Like all great things, results take time. You wouldn’t expect to be an expert chef after 1 week in culinary school, just as you can’t expect an abundance of digital marketing results in just a week’s time. Anyone can manipulate links, automate content, or use other sketchy marketing tactics to get temporary results. But this isn’t what you want. You want real clicks, real conversions, and real business authority. So, here’s what you need to know about generating real, quality, and enduring results.

Digital marketing isn’t a one-time thing. It requires long-term planning and thinking.

Digital marketing efforts take time and lots of expertise. The Blunt truth is if you focus on quick fixes rather than plan long-term then you will fail every single time. You need to be ready to invest in your company’s future if you want to see any real results. Any SEO or digital marketing agency that is promising absurdly fast results for a cheap price is a red flag and should be avoided at all costs. These agencies are using black-hat tactics that can and will severely damage your brand authority and get you penalized by search engines.

It will likely take 4-12 months to begin seeing the results of your digital marketing efforts.

You must stay with a well-planned and executed digital marketing strategy for about 4-6 months before you start to see meaningful results. Results can take even longer and even never arrive if you aren’t fixing all features of your site (from backlinks to content to user experience), posting regularly, or providing high-quality content, ads, etc.

Several factors play a role in the speed of your results.

Your starting point, industry, budget, the agency or employee you use, and your focus areas can all have a big impact on the speed of your results. Working with a lean agency is a good way to utilize multiple digital marketing experts, decrease results time, and maximize your budget.

Where You Start

Google regularly indexes and scores your website. Depending on your current relationship with Google it can take a good bit of time to build or rebuild a trusting and credible relationship with Google’s search engines.

Industry and Budget

If your competitors have a durable online presence, it will be harder for you to outrank them when you are first starting.  Perfection isn’t mandatory you just need to be better than your industry competitors. That being said, if your business offers an inferior product or service, your digital marketing efforts will most likely be unsuccessful. However, if you have a good product or service, digital marketing can help you find and convert new audiences.

As far as budget goes, the more you spend the more you see in return. With a more expansive budget, you can acquire higher quality leads, faster results, and a more sustainable experience. As you grow you should add to your marketing budget to support this growth. For instance, Rolex spent $56 million in 2021, whereas Casio spent only $3.64 million. We suggest spending at least 10% of your annual revenue on marketing.

Focus Areas

Digital marketing is a long-term commitment, irrespective of your focus areas. One type of service is just not enough. While you may see faster results with Google PPC campaigns than with SEO, you lose all of that traffic once you stop running PPC ads. Therefore, you want to ensure your focus on both SEO and PPC campaigns. To cut it short, successful digital marketing requires an extensive approach.

Search engine optimization

Out of every inbound marketing effort, SEO is the most long-term strategy and the tactic that will require the most patience. SEO requires continuous work to ensure your website is as good and relevant as it can possibly be and superior to your competitors.

Google regularly assesses any changes to your website. However, in the first few months, it may seem like your time invested with SEO isn’t causing noticeable improvements to your search engine rankings, keep in mind if you are correctly executing your strategy those changes are all building towards good things in the long run.

PPC advertisements

If you’re looking for instant traffic, Google Ads are your best bet. The campaign you set up will start targeting the characteristics you’ve supplied for your selected keywords instantly, so you may see people clicking through to your website in a matter of hours.

However, it’s not that simple, Google ads can take time to perfect and although you may be getting traffic, your ads are likely not as optimized as they should be to yield real results. If you’re not seeing many results, you likely need to have a period of trial and error before you get a campaign that’s showing reliably good results, this usually takes about 3-6 months to generate.

Successful digital marketing is a continuous journey, not a quick sprint.

When your marketing goals are reached, you can’t let up or resort back to your old ways. Maintaining a meaningful online presence requires a commitment to the consistent implementation of your digital marketing strategy. An effective strategy consists of setting meaningful measurable goals, once met, new goals are set. It is a recurring process and an investment for the longevity of your company’s digital presence.

Where to go from here

At this point, you are probably a little overwhelmed. The best thing to do from here is to just start. Begin by devising a marketing strategy that best fits your business. Don’t focus on just one marketing effort, we encourage you to diversify your marketing assets, practice trial, and error, and constantly optimize your efforts. Most of all we encourage you to begin practicing SEO, as it is hands down the best way to grow your business in the long run.