B2C Marketing Statistics – Latest Reports

The B2C marketing landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by technological innovation, shifting consumer behaviors, and the rapid growth of digital channels. Understanding current trends through data has become essential for staying competitive in this dynamic environment.

Nearly 80% of B2C marketers plan to increase or maintain their budgets in 2025, while 63.9% of the world’s population uses social media, spending an average of 2 hours and 21 minutes daily. With global e-commerce retail sales reaching $6.01 trillion in 2024, digital transformation continues to reshape how brands connect with consumers.

This report examines critical B2C marketing statistics across email, social media, content strategy, AI adoption, and emerging channels—providing actionable insights to guide your 2025 marketing strategy and resource allocation decisions.

Key statistics

• The global B2C e-commerce market is valued at $4.47 trillion in 2023, and is expected to reach $17.77 trillion by 2030 (19.1% CAGR).
• 63.9% of the world’s population actively uses social media platforms, making it one of the most significant channels for reaching consumers globally.
• 91% of B2C marketers use Facebook for marketing purposes, making it the most widely adopted social media platform in the B2C marketing landscape.
• Email marketing delivers an exceptional $36 return on investment for every $1 spent, making it the top ROI-driving channel for B2C brands.
• 87% of B2C marketers have integrated automation into their email marketing strategies, indicating widespread recognition of automation’s importance for scaling personalized communications.
• More than half (56%) of marketers report that their company is actively working toward implementing AI usage in their marketing operations.
• 40.4% of marketers cite data privacy concerns as their main barrier to AI adoption, demonstrating heightened awareness about ethical data handling and security.

What is B2C marketing?

B2C (Business-to-Consumer) marketing refers to the strategies, tactics, and processes that companies use to promote and sell their products or services directly to individual consumers. Unlike B2B marketing, which targets other businesses, B2C marketing focuses on reaching end users who will personally use or consume the product.

B2C marketing typically involves shorter sales cycles since individual consumers generally make purchasing decisions more quickly than businesses. The decision-making process is often emotional and impulse-driven, influenced by factors like personal preferences, lifestyle, and immediate needs rather than lengthy evaluation.

B2C e-commerce market size

The B2C e-commerce sector represents the largest and most tracked segment of the B2C industry. The global B2C e-commerce market size was valued at USD 4.47 trillion in 2023 and is expected to hit around USD 17.77 trillion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 19.1% from 2023 to 2030. 

B2C marketing channels

• Email marketing – Email marketing ranks as the top ROI-driving channel for B2C brands, with an average of $36 for every $1 spent, and 72% of B2C marketers use it as part of their strategy.
• Social media marketing – Facebook is used by 91% of B2C marketers, making it the most widely adopted social platform, with 51% considering it their most important channel.
• Content marketing – 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing in their marketing strategy, and only 5% don’t plan to adopt a content marketing strategy at all.

B2C email marketing statistics

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending targeted messages directly to people’s email inboxes to build relationships, promote products or services, and drive business results.

In the B2C industry, email marketing can be an effective way for brands to send personalised product recommendations, relevant offers, and information about new product launches straight to their target audience.

Consumer purchasing behavior and email engagement 

Half of all consumers (50%) make purchases from marketing emails at least once per month, demonstrating the consistent revenue-generating power of email campaigns. Additionally, 59% of email recipients report having made purchases directly based on email communications, while 34% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase when reached through email marketing compared to other channels.

Mobile devices dominate email consumption, as 91% of consumers check their email on smartphones at least once daily. Regarding frequency preferences, 49% of consumers express a desire to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands on a weekly basis, providing clear guidance for campaign scheduling.

B2C email marketing adoption and automation 

The vast majority of B2C marketers have embraced sophisticated email marketing approaches, with 72% using email marketing software to support their content distribution efforts. 

Even more significantly, 87% of B2C marketers have integrated automation into their email marketing strategies, indicating the widespread recognition of automation’s importance for scaling personalized communications.

Email volume and performance

The scale of email communication is staggering, with 376.4 billion business and consumer emails being sent and received daily worldwide. In terms of performance metrics, B2C emails achieve an average open rate of 20.94%, while the average click-through rate stands at 2.57%. The health of email lists is reflected in low negative metrics, with bounce rates averaging just 0.68% and unsubscribe rates at only 0.18%.

