How long does it take content marketing to work? Here’s your answer!
One of the most often asked questions is “How long does it take content marketing to work?” The simple answer is that it takes a while, but I want to break this down into two major categories of content marketing so you can appreciate how content marketing works. Here’s how I’m going to divvy this up: Immediate content marketing, and Persistent content marketing. What I’m calling “immediate content marketing” is when you use your social media channels to share content you have created or you send out a newsletter that features your content. It puts your content in front of eyeballs immediately. Immediate content marketing produces measurable results over the course of a day or two. You can measure clicks, website visits, views, sales, or some other simple metric. If you have a large mailing list or generate a lot of website visits, you can monetize immediate content marketing. The content marketing problem However, many small business websites don’t have the daily traffic numbers or the huge mailing list that can create a significant cash flow via this kind of immediate content marketing. What these small business owners want is to start seeing results from their persistent content marketing. This is why many get discouraged when they start pondering the question of how long does it take content marketing work. By persistent content marketing, I’m talking about the marketing power that is created through the marriage of your content creation and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. This is when people start coming to your site through organic searches. Here’s the way this often looks to the owner of a small business website: Content is created and posted on website. This content is featured in social media and/or newsletter. This content generates small but measurable results. This content remains on website, but people generally stop finding it. Crickets. As the sound of the crickets takes over, the small business owner loses confidence in the value of content marketing. That’s understandable but very wrong. Let me put this simply: It takes several months for a piece of content on your website to become popular and payoff with organic traffic. Traffic growth over time Below are two graphs from pieces of content on my website. Note that when they are first posted, they generate a respectable number of views for a few days. Then they slack off. Eventually, they start to generate more and more views. Let me add one important caveat to this: Not every piece of the content you create will be a winner. Some of the pieces you post, will never get to the place where they create any significant traffic to your website. Knowing this and understanding how long it takes content to start producing steady organic traffic, I have two critical pieces of advice: Regularly create, post, and feature content on a long list of relevant keywords. Be patient. Do not expect an immediate steady increase in organic traffic. Do those two things and one day (fairly soon) you’ll stop beating your head against the wall as you ask yourself, “How long does it take content marketing to work?” You’ll have the answer! How to get started To find those keywords and blog topics, check out these articles. They look at the job from...
read moreHow to make benign neglect work for you!
The other day one of the morning shows did a segment on men’s socks, an area of commerce which has seen little change over the years. Until recently, men’s socks came in three styles: boring, dull, and bland. The last major innovation to push the “sock envelope” was the Argile sock, and the invention of that pattern and its application to socks dates back to the 1600s. So, it’s been a while. One of the new companies setting the men’s sock world on end is Stance and the company’s co-founder and CEO Jeff Kearl. It was by studying a wide variety of products on sale at Target, that Kearl got the inspiration to start Stance, which offers colorful, designer, and performance socks. When his attention focused on the men’s socks at Target, Kearl found an important consumer item that had been suffering under benign neglect for, well, centuries. I need to note that Stance isn’t alone in its effort to pump new life into men’s socks. Search for men’s socks on Amazon and you’ll be treated to a rainbow of attractive footwear. I tell you this story because there are probably thousands of important consumer items that are suffering under the same benign neglect. And, when someone comes along and finds a way to stir the pot, that person can end up creating a new category. Here’s a question: How many of us have walked by the men’s sock collection at Target and NOT seen it as an opportunity for innovation? I suggest that virtually all of us would be guilty for not seeing the possibilities, or recognizing the fact that little had changed in men’s socks for years and years. I often tell the story of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and the basic idea there is the same. They created a new category – “designer” ice cream, if you like – when they broke away from the standard chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. And in many ways, Apple did the same thing with the original iMac. If you remember, instead of a boring beige box, the first generation of iMacs came in “flavors” like blueberry and strawberry. The good thing about creating a new category, is you don’t have to invent an item from scratch. You just need to find a way to put a new spin on an old product. Discover a way to make it appeal to a young, lucrative market. Here’s one idea: Look for products that are used by both men and women. Determine which is “ahead” in terms of innovation or aesthetics, then take the one that’s lagging and bring it up to speed. And if you can’t think of anything right off the bat, why not do what Kearl did and head over to your nearest Target? Find some items that have fallen by the wayside in terms of modernization. List them all and then start doing some market research to judge the potential size of a category, were you to decide to go for...
