How long does digital marketing take to start working?
I think it's something that people ask us a lot. I think people have unrealistic expectations of how fast this stuff happens, and sometimes it depends what your objectives are and if it's short term results you want, or if you're trying to build a long term brand, then you would expect it to take longer.
What you're trying to achieve has a massive impact on it, right? So we're talking about deploying tactics, a lot of digital marketing tactics that you are paying for, things like paid search, social media, advertising, that kind of thing where you're putting a lot of money up front tend to pay off very quickly. They tend to stop working equally quickly, right?
Once you start paying for the adverts, you've got no way of getting that traffic or those those leads in. Whereas if you're doing something that's sort of more long lasting than the, the effects will carry on even when you stop putting the effort in.
Okay, so we're back at the digital marketing from the podcast coalface, and I'm joined digital marketing from Coalface Podcast. Is that what I said? No. What did I say?
Digital marketing from the podcast coalface, from the.
Well, it kind of is a podcast called face. I suppose we've got like wires and flashing lights and all that kind of stuff. So.
So it's a Digital Marketing podcast From The Coalface.
It is a digital marketing podcast. And one of my favourite songs is a song by, uh, ace called How Long featuring Paul Carrack. Um, your friends with their fancy persuasion. Don't admit that it's part of a scheme, but I can't help but have my suspicions because I'm not quite as dumb as I seem. It sounds like it's a bit of a love song, but it isn't a love song. It's actually a song about a bass guitarist being poached by one band from another band. Believe it or not. Yeah, but the title of the song is How Long? Uh, and the subject of the podcast today is How long does digital marketing take to start working? So we're going to kind of wrap around on that subject, come up with some answers, um, to questions that we get asked quite a lot. And to the conversations that we have with clients and potential clients, etc.. So it's really a podcast, I think that will be useful for people who are not yet maybe using digital marketing, or they've maybe dabbled a bit with digital marketing, and they're kind of wondering how long stuff should take and that kind of thing. Does that sound reasonable? And by the way, did I already say it's Julie and Alex? Did I say that?
No you didn't.
Okay, so I'm joined by Julie rudely interrupted me just then. And and Alex is, uh, over the wires using this, uh, fab Zencaster to.
Interrupt because we can mute him.
So, um, who wants to start us off?
Well, I mean, I think it's something that people ask us a lot. It's like you start working or you're, you're talking about doing some work for them, like, right. So how long is it going to take? You know, when I see results.
And that's not unreasonable is it?
No it's not. But I think people have maybe unrealistic expectations.
Of.
How fast this stuff happens. And sometimes it's really difficult to explain that actually it can take ages.
Yeah. And if we're talking about digital marketing and how long things take to happen, um, then there isn't a straight answer because different tactics.
Exactly.
Remember, you should always have a strategy first, but your strategy will deploy tactics and different tactics produce results, uh, against different time scales.
Yes. And sometimes it depends, you know, what your objectives are and if it if it's short term results you want, or if you're trying to build a long term brand. And so if you're building a long term brand and doing sort of stuff that you want to last forever, then you would expect it to take longer.
Is this a fast talking competition? Because you're talking really fast. I know I talk fast.
I always talk fast. When I moved to London, I actually had to talk slower because nobody could understand me, so I.
Sorry.
Come again. I will consciously try to speak slower.
Okay. Okay. All right. So different tactics take different amounts of time before we get into any specifics. And while we're just at the introductory stage. Alex. Got anything to add?
Uh, just that, I guess what you're saying about the kind of length of the engagement as well. Like what you're trying to achieve has a massive impact on it, right? So we're talking about deploying tactics that, you know, might have a very short shelf life. You're going to get quick results. Tactics that are going to have a very long shelf life. They take a lot longer to show results. So I guess that's I guess.
Yeah, I think that's I think we're all in agreement about that. But also sometimes you can get short term results that as soon as you stop doing the thing that's bringing the results, the results stop and you can do other things that bring in results over time. And once you stop doing the thing, the results keep going. So does that make any sense?
I think we're gonna have.
To.
Dive into specifics, because I think the thing we're dancing around is that a lot of digital marketing tactics that you are paying for things like paid search, social media, advertising, that kind of thing where you're putting a lot of money up front tend to pay off very quickly. They tend to stop working equally quickly.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm meaning. Once you stop paying for the adverts, you've got no way of getting that traffic or those those leads in. Whereas if you're doing something that's sort of more long lasting than the, you know, the, the effects will carry on even when you stop putting the effort in.
Okay, so we've got tactics that will start working almost immediately. I take a little bit of issue with that. But yeah, broadly speaking quickly, I know, I know, I know. So we've got those kind of tactics. Then we've got longer term tactics that will help us build traffic, build interest in our brand customer. Our client, you know, will build their business more slowly. But maybe those those tactics will bring longer term benefits.
Yeah, I think that's, that's fair that the, you know.
So used together, you know, short term tactics, while the long term tactics are delivering nothing, uh, means, you know, if you're clever about it, you can use paid search, for example, Google ads, um, at the start of a long engagement before the other stuff starts kicking in.
Yeah, exactly.
In an ideal scenario. Yeah. Right. But I think it's important to caveat that by pointing out that even things like Google ads or LinkedIn advertising, where you're going to go to a platform, you're going to pay for adverts, it's not like you can just kind of roll up on day one and say, oh, okay, we're going to pay one hundred pounds today and we're going to get one hundred clicks or whatever. You know, there's still a lot of kind of legwork to be done in gearing up for those things, right? I mean, we've been doing some work for a client recently, for example, where they want to switch their paid ads back on. And, you know, we had to build a new landing page for them. We had to write some new content for that. So it's not like any of these tactics are really kind of immediate. You can't just kind of ring somebody up and say, turn my marketing on.
Yeah. I mean, I suppose if you, if you're selling a product, say you're selling a low cost product and you just want to get it out in front of an audience very quickly, then something like a Facebook advert, you could have that up and running in pretty much no time. Highly target the ads at the right people, the people who will buy that product and boom, you know you're going to you're going to potentially make sales if the product's any good or if the message, you know, is any good. So one thing I would say, because I agree entirely with what you said, Alex. So some of the shorter term tactics still have a lead and what I would call a lead and a learn time. So like with paid search, for example, you know, if you say month one is your learning month, month two, we might see some enquiries come in, maybe, maybe not by the end of month two, moving into month three, we should be then getting the thing fairly well optimised so that if there is a market for whatever we're advertising, we should then be starting to get enquiries. Is that fair or is that time scale too short? Too long? What do you think?
Yeah, no, I think that is fair. And I think it's a really interesting way of looking at it actually, like you call it a learn time. I think that's maybe the the piece that's missing a lot of the time, isn't it? People kind of think of marketing in a very transactional way. It's like, oh, I'm going to pay for some adverts. I'm going to get some traffic, I'm going to sell them something. And you know, it's nice to kind of break it down and distill it to that level. But in reality, there's always that kind of learning experience. We're always learning.
There's a really interesting example of a client we had a few years back, um, who was doing home extensions? Um, so yeah, exactly that.
Did you have a cat?
Have I missed why?
No. Sorry. Different client. Obviously.
Okay. I know what you mean. Yeah. Anyway, we, um, we were doing we set up some Google ads, um, home extensions, as you know, the keyword that you're targeting and, you know, had it all set up ready to go. And we were getting clicks and, you know, spending some money, this was all good. And then we sort of started looking, I say learning and, and sort of seeing if there's anything we can do to make it work better. You look at what people had actually typed into Google when they were clicking on home extensions, and it was home hair extensions and home eyelash extensions. Like, ah, that's not exactly what we want. So yeah, you're getting the clicks, but actually it's, it's not right at all. But there's no way we had we had kind of realised that that that's the sort of traffic we would get from that keyword. So, um, we obviously had to adjust and add some negative keywords, which is a kind of technical.
Just as a quick jargon buster. Alex, explain what negative keywords are.
Negative keyword is kind of the opposite of a normal keyword, I guess. So you're telling Google ads or whatever platform you're using that you don't want your ad to appear for this keyword. So you might, in the example you just gave, for example, you could put hair as a negative keyword and then somebody typing home hair extensions wouldn't trigger your ad for home extensions.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so that's part of the learning that, you know, you, you can be very lucky and you can set ads running and, and get a great, you know, get a great enquiry through straight away. But that's more by chance usually takes a little while just to refine it to exactly. Once you understand, you know, who, who's doing what and how it's working, then you can make adjustments to make it work a lot better either to save money or sort of target it slightly differently to, you know, spend the money in in more appropriate places.
Okay. So broadly speaking, using tactics where we pay for the exposure, we, you know, it's an advertising platform like Google ads, Facebook, Facebook ads, etc. using those platforms, we can expect to get results reasonably quickly, certainly within two or three months, sometimes within two or three weeks in exceptional circumstances straight away.
Yeah. That's fair. Yeah.
Okay. So that's, I guess one end of the scale. Um, and so if you're a company who is in a situation where you really need the phone to ring right now, then there are platforms in the digital marketing space that can potentially help you.
Yeah. Yes.
I mean, I say that because quite often I'll say to people that Digital marketing isn't a distressed purchase situation. It doesn't suit itself very well to distress purchase like the phone isn't ringing. There's no money in the bank. We better do something quickly to get business in. Digital marketing isn't always the best, but we're saying it might in some circumstances be okay. Yeah, depending on the lead time for the product or service.
