As the new year quickly approaches, many businesses and brands are preparing for another year of content and digital marketing. The end of each year is a time to reflect upon and assess which marketing strategies proved to be effective, and which ones did not. The nature of advertising via social media or the web changes with each passing year, so understanding what the statistics for the coming year entail is important when formulating a strategy. If you are curious about what the world of marketing may look like in 2015, then you’ll want to continue reading to find out about several key stats that will affect how you conduct yourself online.

How Much Will Be Spent?

We all know that digital marketing costs slowly but surely add up, but nobody expected the total to be so massive. It is estimated that marketers worldwide will spend more than $150 billion in 2015 on digital advertising. This ranges from search engine and website advertising solutions like AdWords and AdSense, to social media network ads on Facebook, Twitter and more. Despite these huge numbers, internet ad spending will still only account for about one-quarter of total advertisement budgeting in the coming year.

Which Marketing Tactics Are Exploding

Not all forms of digital marketing are growing at even rates. The most popular form of digital advertising – in terms of year-to-year growth – will be in social media. Industry analysts expect social media advertising to double over the next five years, placing it far ahead of any other trend. Surprisingly, email marketing that connects to social media will be the next biggest player, growing roughly 150% over the same time period. Nearly three quarters of all PPC marketers reported that they plan to expand their existing ad budgets in the coming year, signalling that there will be even more competition in SERPs when it comes to pinging links.

What Others Are Doing with Content

Digital marketing tactics are important to know, but what exactly are people using these tactics to show people? The biggest year-to-year increase in site content in 2014 was customer testimonials; we saw a nearly 100% increase in digital advertising campaigns centred around this aspect of marketing. Next was video landing pages, which aim to create conversions for advertisers; a roughly 80% increase in marketing was seen in use with this tactic. As mentioned before, social media is playing a large role in expanding trends, too, with advertisements pinging links to social media profiles via search increasing by over 50% in 2014. With strong trends in all of these areas, we definitely expect the pattern to continue well into 2015 and beyond.

Simple Marketing Stats

Still doubting the power and benefit that can come with digital marketing strategies? Consider this: in 2014, business to business companies that used digital marketing generated 70% more leads than the ones who did not use digital marketing. Roughly 50% of all digital marketers found customers via advertising on LinkedIn, and 55% on Facebook. Even if you are not advertising with the intention of making money, pulling people in and connecting them to your brand via digital marketing has great potential.