read moreWhen good intentions go bad: The impacts of minimum wage hikes
There’s something business owners, consumers, and politicians need to understand: Basic laws of economics and human nature cannot be ignored or legislated out of existence. An example of this is playing out in front of us right now. For several years, activists have been clamoring for a higher minimum wage. The push is to make the minimum wage a “living wage.” Several localities have adopted higher minimum wage rates in recent years. It’s important to know that there are often three levels of government that set minimum wage rates: The federal government, state governments, and city or county governments. The more local governments cannot set a minimum wage lower than the federal rate, but they can set it higher. As the minimum wage battle has been brewing, opponents have warned that no matter how noble the cause may be, the final impact will be lost jobs for workers entering the job market with few, if any, skills. This is simply due to the unbreakable law of supply and demand, which says that people will buy less of something when the price goes up. Therefore, when the price of unskilled labor goes up, business owners will “buy” less of it. We’re seeing this happen in the food industry with the introduction of kiosks that replace order takers. I’ve watched Panera install self-order kiosks in many locations over the last year and now Wendy’s has announced that it plans to try kiosks in 1,000 of its restaurants. Further, CaliBurger, a Southern California hamburger chain, is installing burger flipping robots in its restaurants. To be fair, the handwriting has always been on the wall for repetitive jobs that are typically filled by unskilled labor. They are prime candidates for automation and it doesn’t help that good employees are, in general, hard to find today. That has been small business owners’ biggest complaint in recent years. Acquiring job skills There’s another dimension to this situation that is seldom discussed. Let me give you a little background so you understand this view. I remember when jobs in fast food restaurants were held exclusively by teenagers so they could get their own spending money. It went without saying that these jobs were no more than a very small stepping stone along a career path leading to a job that would support a family. I remember some great television commercials for McDonald’s that featured doctors and other highly skilled professionals who got their first jobs at one of the chain’s restaurants. Minimum-wage jobs have taught millions of new workers what is required to be a good employee. I might even say that the lessons they teach are, in the long run, as valuable or more valuable than what is often taught in the classroom, because they are the life skills required for success in any job. By insisting that the minimum wage be a “living wage” we are telling unskilled workers that all they should have to do to get by in life is land a minimum wage job. It’s a demotivating message. Put yourself in the place of a student who isn’t thrilled with school. Right now, our society is sending this person two conflicting messages: You need to get a college education, probably in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subject. We’re passing laws...
read moreThis week in small business: Secret weapons, 20 questions, and talking to Alexa…
This week we have a secret weapon for business success, how to tell the real digital marketing pros, tax tips for the gig economy worker, and much more to enhance your competitive edge. Leadership, management, and productivity Matt Hunckler makes a strong case that emotional intelligence could be the “secret weapon” for your success in business. (I guess it’s not a secret any more…) First “smart homes,” now “smart businesses.” In this PC Magazine article, Rob Marvin goes over 23 must-have Alexa skills for your small business. Running a tech startup? Megan Totka says you should invest in women. We agree. Marketing and sales This article was overdue: How to spot real experts in the online marketing industry. Along those same lines, Eric Samson relays five tips for finding the best digital marketing agency for your business. Creating lifelong customers should always be the goal. Kerry Anderson gives us an example from her life that offers insights. Anna Fitzgerald goes over five basic ways to market your small business in this article. Convincing a roomful of men that there’s money to be made in women’s hygiene products is a tough row to hoe. Ellen Huet tells the tale. Forget flying by the seat of your pants. Becca Wilson insists that measurable results are a must for advertising and marketing spends. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Dan Bova gives us the story of entrepreneur Jon Snyder who run Contenders, the official licensees of MGM for the Rocky and Creed films, and for the WWE. In this edition of Entrepreneur’s “20 Questions” series, Nina Zipkin puts Harper Reed in the hot seat. Reed was in charge of technology for Barack Obama’s second presidential campaign and the creator of what is now PayPal Commerce. Sally McGraw does a good job making the case that you should pay yourself a salary as an entrepreneur. No argument here. Politics, government, and the economy Tom Taulli, founder of Pathway Tax, offer three tax tips for those working in the sharing economy. Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching? – Bruce Van...