In digital marketing, you could say, well, look, the best way to get quick sales is to reach out to people who already know you and have already bought from you. Send an email with an offer to existing customers. Now that's still digital marketing. You're sending an email out to, to existing customers. And, um, you know, they might go, oh yeah, I've forgotten about you. Yes, I need a repeat purchase of whatever it is and I want some more. So that's another way of looking at it. Um, so that that's an option if you're really, really in a panic and need something quickly.
Alex I think you've got something to say on that.
Yeah. Well, I was just gonna say that coming back to that point about distress purchases, right? It's like sometimes PPC, Facebook, advertising, all of those things can be used as a distress purchase. I think the important thing, and I say this because I work on PPC campaigns a lot, is that if you do it as a distress purchase, you're not going to get the results you would if you did it in a more considered fashion, right? So it's not like, you know, a locksmith or a plumber who's kind of standing by to rush in in an emergency. Of course, we can get ads up for you tomorrow and get traffic, but it's never going to be as good as it could be if you took your time. Um, and I think that's quite important because I do think a lot of people kind of treat these things as a very kind of, you know, well, it can be done tomorrow. What's the, what's the hurry? Um, and the reality of the situation is you're only going to get the results you want. If you do kind of take your time with it a little bit.
Like anything, you need the strategy first. If you're really going to make sure you're spending your money in the right way.
Yeah. That's right. Um, I think in, in showbiz circles, people often talk about, you know, it, it took me thirty years to achieve my overnight success.
Absolutely. Yes.
It's, it's that kind of idea that, you know, what, what is maybe perceived as what was in something that was a quick solution. You know, it really is. It really is the case. Maybe that's not the best example, but I think, you know, you can make the point. So okay, so I'm keen that, you know, people get as much value as they can. So some examples of digital marketing that can deliver quick results. We've mentioned Google ads. We've mentioned Facebook ads, I guess LinkedIn ads. Yeah, fit into that as well.
So maybe social media, if you've got a decent following already, but obviously you'll have had to have spent probably a few years building up a decent following who follows you and engages with you for it to have an effect. If you start a Facebook page and suddenly stick something out there that's not going to work fast.
Yeah. Unless you, you know, pay to boost it.
Exactly. And then that's paid advertising.
That's right. Yeah, yeah. Um, that's what I mean. I mean, in the paid arena.
Yeah.
You know, they are the kind of platforms and remarketing and all that kind of stuff can be, you know, as long as you're prepared to pay Remarked again. Yes, quickly, quickly.
But you've had to have build. Built the remarketing list already. So a lot of these things can happen quickly and email can happen quickly. If you've already built a decent email list so you can do things fast. If you've spent a lot of time preparing for them in advance.
So it's that's thirty years to overnight success.
Pretty much. I'm on on the same page as you there.
Yeah. Okay. Alex.
Well, I was just going to say that, you know, one thing I have seen people do admittedly slightly underhand tactic is just buy email lists. Certainly for remarketing. That's something a lot of people do, isn't it? You just kind of buy up a big list of people's email addresses or Facebook accounts, plug them in and say, market to these people. I just think again, with that, you're kind of risking an awful lot for very short term gains, aren't you?
I'd be very interested to see how often that really works. Like, I mean, I've in past life, I think we talked about this in a previous podcast. You know, you can buy email lists, but if those people have never heard of you and they haven't opted in to actually, you know, give you permission to email them. The chances are they're just going to delete it. It's very unlikely that they're actually going to want to purchase from you with an email out of the blue, and they've never heard of you. Um.
All those people, all those people that email us at Red evolution offering us SEO services, we read every email, don't we?
Of course we do. But, you know, earned earned lists are always going to be more effective than bot lists. But it's not to say, you know, if you're absolutely desperate.
And you.
Have.
To.
Try something. Well, you know, there you go. But it's not an ideal situation to be in because you're not going to be thinking sort of long term strategically and you'll do something and it might work, or it might be a complete waste of money. And you don't really know because you haven't planned it.
Yeah. That's right. Okay. So we may return to that, but we've we've got options with digital marketing, as long as we're prepared to pay for the people's attention and that we can, that we can employ. Um, so at the other end of the scale, uh, Julie, what have you got at the other end of the scale?
Well, we've got your, your own owned, um, media, if you like your website predominantly where you spend time, you know, building up the content on your website so that people find what they're looking for when they're, when they're looking for it. And, you know, that takes time and it takes time for it to actually add the content to your website. It takes time to get found in the search engines. Or as I was saying before, it takes time to build a social media following so you can put something out there to people who are interested. But once you've got that base, once you've got the website, the content, the audience, the, um, the sort of presence online, then you know, that's a long term way of, um, of getting leads, but it takes time.
And that's one of the most difficult conversations for agencies like us to have with customers when it's around the non-paid medium. Yeah. Media, um, you know, using search engine optimisation, you're making sure that you've got a website that gets found in Google. That's the thing that's probably the most, um, vexatious, if that's the word. It's like people just kind of generally don't get why that should take so long. Why can't you just wave a wand and.
There's not an answer. There's not there's not an answer to how long it's going to take it. It might be quite quick, it might not be. And we can't we can't answer that accurately because we really don't know exactly how long that's going to take. I think Alex has got a a need to say something. Yeah.
Well, I was going to say with SEO especially, I think it's one of those things, isn't it? Because, you know, I hear all the time people say this like three to six months or six to nine months, or they like to give these kind of like really precise ranges for how long it'll take for your SEO to kind of kick in. I think Julie's point is a really good one, though. We sometimes see clients where, you know, they're making obvious mistakes. They don't have proper meta titles on their page. Boom. Oh.
I did.
It. How long did it take me? It took me seventeen minutes.
That's not bad.
Not bad to trip yourself up. It's getting better. So. Yeah. Um, when you kind of, um, put a page up on the internet, you have the opportunity to provide what is called meta information, which is information about your information. I guess, um, where you kind of.
Yeah, that's exactly what it is, isn't it? Yeah.
Is he still talking?
Yeah. He appears to be. I think we pressed mute a while ago. No idea. What's he.
Saying?
Yeah. You tell you tell Google what your page is about. And if that's not been done properly and you can you can do it properly. You can get some quite quick wins.
Yeah. Alex. Alex makes a great point. I mean, the, the point about sometimes customers come to us and they've got what is actually a decent website that's badly set up, let's say, and that might.
So you avoided the word optimised. I did.
And that might mean that things could happen quicker. For example, is that is that kind of where you were going with that dreadfully long, boring drivel?
What a shame. I think you're being a little bit mean.
I am, I do apologise.
Yeah.
I think, yeah, there are times when you can look at someone's site and say, well, look, there are things that are really obvious things we can do to make it better and that that could work very quickly. It could work a little bit, very quickly. It could work very slowly. Um, sometimes it depends on how many, you know, how many competitors that are out there, you know, trying to do the same thing. Um, sometimes it can just be because Google makes its mind up to do something fast or slow.
Let's distill that down then. Because one, you know, I think a thing that people might be interested in and I'll bring you back straight after I've stopped talking. Alex. In about four or five hours. Um, one of the things that I think people are interested in is, is what are the factors that, that decide how quickly my website will get found in Google because they don't want to spend money on paid search. They don't want to spend money on Google ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., because they know that clicks from normal search, organic search. And, you know, like a lot of people don't click the adverts. You know, we as we hear, I mean, obviously plenty do, but you know, that is a, that is a question that that people would really like an answer to. So can maybe we should unpack that a bit.
Well, I think it comes down to lots of different things. I mean, part of it is how your website set up. Part of it's what's on your website and part of it's what everyone else is doing. Have I missed.
Anything? So I was going to pick up on the point you were just making about competitiveness, right? Because I think this is one of the things that's probably most overlooked when it comes to how long is my SEO going to take, for example, because it doesn't really matter. You know how well you set your site up. If you're in an incredibly competitive industry where you're going toe to toe with the likes of Amazon or, or Waterstones or you know what I mean? A big brand that everybody knows versus a smaller market like organic dog food, where you might be able to just kind of put up a few pages and start ranking them.
Have you got any idea how much organic dog food is out there?
Mhm.
Well evidently not, but but yeah, I mean, I guess this is the thing, isn't it? Fundamentally, you have to look at SEO as kind of you're competing with other people for attention for a share of traffic. So it's all going to depend on how good they are and how sophisticated their SEO is as to how long it takes yours to kind of kick.
Just as you're talking about dog food, the dog's dog barking. Is it dinner time?
My organic dog food has been mentioned.
Love it. You couldn't have timed that better, Alex.
Um, but yeah, no, so I just think that's, uh, where were you an often overlooked. Yeah.
You can, you can do everything right. But if someone else is doing also doing everything right and has been doing it for longer or is doing more of it than you're never going to be able to kind of get above them in, in the search results.
Well, here's an example. We were with, um, a real life face to face meeting in Aberdeen today. Julie and I, and we were looking over some data with a customer, with a client, and we identified a search term that they would like to be found for. They would like to be on page one of Google so that people find them when they carry out this specific search. And when we looked at the search term, it's mentioned on their website once on one page. No, originally it was only once on one page. Now. Now, there have been some changes made which we were discussing. So it was mentioned once on one page. And when we reviewed the web page that ranked number one for that particular search term, it was mentioned five hundred times on the website and on eighteen different pages on that website, on the on that's only on the site. That's number one for that search. Now, it could be the site that's number two or number three for that search term mentions it only a handful of times, in which case fine. But there are things that we can do which which digital marketing people can do to try and establish how competitive something is. So it isn't always easy to figure out how long something might take, how long it might take to improve a situation. So one of our clients, or, you know, the client of an agency gets found quicker, but there are things that we can look at that give us a fairly good indication.
