Happy Valentine’s Day! Though we’ve all had dreams of love at first site, many of us learned the hard way that love takes time to blossom and develop. As the song goes, “You can’t hurry love.” The same can be said for digital marketing. Though we have become accustomed to the idea that technology allows us to communicate and accomplish tasks at top speed, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that make some digital marketing campaigns quite lengthy. To clear up the confusion, we have created a Valentine’s gift for you: a working timeline for digital marketing projects, from their conception to completion.

A Digital Marketing Timeline

• Facebook Ads:

  If you’re looking for a quick boost in fan counts or site traffic, Facebook Ads are your best bet. Not only are the results from campaigns speedy, ads can be written and created in under an hour.

• Social Decks:

  The creation of weekly social decks has become standard at TTG. This process entails gathering sources for each client’s various social platforms and writing related posts for each platform based on the agreed upon posting frequency. Depending on the number of platforms and posting frequency, it takes between 30 minutes and an hour and a half to put together a social deck for 1 week.

• Blogs:

  Content creation is an essential part of SEO, but it takes time! About an hour to an hour and half is spent on each blog, between brainstorming topics, writing the blog, optimizing it with specified key phrases and posting it.

• Social Images:

  Though not as quick as simple Facebook ads, social images such as profile or cover photos are also fairly fast. Including headline writing time, the purchasing of any necessary stock photos, creating additional imagery, and putting it all together takes anywhere from an hour to three hours.

• Eblasts:

  There are four major tasks that go into the creation of custom eblasts: writing, design, coding, and testing. Altogether, the process can take anywhere from four to eight hours, depending on the complexity of the blast. Templated blasts are much quicker, as we must only account for writing and testing time, a total of approximately an hour and a half.

• Social Strategies:

  We create in-depth strategy documents that examine a client’s current social efforts, gives a breakdown of their audiences, explores posting themes, details proven best practices and more. Due to the amount of research involved in creating these strategies, they are time consuming. Depending on the number of platforms requested and who will be implementing (TTG or the client) the plan, they can take anywhere from 5 to 10 hours.

• Infographics:

  We all love infographics because they convey facts in a fun manner that makes them quick to process. However, that speed doesn’t apply to their creation. Complex infographics can take upwards of eight hours to create, as they involve researching statistics, developing a concept, writing copy, and designing the final product.

• Websites:

  The time it takes to launch a new website or website redesign varies greatly. While sites with few pages using client tailored templates may be finished in a month or two, intricate custom websites can take over a year to complete, due to rounds of design revisions, copy edits, complex coding, and more.

Additional Considerations

Though we have outlined the amount of time that each task generally takes our team to accomplish, please note that this does not reflect the time work spends waiting in the pipeline. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we are not always able to immediately begin projects, due to prior commitments. Nor does this account for the time spent waiting for client approval between stages, which can greatly delay projects.

If you go into a relationship expecting a wedding within a week, you’re setting yourself up for heartbreak. Similarly, if you have unrealistic expectations about the time it take to complete digital marketing projects, you’re bound to be disappointed. We’re here to play cupid and prevent that distress! Wondering how long your next project will take? Reach out to us for a consultation and realistic time quote!