Has Digital Marketing Made Marketers Too Impatient?

Digital marketing moves very quickly and performance metrics are more immediately available than many traditional communication techniques. Immediate accessibility to performance metrics doesn't necessarily translate to immediate results.

There is a significant difference between being able to read results quickly and having digital marketing techniques work overnight. Marketers today often find themselves being pressured to impatiently switch from tactic to tactic, potentially underestimating the amount of time it takes to achieve and correctly assess whether strategies are succeeding or failing. All types of marketing, including digital, is a question of building momentum and allowing tactics to get traction before darting from one strategy to another. Constant innovation is critical in today’s marketing arena. The reality is however, that digital marketers may have misaligned expectations around digital marketing results, and ultimately sabotage themselves. This article will explore how long it will take different digital marketing campaigns to work.

Getting social: The realities of digital marketing lag
To understand why certain types of digital marketing campaigns may not work immediately, it’s important to remember that many digital media techniques and tactics today work organically. Imagine a tree growing: it starts off as a small seed, germinates into a tiny plant and then ultimately becomes a towering oak. A tree cannot just become an oak overnight; in fact, a tree that grows too fast will often be weak and sickly. In digital marketing you will find that the greatest strides will be achieved after a certain "tipping point" has been accomplished. The campaign slowly builds and reaches a point where multiple touches start to get traction and make a difference.

It's long been considered common knowledge that a typical inbound marketing or search-driven content marketing campaign will take about six months to yield solid results, as reported by both Business2Community¹ and HubSpot.² Some campaigns grow much faster and others much slower; it is not an exact science. Think about a digital marketing campaign like a child: Some children learn to walk later, others to talk later and still others to read later. But, provided with enough attention and effort, most kids end up in the same place by a certain age.

Artificially throttled growth: A case of diminishing returns
SEO is often held up as a quick fix, but it really isn't. In fact, there are forces actively conspiring to keep your SEO campaign from growing too fast. According to the Search Engine Journal, search engine algorithms often look for websites that are being aggressively optimized.³ Consistent updates are essential to securing continual high rankings. Search engines’ goals are to match user’s needs and interests with the correct website. Older information could be outdated. This is one of the reasons Google rewards frequency and recency.

Additionally, search engines look for consistency and history before giving the reward of higher rankings. This seems fair. Digital marketing isn't just about creating a solid strategy now; it's about building a solid foundation for the future.

One email touch makes a difference?
Many organizations experience pressure to improve speed to market and test so they think, “Let’s blast an email and see how it does.” Email is one of the most cost-efficient digital marketing techniques and provides almost endless opportunities for testing. The reality is, however, that marketers must be cognizant of the old rule of thumb on frequency of message. For years, we’ve known that it takes somewhere between three and four times for a user to be exposed to a message to even recall it, let alone take action. Targeted outbound campaigns, generally see a significant lift between the third and fourth communication touchpoints.

Innovation is essential, and digital marketing techniques should be optimized while in market. Testing can provide insights on how to make small shifts that can continue to drive improved performance. Allotting the appropriate amount of time to determine success and failure can be mutually exclusive from optimization. Optimization efforts determine the best way to go to market with a strategy, and determining whether the entire effort is a success or failure. Many reports suggest that marketers are quick to dismiss certain tactics without fully attempting to optimize those communication techniques first.

Digital marketing hasn’t changed this best practice, it has just provided customers more outlets to reach this threshold. This is one of the main reasons multichannel campaigns are so necessary and can actually help shorten the window to deliver performance. By using multiple channels, the user is provided more outlets to reach the three to four touch threshold. It’s important to remember that when using a digital marketing technique that is either aimed at changing behavior, or even changing perceptions, it still takes time. Most of us don’t change our minds on something overnight. And in B2B marketing the decision-making cycle generally takes longer, simply because few decisions are made by one individual.

Digital marketers obtain unprecedented access to their consumers, not to mention the wide swathes of data and analysis. This can give a digital marketer the illusion that things are working, or not working, quicker than really is realistic. While digital marketing undoubtedly works faster than other forms of traditional marketing, there are still many considerations, such as inertia, complexity of a decision and scale that deliver a successful digital marketing campaign. A digital marketing campaign needs time to grow, and marketers who are unwilling to allow this time for growth may end up frustrated or changing gears without giving something a full chance.

Do you feel your digital marketing efforts would benefit from innovation?

Sources: