The online world moves forward with light speed, and everyone wants to see results for every buck they spend on digital marketing in a jiffy! People wishing to see instant results sometimes jump into unapproved tactics and end up with fast but diminishing results that end up negative for the business.
There is no rocket science behind knowing exactly when digital marketing efforts will yield results. Though the outcomes take time, they are worth the wait and money if applied right. Let’s understand exactly how long it takes to find results with digital marketing and what factors affect it.
What is Digital Marketing?
Also known as online marketing, the process of promoting and selling products and services using the internet and digital technologies, including computers, mobile phones, and other different digital media and platforms, comes under the ambit of digital marketing.
Digital or online marketing can also be analysed as an improvement over traditional forms of marketing. Where conventionally, television, newspaper, big billboards, pamphlets, and like forms of marketing were used, social media channels and other digital platforms are used for online marketing.
What are the Factors That Influence Digital Marketing Campaign Results?
First things first, it is crucial to comprehend that digital marketing success is a journey and not just a destination. It may take months for your digital marketing process to show results. The length of the duration depends on several factors, which comprise of:
1. Where You Start
Understand that you cannot change your reputation overnight. Building trust and credibility among your customers can take a long time. But once that trust is established, it will become relatively easier for digital marketing efforts to show results.
2. Budget
Budget is the major factor that affects the timeline of digital marketing results. If there’s no proper budget allocated, the efforts will take a prolonged duration to show results. Campaigns like Pay-per-click and social media ads involve investments, but it delivers results that turn into sales.
3. Competitors
If there is already saturation in the industry, it will take comparatively more time and effort to create a digital presence that is unique and distinct from your competitors. Everything you do will depend highly on how your competitors perform. On the other hand, if your business is one of a kind, it will take much less time to stand out!
4. Consistency
Being consistent is the only thing that decides if every other factor will result in success or not! Keeping up with trends and understanding how your customers and audience are reacting to your audience is a crucial aspect to cover in digital marketing. From blogging to social media posts, and newsletters to content marketing, every aspect needs consistency and regular updates.
5. The Type of Campaign
Each type of campaign has a different timeline to yield results.
- Content Marketing: Managing content on-site is one of the most effective ways to enhance the digital presence of a brand or business. The on-site content includes blog posts, e-books, guides, case studies, and every other written content that engages the audience. If the audience is large, it will take considerable time to show results.
- Email Marketing: Think of a newsletter that informs the subscribers about the updates related to the business. It can also be used to announce product launches, sales, or ongoing discounts. It can spike up the sales for your business quickly.
- Search Engine Optimisation or SEO: Generally speaking, it will take at least 12 months to attain complete optimisation. It takes almost four to six months to create a hundred or more organic search results for a new website in a day.
- Paid Search: Paid search or PPC (Pay Per Click) shows results most quickly as it can be optimised using targeted SEO-optimised keywords and can be directed to a pre-defined audience.
- Social Media: Social Media advertising is essential to build a customer base and directly interacting with them. If you keep up with the going-on trends, it becomes easier for businesses to stay on the favourite list of their audience.
What are the Common Digital Marketing Mistakes that You Must Avoid?
Whether you are just starting with your digital marketing safari or currently doing it, there are inevitable slip-ups that everyone almost tends to incur. To keep you from the consequences, we have drafted a list of the most common mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. Not Setting Realistic Goals
Casting your net wide may be challenging while selecting an audience for your marketing campaigns. What matters is that you are providing relevant content and information to only that part of the audience that would be interested in you and your content. Not deciding on a clear audience or targeting the wrong one can become a big blunder.
How to avoid: To avoid losing track, set goals that are SMART i.e, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and time-sensitive.
2. Not Defining Clear Audience or Targeting the Wrong Audience
Casting your net wide may not be an ideal thing to do while selecting an audience for your marketing campaigns. The thing that matters is that you are providing relevant content and information to only that part of the audience that would be interested in you and your content. Not deciding on a clear audience or targeting the wrong one can become a big blunder.
How to avoid: Research, research, and research! Finding the right audience needs a lot of research and includes testing. The ultimate aim behind the research should be to understand who’d be interested in your product, and you can start by creating a buyer persona based on- demographics, interests, hobbies, Buying habits, etc.
3. Neglecting your Website Design
There’s a saying in the digital world that digital marketing starts with a website and ends with a website! You need a website if you wish to run a business, and that’s unavoidable. Putting efforts into a website is a must; your marketing campaign and money invested will fail if your website is not good enough.
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How to avoid: Make sure to create and maintain a user-friendly website with other features like mobile-responsive, very quick loading, easy to navigate, etc.
4. A Wrong Approach to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Even if you have the best website designed by the best website designers worldwide, your marketing campaign will not show any results if you haven’t incorporated Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. SEO puts you in the search results when users search for the kind of product/ service you offer.
How to avoid: There are multiple ways to do SEO, including on-page and off-page SEO. These tactics include optimising keywords, optimising title tags and the website’s loading time, delivering high-quality content, etc.
5. Missing out on Blogging
To create a brand identity and market your business as a trusted brand, blogs are the best way to do it. But unfortunately, many companies even don’t have a blog because it is time-consuming and does not yield instant results, which can be a big mistake!
How to avoid: Blogging regularly with quality content that is relevant too is the only way to do it! Interact with your audience via the content and reply to their queries and comments to make them feel heard.
6. Not Exploiting Social Media
As per a study, an average user spends as much as 28% of the time they spend on the internet on social media. You’re missing out on a big opportunity if you are not actively interacting with your target audience via social media. From increasing brand awareness to improving customer experience, it reaps multiple benefits; hence, ignoring it can be a big blunder.
How to avoid: Start with determining the right platforms for your business and post regularly to engage the audience.
Conclusion
If you have come this far reading, you must have understood that the sooner you wish to see digital marketing results, the sooner you need to start applying digital marketing tactics and exploiting its potential!
The digital world and online marketing are undoubtedly the future. If you wish to outdo your competitors and drive that relevant customer base to your business, embark on your digital journey now and remember not to expect instant results!