read moreCreate a Competitive Edge With the Right People
Right now, no matter the type of business you’re in, or the size of your organization, your company is at risk of becoming irrelevant. Why? Business owners and leaders get stuck in their current business models and fail to keep pace with changing markets. How do you avoid this pitfall to protect your business and maintain a competitive edge? You need to build innovation into your company’s DNA. Your business should be agile and flexible with an ability to adjust in real time. Tapping into the creativity of your company’s team is one way to help you identify new opportunities and initiatives. However, if your staff members all look the same and think the same way it’s difficult to unleash real creativity. Diversity is critical to an organization’s ability to innovate. A Harvard Business Review article notes a body of recent research that says non-homogenous teams are smarter. When you work with people who are different from you, you’re challenged to think in different ways. You shed your stale ways of thinking and are pushed out of the autopilot habits that have limited performance. We’re always talking about thinking “out of the box”; it’s impossible to do if everyone at the table thinks alike. Additionally consider this, a 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15 percent more likely to have returns above the industry mean. There is one more important element to consider in today’s changing workforce — generational diversity. Millennials (born between 1982 and 2000), now out-number Baby Boomers according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This change in demographics is having an interesting impact on the workplace. Millennials and Baby Bomers often clash when working together. Baby Boomers view Millennials as unmotivated slackers, while Millennials see Baby Boomers as rigid and out-dated. But each group can bring much to the table, learn from each other, and help your organization become more innovative and creative. The bottom line is, Millennials are the future of business. As a business leader here are some keys and benefits to building diverse,innovative organizations. Hire for life. You can’t build a great, highly performing business if you don’t make the right hiring choices from the beginning. Having the wrong people on your team comes with a significant profitability cost. Hiring team members has an associated cost known as LAC – labor acquisition cost. Your LAC can range from hundreds to thousands. A high turnover in personnel can result in significant costs and can can cripple your business – not to mention other costs such as lost opportunities, productivity, and morale.Solution? Make the right hires, and give them a reason to stay. Provide incentives for them to work hard and contribute to the company’s vision. Make employee satisfaction one of the key factors you measure in your business. Companies with a competitive edge hire for the long-term not just for an open position. They want someone who will perform well over time. Shared Values. Technical skills can be overrated. Prisons are full of criminals who are proficient technically. You can teach skills. By the time men and women...
read moreDon’t pay the psychological price of being the ‘low-price leader’
I’ve stressed the importance of finding and exploiting niche markets many times in this space. One of the biggest reasons operating in a niche market is preferred is because you can enjoy higher prices and the higher margins that accompany these higher prices. Usually, when we discuss niche marketing and pricing pressures, we think about products. When market conditions for your product force you into being the “low-price leader,” you find yourself in a difficult position to manage over the long term. Pricing for services Today I want to consider pricing pressure on small business service providers. I’m going to relate a story that an acquaintance shared with me the other day that I believe many small business owners will be able to relate to in varying degrees. This family needed some cement work done in their yard so they went to Craig’s List and started searching for contractors or handymen who would be right for the job. They found a guy who had a great price, got an estimate, and scheduled the work. He wanted a significant up-front payment and the homeowner was hesitant. Instead, they agreed that the homeowner would pay in advance for materials. Before the cement contractor was scheduled to do the work, the homeowner got an early morning call from him. The contractor cussed him out for not wanting to meet his request for an up-front payment and then bitterly lit into the customer for wanting to get the work done for “half” of what others would charge. My friend told me how upset he was after the call. He figured he would have to find someone else to do the work. Later that day, however, the contractor’s wife called, said her husband wasn’t feeling well and apologized. The work got done and the results are certainly acceptable. Two costs of being inexpensive This incident highlights some dangers for service providers when they recklessly compete on cost. This “professional” marketed his services as the least expensive in the area. None of his clients can be blamed for how he bids projects or prices his services. However, the situation – including expectations on both sides – sets the table for trouble in the business relationship. First, if you’re perceived as the “cheapest” service provider, you’ll attract clients whose primary concern is cost. You need to expect them to be tight with their money. In my example, we see this with when the family resisted an up-front payment. It will also lead to problems if unforeseen circumstances cause increased costs for the service provider. Second – and this is the point I really want you to grasp – if the main way you sell your service is by undercutting all your competitors, you pay a big psychological price. Mentally, you are undervaluing yourself and this will eventually embitter you. You’ll start to see your clients as a bunch of cheapskates who are only doing business with you because they think they are getting a steal. I believe this is what was happening with the concrete contractor. His clients are loyal only as long as he keeps working for pennies and he knows it. If he were to raise his prices, his clients would look elsewhere. He has painted, or cemented, himself into a corner. He’s in...
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