Digital Marketing Statistics: 2024 Compendium

This compendium is intended to serve as an overview of our published reports and statistics on digital marketing, distilling the key insights from each into a single report. We’ve divided this compendium into 3 categories:

  • Digital Marketing Statistics — Our reports on digital marketing statistics have covered ROI, conversion rates, average session duration, customer acquisition costs, and cost per lead for each channel and industry in our dataset.
  • SEO Statistics —  SEO is our agency’s specialty, and as such we’ve had the opportunity to work with clients across over 50 industries in our 12+ years of experience.
  • B2B Marketing Statistics — B2B clients make up approximately 75% of our client base, and we’ve published several reports that pertain specifically to B2B businesses.

We link to each report in our sources below, and a full list of all of our reports may be found here.

Digital Marketing Statistics

Notable Digital Marketing Statistics

  • SEO results in the highest long-term ROI and conversion rates of the above digital marketing channels at 748%, but has the longest time to break even.
  • Email marketing results in a 40% lower B2B CAC than the average, assuming a well curated mailing list and high quality content. This can be further increased through content repurposing.
  • SEM/PPC has the lowest time to break-even at 4 months, but scales poorly long-term.

To understand the success of a digital marketing campaign, you first need to understand which KPIs to track. In the below table, we present the most important KPIs for digital marketing campaigns, as well as benchmarks for each.

Top Digital Marketing KPIs

KPI Benchmark
1 ROI* SEO: 748%
SEM/PPC: 36%
2 Total # of Marketing Qualified Leads 40% increase YOY
3 Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Organic: $942
Inorganic: $1,907
4 LTV to CAC Ratio 4:1
5 % Change in Website Traffic 45% increase YOY
6 Engagement Rate B2B: 71%
B2C: 65%
7 Average Conversion Rate 2.2%

*3-year average

Tracking these 7 KPIs will provide you with insight into your campaigns, as well as how to course-correct should a particular metric be lagging. For more detail, refer to our full report on Digital Marketing KPIs, as well as our report on Digital Marketing Benchmarks by Industry.

Next, we compare the (a) conversion rates, (b) CACs, (c) time to break even, and (d) ROI of the top digital marketing channels. These metrics provide a high-level overview of each channel, and allow your marketing team to better prioritize your per-channel spend.

Top Digital Marketing Channels, Compared

Channel B2B Conversion Rate* B2C Conversion Rate* B2B CAC B2C CAC Time to Break Even ROI**
SEO 2.6% 2.1% $647 $298 9 months 748%
SEM/PPC 1.5% 1.2% $802 $290 4 months 36%
Email Marketing 2.4% 2.8% $510 $287 7 months 261%
Organic Social 1.7% 2.4% $658 $212 5 months 229%
Paid Social 0.9% 2.1% $983 $230 5 months 192%
Webinars 2.3% 1.3% $603 $251 9 months 430%
Online PR 0.3% 0.4% $1,720 $381 8 months 62%

*Visitor-to-lead conversion rate   **3-year average

The full reports can be found here: Conversion Rate by ChannelCAC by Channel, Digital Marketing ROI Statistics.

SEO Statistics

Notable SEO Statistics

As with digital marketing as a whole, measuring the effectiveness of an SEO campaign begins with using the right KPIs. The below table presents the most important SEO KPIs, and benchmarks for each.

Top SEO KPIs

KPI Benchmark
ROI Year 1 160%
Year 2 861%
Year 3 1,223%
3-Year Average 748%
Bounce Rate 36%
Average Session Duration 3:36
# of Autofill, Transactional Keywords on Page 1 91% growth year-over-year
Pages Per Session 2.2
Conversion Rate (Visitor-to-Lead) 2.4%
% Change in Organic Traffic 47% growth year-over-year

For a more in-depth look at SEO KPIs, refer to SEO KPIs: What Success Looks Like. You may also find detailed statistics for your particular industry in our reports on SEO Benchmarks by Industry, and SEO ROI Statistics.

As important as understanding how to measure the success of your SEO campaign is understanding how your Google ranking position affects the likelihood that a searcher will click through to your website. The below graphic presents the average CTR of the top 2 ad positions, and the top 4 organic positions on Google.

CTRs by Ranking Position

In the full report, we also present our data on CTRs for the full first page, including page elements such as snippets, image results, video results, and Google My Business results.

B2B Marketing Statistics

Notable B2B Marketing Statistics

  • Organic channels see, on average, 60% lower CACs than inorganic channels across all B2B industries.
  • The average B2B conversion rate is 0.23% lower than the average B2C conversion rate, owing to the greater commitment inherent to high value B2B transactions.
  • B2B legal services see the highest conversion rates of any industry at 7.4%.

The primary focus of most B2B marketing campaigns is lead generation. As such, the KPIs we recommend tracking for B2B campaigns are shown below.

Top B2B Lead Generation KPIs

KPI Benchmark
ROI 748% (Thought Leadership SEO)
36% (PPC)
Total # of MQLs +40% YOY
Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate 2.2%
Lead to MQL Conversion Rate 35%
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) $942 (Average Organic)
LTV to CAC Ratio 4:1
Website Traffic +45% YOY

The full B2B Lead Generation KPIs report expands on each of these. We also published a separate report examining the top KPIs for B2B SEO campaigns.

The KPIs above are an average for all industries. For the most relevant data on B2B CACs and conversion rates, refer to the charts below:

Average B2B CACs by Industry, Organic and Inorganic

B2B Conversion Rates By Industry

Requesting a Copy of this Compendium

You can contact us here if you’d like to request a PDF copy of this compendium, or learn more about our SEO, lead generation, or demand generation services.

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