The questions everyone asks: How long does marketing take? This is an understandable question. After all, if you’re throwing your valuable time and money at your marketing, you’d want to know when you can expect results. Today we’re sharing some general timelines based on our experience with different industries, companies, and clients.
Paid Marketing
Paid advertisements, understandably, can provide some of the fastest turnarounds in terms of marketing. Once you launch your ads, it generally takes 1-2 weeks for those ads to really reach their full potential. You might wonder: If I’m paying for these ads, why aren’t the results immediate? The answer comes down to the algorithms.
Facebook, Google, Pinterest. Social media giants. And what’s their goal? To make money. Each platform has a sophisticated algorithm involved in who your ads are shown to. Though you might control a bit with targeting, in the end, the algorithm is king. It determines how often you’ll be shown based on your bidding and conversion metrics, and it takes time for the machine to design the best way to do that. It can take a few days to start gaining traction, and even then there’s variety.
The most important thing to remember when it comes to paid marketing, is always keep it running at least a week. User behavior will differ depending on the day, so you’ll get different engagement on a Wednesday vs a Friday vs a Sunday. If you shut your ad down early, you won’t get the full picture. By letting it run at least a full week, preferably without a holiday or special event, you’ll get all the data you need to make adjustments and decisions to improve your campaign.
Email Marketing
On the other hand, email marketing can take anywhere from a few weeks or a couple months to really produce results. We generally use the timeline of 3-6 months from the moment of launch to a well-oiled, marketing machine.
In email marketing, your goal is to get the attention of your audience. And in order to do that, you have to figure out what they are going to respond to. And what’s the best way to do that? Data, of course. While ideally you’d want the data on what works before you start your marketing, that usually isn’t the case. So don’t expect great results right out of the gate with your email marketing.
Content Marketing
Mastering your content marketing can be a difficult undertaking. Whether you’re working on your social media or search engine optimization (seo), you’re looking at anywhere from 6 months to a year before you start seeing great results.
Why does it take so long? Well, you’re reliant on an algorithm, something you won’t be able to throw money at to make more effective. On the organic side, your content’s success is more a matter of whether your content is resonating with people, not how much you’re spending on it.
So how can you succeed in your content marketing? Again it comes down to the goal of the platforms. We are constantly bombarded with content online, day in and day out. These platforms want content that is going to be useful – content that will keep people coming back. In a way, you’ll have to build up “trust” with the algorithm, and prove that your content is only working in their favor.
Things to Remember
Marketing is all about playing the long game. If you’re not throwing money at it, you’re still throwing away your time. And both are incredibly valuable. You might think your marketing is a waste, but it’s important not to get discouraged if you’re not seeing results after a couple weeks.
These tips and timelines will be variable based on the industry, and the market saturation for your product. If you’re struggling to stand out among the marketing noise, visit our website or schedule a call with us. Byte Size Digital can give you all the tools and resources you need to run, grow, and scale your company.
