In episode #517, Eric and Neil explain why you should be patient and play the long game. Tune in to hear what's changed in content marketing over the years, how long you can expect to wait to see results, and how many followers you need before things start really snowballing. Time-Stamped Show Notes: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Why You Should Play the Long Game [00:35] When Eric and Neil first started, you could get results within six months. [00:52] Now there are many potential marketing channels, so it takes different techniques and more time. [01:15] Now, it takes a year to a year and a half. [01:20] In the US, during 2017, Facebook had more advertisers than inventory. [01:37] The question is: when is it going to be too expensive to do paid advertising? [01:48] Go for the organic route, do it for two or three years: you will succeed. [02:13] The Panchenko marketing agency started small, but now is publicly traded and does $200,000,000 in business, [02:54] Americans tend to move onto the next thing over and over, while business people in Japan stick with on business for years. [03:15] Neil has been doing content marketing for sixteen years. [03:45] Neil started with blogging, but it has become so much more. Always play the long game. [04:04] Now, Eric and Neil get to call the shots about what they choose to invest. [04:30] Eric’s cousin works at a B2B marketing agency and gets most of his customers from old content he created. [05:00] This doesn’t mean new stuff isn’t working, it just means it will work in the future. [06:23] Eric has a great metric for content marketing. The URR (Unsolicited Response Rate) is important to gauge how well your content is working. [07:16] Once you get to 10,000 or so followers, it will continue to snowball from there. [07:31] That’s it for today! [07:32] Go to singlegrain.com/giveaway for a special giveaway. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu