How Long Does it Take to Realize Digital Marketing Results?
In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, a lot of things can be done quickly. Swapping out images on paid social placements, adjusting targeting and adding keywords to pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can be quick as far as simply completing the task. However, seeing results when you’re overhauling digital marketing strategy can take much longer. It won’t be immediate, and it won’t even be within a few weeks. To truly turn around digital marketing results and start seeing gains in key performance indicators (KPIs) takes time and patience.
How long does it take to see digital marketing results?
This does depend a little bit on what needs to be adjusted. Digital marketing encompasses a wide variety of tactics and even your website. Depending on how deep you need to go in revising strategy, testing new messages and even ramping up SEO on your website, you could be looking at a variety of time frames. We can often see quick improvement within a first few months with some fast gains as adjustments take effect in the first phase. As we continue to work through strategy and turn your digital marketing campaign into a well-oiled, lead generation machine, it could take several more months. The idea being that month-over-month we continue to see incremental improvement until a poorly performing digital campaign is revamped and into prime performance zones.
What is involved?
Why are we saying it can take only a few months to see immediate gains but longer for a total overhaul? There’s a lot involved in changing gears and getting a digital marketing campaign back on track. Here are a few things that might need to be adjusted:
Website – If your website isn’t in a good place, it will hinder performance. No matter how good the marketing is, if prospective clients arrive at your site and it’s not updated, they could change their minds about purchase. Also, we’ll want SEO to be strong to get those organic placements that are so important.
Competitors – We might be fighting an uphill battle if your competitors are already at top performance. It’s much easier to hold onto market share than to convince people to try something new.
Targeting – We’ll need to make sure you’re targeting the right people at the right time in the right place. This might mean doing some additional market research as well as testing different messaging and tactics. We’ll always start out with our best strategy, and then adjust from there as results start rolling in.
Lead generation and multi-step processes – Before we can increase KPIs, we might simply need to boost your pool of leads. This would mean engaging with a couple different types of campaign strategies, one for lead generation and one for conversions and sales. Connecting with your target and collecting their data takes time, so it won’t be a quick turn around with automatic results.
Sustained results – It might be easier to get a quick boost in followers or website visits with some digital tactics, but that won’t necessarily increase sales performance or provide a good ROI. We want to give solid, sustainable results that will keep your brand seeing the benefits of your efforts.
In it for the long haul
While it may take longer than you were originally hoping, a strong digital strategy that sets the foundation for continued brand growth is well worth the time investment. We’re in it for the long haul with you, and we hope you can see the value of taking time and doing things the right way. We know you’ll love the result.
Connect with one of the digital marketing experts at Beyond Fifteen to learn more about how we can craft a digital marketing campaign that provides sustained results.