How Long Does Content Marketing Take To Work?

Your company has revamped the website, built up an archive of valuable material, started a blog, launched some landing pages with downloads and created a content schedule to be promoted via social media. Now you're ready to start driving traffic. But how long will it take for that traffic to arrive? For many reasons, content marketing tends to be a mid-term strategy rather than a short-term one. The reality is content marketing can take time to get traction. It’s important to remain consistent through the initial phase and not give up.

What to expect
Before content can be effective, it needs to be discovered. While the amount of time it takes to build momentum can vary, it's usually cited as anywhere between four to nine months.1 The rule of thumb is that you should expect success within the first year – and if you do not see significant results, your strategy should be altered at that time.

Content marketing begins with valuable, informative content -- but this content doesn't exist in a vacuum. First the content must be recognized by search engines. Once the content is recognized, users need to find it and choose it over other like content. Once the content is found, if it’s shared, search engines will perceive it as more valuable. Shares are essentially perceived as “votes” to search engines, that the content is valuable and useful in the eyes of users. Companies can help jump-start the process by putting significant social media efforts behind content development. Engage employees and ensure a disciplined set of activities are consistently put against promoting content via social media channels.

Every part of this system feeds back into itself. The more often the content is shared, the higher it will rank in search engines. The more people that are searching for the content, the more it will be shared. Because of this, traffic does not always build in a linear way but often in an exponential way; the more traffic you get, the more momentum you build.

Readership takes time to develop
To build a strong following for your content, you need to develop a readership. And this takes time; you can't just jump out of a gate and become wildly popular. It takes repetition and consistency to create a dedicated reader. Your readership must know that you provide quality content and that is provided on a regular basis. The more a readership engages with content, the more likely they will be to share that content -- and this will bring in new readers through word-of-mouth.

Logically, we wouldn’t want search engines to recognize any content, from any company as valuable, would we? It makes sense that rankings are somewhat based on the history of the content’s domain, and whether users have found the site’s content valuable in the past. This process essentially protects users as it applies past behavior to validate the authenticity.

Search engines favor longevity and consistency
But it isn't just the process or the readership that takes time. There’s also a technical issue. Search engines -- the most notable of which is, of course, Google – are looking for consistent content updates. According to Webconfs.com, Google looks to the age of the site, the length of time the domain has been registered and when it was last updated.¹ But as long as a domain name has been around for at least three to six months, it shouldn't make a significant difference, according to Google.²

They are also looking at who else is discussing a site. Websites that are too new or aren’t updated consistently will not rank high in search engine results pages. Developing search engine ranking involves cumulative improvements. Over time, the site builds a reputation for providing quality site that readers enjoy. These improvements happen over time; as an arsenal of quality content is built, links from other quality sites are added, and updates are consistently posted. A website cannot be created and have rank high rankings overnight.

A commitment to consistency, regardless of initial results, is recommended. Additionally, search engine crawlers view frequent updating favorably. According to Marketing Charts, more really is better – customer acquisition for bloggers who posted multiple times a day was almost twice as successful as bloggers who posted monthly.³

There are a number of factors that impact how long it will take content marketing to work. It certainly won't be overnight, but most companies will generally begin to get some traction within a few months and these results will continue to build on each other. A company should assume that it’s content marketing strategy will become effective between six to twelve months from inception.

To ensure your company is leveraging best practices for an effective content marketing campaign, sign up for our personalized webinar. Your company will learn techniques that will create cohesive integration to increase response rates and drive action across all communication channels.

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