B2C social media marketing

91% of B2C marketers use Facebook for marketing purposes, making it the most used social media platform within the B2C segment, higher than B2B (83%). Instagram follows with 86% of B2C marketers using this platform, and LinkedIn is in third at 55%.

TikTok adoption among B2C marketers is still relatively low compared to other platforms, but it is more common in the B2C industry than in B2B marketing (24%). This demonstrates TikTok’s stronger appeal in helping companies to engage directly with consumers.

Threads is the least used platform for B2C marketing, with only 9% of marketers saying they used this platform to reach their audience.

Social media marketing effectiveness

Nearly half of all marketers (45%) identify social media advertising as their most effective paid marketing channel, demonstrating the continued power of targeted social campaigns to reach and convert audiences, while a significant percentage of marketers (56%) specifically increased their budget allocation for TikTok advertising in 2023, reflecting the platform’s growing influence and effectiveness in reaching younger demographics.

B2C marketers cite Facebook as their most effective non-paid social media platform (63%), followed by LinkedIn (53%), and Instagram (39%).

B2C content marketing

Content marketing has become a cornerstone of B2C marketing strategies, with brands using blogs, videos, social media posts, and other valuable content to attract, engage, and convert consumers.

29% of B2C marketers report that their organization is extremely or very successful with content marketing, while 58% rate their success as moderate, showing that while most B2C brands use content marketing, there’s significant room for improvement in execution and strategy.

In 2024, B2C product and service sectors spent 17.8% and 15% of their budgets on marketing, demonstrating substantial investment in content and marketing initiatives.

Most popular content marketing channels

83% of B2C marketers create short articles and posts, making it the most popular content type for reaching consumer audiences. 71% say they have used videos for content marketing in the last 12 months, reflecting the increase in demand for video content by consumer audiences.

When it comes to producing results, in-person events are the most successful (48%), though only slightly more than short articles and posts (47%), and videos (45%).

Paid vs organic B2C content marketing

70% of B2C marketers use paid media content marketing in 2024, up from 63% in 2023, showing a recovery after a dip during economic uncertainty.

Just under half (45%) of all marketers identify social media advertising as their most effective paid marketing channel, demonstrating the strong performance of paid social.

Data on paid social retargeting strategies shows that more than three-quarters (77%) of B2B and B2C marketers use retargeting on Facebook and Instagram, which is around 8% more than on Google.

AI and B2C marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption in marketing is growing quickly, with 56% of marketers saying their company is actively working towards implementing AI usage, and 32% of organisations having fully implemented it.

How marketers are using AI

The use of AI by B2C marketing professionals is heavily concentrated on content activities, with content optimization (51%), content creation (50%), and content brainstorming (45%) representing the top three use cases. This reflects the growing demand for scalable, high-quality content production in modern B2C marketing strategies.

Beyond content, marketers use AI for automating tasks (43%), analyzing data for insights (41%), and conducting research (40%). 

Why some B2C marketers aren’t using AI

Let’s look at some of the reasons why B2C marketers might be shying away from using AI:

• Over 40.4% of marketers identify data privacy as their main concern, demonstrating heightened awareness about ethical data handling and security in AI implementations.
• Nearly 38% of marketers point to insufficient technical expertise as a critical barrier, revealing a significant gap in the skilled workforce needed to effectively deploy and manage AI tools.
• About one-third of survey respondents (33.2%) cite implementation costs as a major hurdle preventing their organisations from fully integrating AI solutions.

Bottom line

The numbers paint a clear picture: B2C marketing is evolving fast, but the fundamentals still work. Nearly 80% of marketers are maintaining or increasing budgets in 2025, and for good reason—email marketing is still performing well with a $36 ROI per dollar spent, social media reaches almost two-thirds of the world’s population, and AI is becoming an everyday tool.

That said, there’s a gap between adoption and execution. While 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing, only 29% say they’re actually doing it well. AI faces similar hurdles—40% of marketers worry about data privacy, and many teams simply don’t have the technical chops or budget to implement it properly yet.

As the B2C e-commerce market races toward $17.77 trillion by 2030, the winning strategy isn’t complicated: double down on what’s working (email, Facebook, Instagram), and keep an eye on what’s emerging (TikTok, AI). It’s all about choosing wisely with your resources and building the right capabilities for success in the long term.