Do you think that's fair?
About how hard it's going to be to get where they want to be?
Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Exactly.
Um, and, you know, if there's sites already, great. Then, you know, finding improvements is going to be really difficult. But if there's sites a bit iffy and, you know, hasn't been set up right and, and maybe doesn't have that many pages, then, you know, there's a lot that can be done and you know, that that is definitely going to make a difference.
Well, we've landed some really interesting gigs recently. And you know, one in particular, um, that customer's website is quite strong. They've got quite a lot of content, but it's kind of, you know, it's almost like they've just kind of chucked it up. So they haven't really thought about, they've created content, some of which is quite nice, but they haven't really thought about how they've presented it on their website. So it's almost like in that situation and, and exactly what we're doing for them. We're unpicking it all from a position of relative strength. They haven't come to us saying, we're trying to get we're trying to make a an appearance in this market. We're currently, you know, our website's got three pages and no content. And please help us. They're actually in a situation where they've been going crazy at it, but they've been doing it in a slightly, you know, wonky way.
Yeah.
We're going to fix that.
They're getting found, but not necessarily for exactly the things they want to be found for. So it's, it's more a sort of tweaking and refocusing.
Can I say my joke?
Go on then.
They're playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.
Yeah.
Yes. Finally I got that into a podcast. Alex, any thoughts on this? This what we're talking about just now?
No, I went to sleep.
Um, no.
I knew he was.
Going to say that.
Fair enough.
No, I think that's exactly it, isn't it? It's it's the thing that takes the time for SEO especially is kind of if you have to build content from scratch or you have to kind of help somebody position themselves, you know, and they've got nothing, no kind of pre-existing backlog of content or anything to optimise. I think when you're inheriting, like you say something where somebody's gone at it and put a lot of energy and time and effort into it, it's then relatively easy to kind of tweak and redirect. Um, I think the thing that takes the real time with SEO and the thing that frustrates a lot of small business owners and marketing managers, that kind of thing is when you kind of telling somebody, right, we've got to build you a backlog of, of content.
Catalogs.
To build. And there's no, there's no quick or easy way of doing that, right? It's just you have to churn away at the coal face, if you like, until you've got these kind of two to three hundred articles or whatever.
Yeah.
We had a client who we've been working with for, for quite a few years now, but, um, about nine months in, they emailed us and said, it's not working. We spent a lot of money. It's not working. We want to give it a rest. We're, we're going to leave you. And we managed to persuade them that they were so close. You know, we'd put all this work in just, you know, just give it a little bit longer because, you know, you've put all the, the groundwork in now and you're in a position where you actually will start to see results. And they, they kind of said, okay, you know, they weren't sure they were, they were really weren't convinced that that we were telling the truth or anything. So, but they said they gave us the benefit of the doubt and they said, okay, you know, we'll give you a little bit longer. And, you know, very quickly after that, they got some really, really good leads. They now have a website that brings them in clients from all over the world. Whereas before they they only really had clients in their own country. They now have an international business.
Previously they used to go to trade shows.
They still do. But they say.
That, um, they can get more traffic, more leads from their website than they can from trade shows.
Now they actually said, ooh la la, this is working now.
They did.
Wonder where they could be.
From.
I was just going to say that, you know, it's funny because my actual answer to the question that kind of prefaced, what was the question? How long does it take for your marketing.
To that.
Question? It's always it's always a kind of a week longer than the client wants it to, right? Yes. That's how I honestly feel it is. It's always like just on the cusp of happening when people kind of turn up and say, oh, you know, we've been doing this for six months and we've got nothing. I have a huge amount of sympathy for the fact that it is quite frustrating that it takes that long sometimes, but there is really no way of getting around the fact that it does actually take a long time.
To.
Build a brand.
Yeah. So to that point, what I would advise people do is that they make sure they've got Google Search Console set up because in the Search Console, um, as your site grows, even if you're still not getting clicks from search, the search console will show you which search terms you're appearing for. So if you're trying, let's use our blue widgets again that we haven't used for a few podcasts now. So you're trying to rank for blue widgets and you're, you know, you go into Google and you type in blue widgets and you're not on page one, you're not on page two. And, oh, this isn't working, this isn't working. But if you look in the search console, Google, search is a totally free tool, fantastic tool. And you can see in there, oh, wait a minute, look for blue widgets. We're actually now on page five. We were nowhere before. We're now on page five. And you know, the following week you're on page four. The week after that you're on page three. And then, you know, you can see the charts, the graphs, you can see that you're starting to appear for more and more search terms, albeit you're still not getting the clicks, but you can see it's working. And I think, you know, if you do that, then you can take heart from it. You know, I don't think you should ever be in a situation where nothing's happening until it happens. Nothing's happening until a lead comes in. I mean, I know some people would say, well, you know, it's only important once a lead comes in. I don't want to know. I'm on page three. But well, you kind of do if you were nowhere and.
