While email remains one of the cheapest and most effective ways to drive engagement with your customer and subscriber base, social media is quickly becoming the belle of the ball. In fact, our 2016 Retention Marketing Report ( shameless plug: the 2017 survey is open for the 2017 report – you can take it here) showed a 31% increase in medium and large retailers devoting 26-50% of their budget allocated to marketing to existing customers on paid social media campaigns. This number is an indicator of a trend that we’re seeing out in the marketplace, retailers know they need to be doing something on social media, but the how and what is a little harder to come by. 

In case you’re on the fence about whether it’s worth it to hop on the social media band wagon, here are 10 stats that may shed some light on the virality of social media advertising.

1.  Facebook cited 1.86 billion monthly active users worldwide in 2016, a 17% increase year over year
2. 2 million businesses advertise on Facebook
3. 1 in 5 pageviews, in the US, occur on Facebook
4. there’s been a 26.3% increase in global spending on social media advertising
5. Facebook saw a 59% increase in revenue from advertising in 2016
6. Instagram earned $595 million in mobile ad revenue
7. Social media advertising budgets are expected to exceed $35 billion in 2017
8. Average ad click-through-rate (CTR) is .9%
9. Average ad cost per click (CPC) is $0.64
10. Facebook ads on desktop see a click-through-rate that is 8.1x higher than normal web ads, mobile sees a 9.1x higher CTR.

Retailers are being challenged to incorporate social media advertising into their existing marketing campaigns in a cost effective and efficient way. With the right infrastructure in place meeting the demand for personalized advertising becomes easy. Learn more about incorporating data into your social media strategy here.

Sources: 

Facts 1 & 3: https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/

Facts 2, 5 & 6: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/01/05/social-media-marketing-statistics

Facts 4, 7 & 10: https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-advertising-stats/

Facts 8 & 9: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/facebook-advertising-statistics/