{"id":2970,"date":"2012-01-20T15:01:07","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T15:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sanctuarymg.com\/academy\/?p=2970"},"modified":"2022-05-26T09:33:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T13:33:39","slug":"content-marketing-strategy-show-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sanctuarymg.com\/academy\/content\/content-marketing-strategy-show-results\/","title":{"rendered":"How Long Does It Take for a Content Marketing Strategy to ‘Work’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What? Do you want accountability? Do you have an expectation for return on investment for a marketing effort? Do you actually expect someone to give you a definitive answer so you can hold me (or someone<\/em>) accountable for the considerable time, resources and financial investment that is <\/em>content marketing?<\/p>\n

But, this is the new age of social marketing. We don’t measure results in dollars and cents (sense?). We measure followers. <\/em>We measure likes. <\/em>We measure page rank<\/em> and backlinks<\/em> and unique site visitors.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rather than give you a bunch of CYA disclaimers, \u00a0here’s my ‘no B\/S’ answer on how long it takes for a content marketing strategy to work:<\/span> 12 months.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Could you see positive results before then? Sure. In fact, you probably will see benefits<\/strong> and improvements<\/strong> across many of the engagement metrics mentioned above within a few months of launching a serious effort to create great content.<\/p>\n

BUT, if your content marketing strategy has not yielded enough profitable revenue to pay for itself<\/strong> (and then some) within the first 12 months, something’s wrong. <\/p>\n

Now the Rest of The Story<\/strong><\/p>\n

Note: in the above declaration I did NOT say stop your content marketing campaign if you aren’t seeing results at the 12-month mark. I am saying, something’s wrong and that adjustments and corrections to the strategy need to be made. \u00a0This may<\/em> include discontinuing your efforts. But that isn’t very likely.<\/p>\n

Your inbound marketing campaign is one of the most important aspects of making your business a success. \u00a0But these things do take time. While I expect, as a service provider, to be held accountable for results after a 12-month investment<\/em> by the client. That expectation comes with certain caveats.<\/p>\n

The first is that you…now, hold onto your hats…stick with it for 12 months.<\/strong> This is NOT the same media channel as a direct marketing effort of say 1985, where you drop a mailer, get a 2% response and know if it worked within the first 6 weeks of the mailing. \u00a0Nor is it a broadcast email program of 1995 where you blast out to 100,000 of your closest friends and know if the campaign worked within a matter of hours.<\/p>\n

This is inbound marketing and that means creating a trail of great content over the course of many months in order to build credibility, establish trust, and bring qualified business leads to you. The difference is traditional marketing efforts spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on something that, if you’re lucky, results in a \u00a02% response and is over the moment your top spending money. And that 2%? That was over 20 years ago before those rates were standard.<\/p>\n

Most people in the direct marketing arena will attest that they’re lucky to see .5% (one-half of one percent). \u00a0And that means 99.5% of your activity in that channel was wasted.<\/p>\n

Here’s the thing. Every marketing channel has its pros and cons. With inbound marketing the pros are:<\/p>\n