Now you're.
On page five and now you're on page four, now you're on page three, and then, you know, and then as you see it creep onto page that you know, the top of page two and then onto page one, and then you start seeing an odd click come through the penny drops, and you can see that the work you did resulted in this stuff, which is now. So you get these lead and lag indicators that show you that the work you're doing is making some sense and actually moving things forward, even if you're not getting the leads or making the sales.
It's a nice thing about digital marketing is that you've got a lot of data and you're not guessing.
Yeah, there's a lot of data that some agencies hide behind. Oh, look, you know, we've got this and we got that. We can show this, we can show that. And you know, I would say to all customers like say, well, okay, that's fine. But you know, show me the money. Where, where are the enquiries? Where's the.
Sales?
But you're dead. Right? Um, that you have got a lot, a lot of data. If you, if you work with an agency who show you the right data, the stuff that really matters, or if you just go into the search console yourself because it's not hard to use it, you can see clearly, you know, when things are working and when they're.
Not.
You open it up and the first thing you see is a big graph. So you can roughly see what direction you know, the graphs. If, if they're going up and to the right, then you know, there's, there's something good happening.
I'm not always a huge fan of the tools that Google produces because to me, I mean, they constantly meddle with them. So you get lost.
And the new Google the analytics?
Yeah, they make them ridiculously complicated to use. But I would say where the search console is concerned that that's not the case.
It's really simple.
Yeah, it really is.
Yeah.
But yeah, the new, the new Google Analytics is. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm not sure how that's supposed to be an improvement.
No. Well, I'm sure they could tell you, but possibly not.
I think it's it's just going to pick up on what you were saying there actually because it's really interesting isn't it. I guess in a way maybe I've kind of.
Oh, you.
Were awake were you?
I was this time. Yeah. I kept pinching myself.
Lucky.
The screens kind of fuzzy where we're looking at you, Alex. So we can't actually tell whether your eyes are open or not.
Um, but no, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think ultimately these things, the questions that people ask us quite frequently, you know, how long does it take for my marketing to work? Why isn't my marketing working yet? They're all kind of, um, I guess kind of problems where people have just been kept in the dark too much. They don't realise that all of this stuff is kind of bubbling away under the surface. And that, you know, the eventual enquiry is the tip of the iceberg. But to get to that point, lots and lots and lots of stuff was happening that they could have tuned into had they known how to kind of watch it grow and watch it happen. And maybe people would be a lot less frustrated if, like you say, more people were kind of up front about how to monitor and track these things over time. And it wasn't just a case of, oh, you'll know it's working when you're making lots of money because that's nothing in life is ever really like that.
It's like if you're sitting on a train and the train stops and it stops and it doesn't go and it sits there for ages and you have no idea what's happening, you get quite angry and quite stressed and quite upset. But if they kind of come on and announce, you know, the train has stopped because there is a sheep on the line and we're trying to move the sheep, but all its friends have now come on the line and you know, it's taking a little while then then you kind of go, okay, that's fine, I understand. I can kind of have an idea of what's happening out there. And then they go, right, there's only three sheep left. You know, we'll be we'll be going soon. You know what's happening. It's fine. You appreciate there's a problem. You appreciate that they're trying to sort it and you know where you are. And the stress is less than if you just sat there having no idea why are you laughing at my my example?
We we do love an analogy here. Don't worry.
We do. I thought that was quite a good one. I did used to work for the railways, so I have a. I like a railway analogy and a sheep analogy. I'm from Aberdeen.
So okay, so what I would encourage people to do where digital marketing is concerned is make sure that at the start, before you set off, you figure out either either with the agency you're working with, with your internal team or yourself and Google it, figure it out. But try and understand what a realistic time scale is based on the market that you're trying to get into, how strong the competition is, etc., and put in place some metrics that are going to help you understand whether or not you are making progress. Um, primarily I think the Search console can play a big part in that if it's a paid search campaign. Um, again, even if you're not getting clicks, you can still see if your adverts showing and what keywords are triggering your advert. So even that is useful data, even if again, it's not creating actual sales or enquiries. Yeah.
Because you get a lot of data that way about what people are typing into Google when they're looking for the things you do.
