media advertising statistics you’ll want to successfully optimize your campaigns.
- “Weak” social media ads (which may be generic, vague, or not properly geared towards the target audience) can create a negative emotional response in users within less than a second before the viewer even blinks.
- Cost per leads on LinkedIn is 28% lower than on Google Ads, and it offers incredible targeting capabilities that are particularly useful for B2B businesses.
- Twitter users linger over ads 24% longer than users on other platforms, which may make it a great platform if you have an offer or ad you want users to spend time thinking about.
- 58% of users in the United States have said they grew more interested in brands after seeing it in Facebook Stories, making it an outstanding platform for discovery. Keep in mind that 300 million people use Facebook Stories daily, and Instagram Stories has 500 million daily users.
- Ad spending is approximately 23% higher on Instagram than Facebook, according to a study by Merkle, even though the two run through the same ad system. Our own research has shown that Instagram Ads may cost slightly more (depending on the quarter, though, this isn’t always true and Instagram placements have dropped significantly in cost since first rolling out) than some other types of Facebook placements, but they also may have more success driving conversions. Brands may just be prioritizing Instagram overall.
- Split testing ads improves cost-per-acquisition by an average of 72% according to a study from Facebook. Note that this happens over time as you continually optimize your campaigns.
- The average Facebook user has clicked 12 ads in the past 30 days, making it a high-engaging platform.
- Social ad spending is forecast to increase approximately 20% in 2020, bringing it to around $43 billion USD.
Miscellaneous Social Media Marketing Statistics
Here, we’re going to dive into additional important social statistics that you can use to properly optimize your campaigns and make strategic decisions moving forward.
Remember, just because they’re in the miscellaneous section doesn’t mean they don’t matter; instead, they matter so much we included them even though they didn’t fit into an otherwise defined section!
- 83% of users have named YouTube as their favorite type of social media marketing. This is so important because many small businesses aren’t on YouTube, but they should be. (Keep in mind that YouTube users spend an average of 23 minutes on the platform each time they visit, which exceeds other platforms).
- 92% of all Instagram users have said that they’ve made a purchase, clicked to the website, or followed a brand after discovering them on the platform. This is a great way to reach engaged, high-intent users.
- The average organic reach for a Facebook’s post is 5.17% of the Page’s total likes. If you have 100 followers, this means that five or six on average will see the post. Focus on creating high-engaging posts, which increase your reach consistently, and use boosted posts to increase reach further if needed.
- In 2019, LinkedIn was voted the “most trusted network” by users. B2B businesses should take advantage of this, forming meaningful connections with industry peers, potential clients, and even potential employees. (It’s worth noting that Facebook was trusted least, likely do the platform’s notoriety around privacy and transparency concerns right now).
- In 2019, users and businesses exchanged 10x more messages than in 2016, amounting to over 20 billion each month. This has likely only increased in 2020, especially considering the impact of the coronavirus. Customer service is essential for long-term success, so make sure that your team is well-equipped to handle these interactions. Using a social media management tool like Hootsuite can help, allowing your team to assign messages and to see all incoming messages on one dashboard.
- 47% of Twitter users prefer “culturally relevant” brands and “inclusive” and “transparent brands” compared to 39% of the US population.
- In early 2019, TikTok was the third-most downloaded app globally. By February of 2019, they had hit over 1 billion downloads, beating Instagram and Facebook in the app stores.
- Mobile is essential; more than 70% of YouTube watch time happens on mobile, 79% of Facebook users access the platform only on mobile, and 85% of Pinterest use happens on mobile. You must ensure that all landing pages you’re sending users to are fully optimized for mobile, or else you’ll lose sales. You also want to optimize your video for mobile; consider using more vertical video instead of horizontal video.
Conclusion
Social media marketing can be wildly beneficial for all kinds of brands and businesses, but it’s also complex.
There are plenty of platforms to choose from, and you must optimize your content for each one accordingly for the best results.
Understanding how the different platforms are utilized by users at different stages of the funnel, what content they like to see, how they’re interacting with it, and what devices they’re accessing that content on are all important pieces of the puzzle to help you better optimize your campaigns moving forward.
What do you think? Which of these social media marketing statistics will you use to shape your campaigns moving forward? Which ones surprised you most? Share your thoughts, questions, experience, and any other of your favorite social media marketing statistics in the comments section below!
Santhosh Muralidhar says
Very interesting statistics actually. I was astonished to know that more than forty percent of the online audiences will go to social media for researching the products which they want to purchase. Thanks for writing this awesome post. Also, it was even more interesting to learn that more than half of the online brand discoveries happen on public social feeds.