How Long Does It Take for Content Marketing to Work?

How Long Does It Take for Content Marketing to Work?

“Does content marketing work? How long does it take to start seeing the results I want?” We get these types of questions a lot.

And yes, content marketing works. It can take around six to nine months to start seeing substantial results.

Keep in mind that the answer for your business could look very different. You might see results more quickly, depending on how much effort you put into strategy, production, and promotion.

Conversely, it may take you much longer to see the same results based on your content output and focus. Your timeline will depend on these factors:

Content marketing takes time to work. It’s a long-term strategy. If you desire immediate results, you may not find them this way. But if you want to build your business on a firm foundation and grow confidently into the future, content marketing is one of your best options.

Here are some stats that prove the value of content marketing (CM):

Learn how to set your content marketing team up for success and measure your results to see how well your strategies work over time. Here’s a basic blueprint.

To know “if content marketing is working for you,” you first need to define what success looks like for your business.

Does success begin when you make the first dollar? Are your efforts successful once you meet a benchmark for traffic or leads? Is it when you make a certain number of sales? Number of shares on Facebook or LinkedIn? Engagement? Month-over-month growth?

If your content marketing efforts achieve the goals you set, your brand will be successful.

Before you begin setting goals and building content marketing strategies to grow your business, you must define your key performance indicators (KPIs). Make sure you choose the best metrics for your industry and business.

For example, your key metrics might include website traffic, email subscribers, and brand awareness if you’re a startup. If you’ve been in business for over ten years, you may want to focus on metrics like revenue and sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

We recommend including the following two metrics when building a CM plan, regardless of your business’s size or scope.

How will you build effective strategies if you don’t know who you’re targeting?

One of the first steps to building a solid content marketing plan is researching your audience. Develop reader personas to target your ideal consumers through your content.

After researching online, conducting interviews for more insight, and learning where your target audience spends time online, you can form your reader personas and determine what types of content they’re seeking. This will play directly into your goal setting and marketing strategies.

If you don’t set goals and define what “success” looks like for your business, you’ll never know if you’re getting desirable results from your content creation and marketing efforts. Before defining and implementing content marketing strategies, set some SMART goals for your business.

Use appropriate metrics for your industry and business, as we mentioned above. SEMrush found that some of the top content marketing goals include generating more quality leads, attracting more traffic to the website, improving brand awareness, and improving customer loyalty and engagement.

Here are a few examples of what SMART goals for your business could resemble.

You’ve started implementing your strategies, developing and publishing quality content, and working toward your SMART goals. Now you need to start tracking your results so you can see your progress. By measuring performance, you can see whether the initial goals you set are realistic or if you should adjust them for the next period.

Revisit your overarching goals every three to six months to ensure you’re on track. If you’ve exceeded your plans early, develop new ones to facilitate more remarkable growth moving forward.

Make sure you’re getting the feedback you need to know how effective your CM is working. You can email your contact list or send out a survey. Determine which tactics are helping you reach your SMART goals and which you should leave behind moving forward. Refresh your goals, adjust your strategies, and continue building momentum.

Don’t rush the process or expect results prematurely. If you do, you’ll be disappointed and quit too early. It takes time for content to gain traction on search engines and your business brand to build authority and awareness online.

You may also see spikes and drops in traffic to your website. This is normal. Concentrate on the gradual and steady climb. Content marketing results grow exponentially, as opposed to linearly. What may seem like a slog at the beginning can turn into tangible progress and revenue over time.

Remember that content marketing is hard work. The top-performing articles online are long (over 3,000 words). But they get three times the traffic, four times the shares, and three-and-a-half times the backlinks of average-length articles (901-1200 words). That’s why many businesses outsource their content marketing – so they can focus on their business and leave the legwork to those who live and breathe SEO and content creation.

If you want results, you must put in the work. Invest in the right resources, and be patient – especially in the beginning. If you do, you should see sustainable and substantial results over time.

Effective content marketing will grow your online presence, boost brand awareness, drive traffic and sales, and increase revenue. Here are several additional benefits:

If you do not see the results you want, consider the following list of reasons content marketing doesn’t work for some businesses. You may resonate with one or more of them, which means there’s hope. Make strategic adjustments to improve your efforts and results moving forward.

If you don’t invest enough time and resources into CM, you won’t see the results you want. A larger budget can afford higher quality content and quicker results. More succinctly, you get what you pay for.

Make sure you’re consistent, regardless of publishing frequency and budget. You can focus on less expensive tactics, like blogging and free social media promotion. Skip more expensive strategies like paid ads and video marketing until you can afford them.

Keep track of which efforts have the most significant ROI for your business, and then spend more of your budget there. Decide if outsourcing CM would be more efficient and cost-effective than trying to juggle all tasks in-house with limited resources – or hiring an expert to take it over.

While content marketing can be expensive, it can have a high return on investment. It generates around three times the number of leads per dollar spent as traditional marketing (Demand Metric).

59% of B2B marketers believe blogs are the most valuable channel for content marketing. Companies that blog produce 67% more leads monthly than those that don’t (Demand Metric). However, it’s not the only viable or profitable option.

If you’re not already blogging, you should start. If you are, here are some other forms of content to consider adding to your marketing plan:

Are you promoting your content after you create it? This step of the process is as critical as the creation process. Without promotion, you’ll have a hard time building engagement. Engagement leads to more traffic and higher rankings on search engines.

Start promoting your content on social media, in emails and newsletters, and on other websites or blogs when appropriate. Also consider working with influencers. Ask them to share your content with their audience and expand your reach. Just make sure you have the same target consumers.

Does your content engage your target audience? Does it address their specific needs and provide value?

To be considered high quality, your content must be relevant, engaging, and well written. It also must demonstrate authoritativeness, expertise, and trustworthiness on the given topic (Google). It should encourage your readers to act – like to fill out a form or download a PDF.

If your content isn’t providing the right value to readers, it’s insufficient. If any of these statements are true, your content may be of low quality.

We’ve already touched on this. The more frequently you can produce quality content your audience loves, the better and faster your results will be. Ensure consistency long term to build confidence with your followers. Commit to a plan you can fulfill.

Are you doing keyword research and tracking your progress? Are you optimizing every new piece of content for search engines? Are you keeping old content updated so that your website stays fresh and timely? If not, you won’t succeed.

If you need help with SEO, hire an expert consultant or marketing agency. They can conduct an audit to identify SEO gaps or weaknesses and tell you how to fix them (or fix them for you).

If you’re in a niche with steep competition, it may take longer to rank on search engines and attract the traffic you want. Here are a few tips for staying in the game if you’re in an aggressive industry:

To compete with much larger and more established competitors, you must be strategic, work hard, and build a devoted following.

If your expectations are too high, you’ll never be satisfied – even with stellar results. Don’t compare your results to other businesses or your competitors. You’ll get discouraged if you can’t reach your goals.

Instead, compare your results with how you performed this time last year or even six months ago. If you haven’t been producing consistent content that long, give it more time to gain traction.

Marketing Insider Group is a content marketing agency and business thought leader. We exist to deliver strategy, ROI, content creation, branding, coaching, and more for our clients. We designed our Content Builder Service to craft custom content marketing strategies to help businesses win new customers fast.

MIG will do all the legwork for you. We’ll devise a content plan, implement crucial strategies, and help you reach your SMART goals. We’ll craft quality content that draws in the right traffic and converts leads. You can focus on growing your business.

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