Yeah. That's right. So are we, are we wrapping this up now? I mean, what else do we need to talk about when we, you know, around the subject of how long stuff takes? Alex, you want to say something?
Well, yeah, I was just going to say the other thing I would say is like, try and be realistic about what you've kind of already got in place, right? So I think a lot of marketing, certainly brand building, SEO, that kind of thing requires that you have a lot of content pre-existing. So if you know you're in a situation where you have your about us page and that's it, expect it to take a lot longer than if you're kind of sitting on a blog with two hundred blog posts or something like that.
Yeah, I would agree. Um, so the whole being realistic thing again, with digital marketing, you don't have to guess. You don't have to guess about what everybody else is doing. Tools like SEMrush, SEMrush, SEMrush dot com. You can get a free trial of it. Um, you know, tools like that will show you what your competitors are achieving. You know, how much are they spending on paid search and how much traffic are they getting from organic search. What sort of keywords are they appearing for? Um, and then you can do some very simple queries in Google and see how big their website is, how much content they've got. And, you know, any agency that you choose to work with, and I say any credible in-house marketing team would, would undertake all of that research so that you then paint a very realistic picture of how long it's going to take to start seeing results. And those results might as again, just to reiterate, those results might not be enquiries or sales. Those results might be, you know, yay, we're now in now in the top one hundred for this really competitive search.
Google now in the right direction. Google knows that we do that thing. Yeah. That's right. And it's a start. Um, but yeah, if you know the size of the task, then you, you can kind of see how long it might take to, to get there. But if you're, if you're going blind, then, then you have no idea.
Yeah. And I guess, you know, if you're going in blind to something, if you're, if you're working with a team or an agency who are not talking about the stuff that we've just been speaking about, and they're just straight into maybe straight into tactics and they're just trying stuff, then that's when it gets frustrating. And that's when, um, you know, we've had people coming to us who are already really frustrated. They've just sacked the previous team. Yeah. And nothing happened. And often, you know, we can unpick things and say, well, actually your previous team were doing a good job because look, look what was starting to happen. You know, back to the point you made of the customer, um, who was saying to us, you know, we don't really think this is going to work and we're losing confidence when they were just, you know, just a stone's throw from actually starting to get enquiries. They stuck with it. And goodness me, I mean, their website has generated so much business for them.
It's very strong now. I mean, they're, they're one of the top results in Google for all the things they do now.
Yeah. That's right.
And they were they were nowhere before. Absolutely nowhere.
But that did going back to a point you made earlier, Alex, that was, you know, like, is it three to six months? Is it is it, is it six to nine months? Is it twelve months? Whatever it is? Um, you know, for them it was about nine months.
It was. Yeah, it was thereabouts. It was less than a year, but it was close to a year. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it did take longer, but, you know, it was worth it. Yeah, totally worth it.
Alex, I guess what we're saying in a roundabout way is that there are kind of no precise answers to this question, but that your agency should be kind of happy to work with you to find an answer and explain how they're getting there.
Yeah, but I, I think, okay, there's two things isn't I think there are some fairly accurate answers to these questions, if I can say fairly accurate. No, let's just say it. There are accurate answers to these questions. It's it's I think it's more about whether the agency or the team, you know, if it's an internal team, it's whether or not they try and sugar coat it. So as soon as you try and sugar coat it and say, well, yeah, it's quite a tough market, but you know, we'll do our best. And then you get this kind of situation where people what they hear is, oh, you know, we're going to get results quickly. So you've got to be grown up about it. I mean, if you've totally neglected your online presence, you've never used paid search. You've never you don't rank anywhere in organic search, your website's rubbish, etc. then, you know, just like start now to make that situation go away, start putting one foot in front of another and and get on with it. Because, you know, I've said, I know it's a bit sort of almost supercilious, but I've said it to people before, like you're always six to nine months away from seeing results. You know, if you don't start and do something, you're still nine months away from it. Two months from now as you're prevaricating or procrastinating, whichever it is, you know, and you still haven't started doing anything, well, guess what? You're still nine months away from seeing any results. And and I know how that sounds, but it's just the same for us. I mean, we don't, we don't have a, a secret in with Google because we're in digital marketing. We work bloody hard at getting the rankings that we get. Yeah. And we've seen some really good rankings that we've had, you know, evaporate over the years despite our best efforts to keep them because the market was so competitive. We just didn't have the resources and the time to keep maintaining that position in the rankings because it was being attacked by so many other people, you know.
And partly that, you know, some results are just vanity anyway. Yeah. It's like, oh, we show up for this. It doesn't bring any any business in, but we just like showing up for that. So part of it is being really clear about what you want to achieve, what your strategy is, what your objectives are, and going for the things that are most important rather than go for the things that are easy.
Alex.
Yeah, no, I was just gonna say it's a really interesting point and it kind of links back to something you were saying earlier, the risk of prolonging this podcast, which is just the, the, the length of time it takes for your campaign to work, will also depend very much on how you are measuring it. And it is very important to make sure you're measuring the right thing, right? Because I think a lot of people go into these things being like, when am I when am I going to be in the number one spot for, I don't know, blue widgets?
You get these emails guaranteed number one in Google in two weeks. Well, yeah, you can be number one in Google in two weeks for something that nobody else has ever tried ranking for ever. That's that's easy. It's getting to number one in Google for something that everyone else is trying to rank for. And yeah, it's been really clear about what, what's important and what matters.
Well, yeah, I mean, let's be right about this. It's about getting to the number one spot in Google for a keyword that's actually going to grow your business, isn't it? And it's about doing that hard work to a uncover that keyword B, start ranking for it. And not to get kind of sidetracked with vanity metrics and trying to rank for things that you feel your business should rank for.
Well, at the danger of sounding like the Google search console's biggest fanboy. Um.
You are.
Yeah, we already know he's got a t shirt and everything.
Yeah, I know, I've got some Google cushions downstairs.
Yeah.
Very nice. Yeah. Lovely. Yeah. Um, again, the Search Console gives you, well, four key pieces of information. It shows you how many clicks you got for a specific search term. It shows you the click through rate. That means, you know the number of times you appeared for a search result and the number of clicks you got. So it's simple enough to understand that it tells you your average position over a set period of time, and you can set like three months, six months, two days if you want or something like that anyway. And it also shows you how many times you appeared. So it will say for this search term, you've had no clicks, but you appeared five thousand times. It just happened that you appeared at position twenty five, five thousand times. So you never got any clicks because nobody ever saw you. But that is proof that the keyword you're chasing is being used by people. And the flip side of that is exactly what Julie said, that, you know, some unscrupulous agencies might say, well, look, we got you to be number one for hairdressers in Khelat, you know. Well, that's fine, but absolutely nobody searches for hairdressers in a place in north east Scotland.
And. And you're not hairdresser anyway. Yeah.
And then. And you're not hairdresser.
You just happen to write a blog post about how your business helps hairdressers in class. And suddenly you're ranking for hairdressers in Clat. But that wasn't the point.
Well, the interesting thing there is, is like you often hear people say, you know, we want to be number one in Google, which is it's kind of nonsensical, isn't it?
You can, you can, of course, you can be number one in Google for something.
But it needs to be qualified with for what?
Yeah. For something that is actually commercially important to you. That's the question.
Yeah. That's right. Did you want to say something, Alex?
Uh, no, I don't think I did.
You don't want to say something? Well, okay.
Is that unusual?
Yeah. Okay. Well, if we're going to have a series of embarrassed silences, then maybe we've kind of done this. And I know Julie wants to take Oscar for a walk.
My dog is desperately waiting to go out for a walk. So if we could tie this up now, he would be really, really grateful.
It's a bit rude to the people who are still listening to us. I mean, you know, if they've stuck it out this long, it's like, what? Forty two minutes plus and they've stuck it out till now and we're basically saying, look, we're bored now. We're going.
I think they're probably bored now as well. So I think we're doing them a favor.
I do also think we did manage to answer the question.
I think we did. Yeah. And I think it's more or less how long's a piece of string.
Yeah it depends. How long does it take to rank in Google. It depends.
Yeah, I think so. Um, just before we finish this, uh, podcast, if you do listen to these podcasts, then thanks very much. If there's any questions that you'd like us to discuss, if there's stuff about digital marketing that you're unsure about and you, you know, maybe you feel embarrassed asking because some people, I mean, to us, there's never a daft question, but.
We ask them all the time.
We do, we do internally. We do. Um, so if there's anything you want to do, then, you know, just get in touch with red evolution and we'll, um, red evolution dot com we'll answer, uh, you know, if we can turn it into a full podcast, we'll turn it into.
We'd love.
Podcast. Or if you've just got any questions, I mean, the whole purpose of this podcast is to help people. And, um, because ultimately I think that helps us as well. You know, it's, it's not a pitch, it's a genuine offer to help people. Yeah.
And like, and subscribe, please.
Oh, we've never said.
Like and subscribe. I've always wanted to say it like and subscribe.
Yeah. I, um, we're not, I guess I guess it makes sense. I mean, just to say stuff like that, but yeah, I mean, I always think it sounds really needy. I mean, you know, like.
You know, we could be needy once and again, once, once, once in a while.
I suppose. Okay.
All right. Well that's great. Um, we will be back soon with another fantastic podcast. In fact, the one after this might be another guest podcast. I'm not sure. It depends what order we put them out in, but, uh, do send your questions in. Thanks for listening and Tara.