Staying on top of a competitive marketing landscape is a challenge every business faces. A lot is vying for audience’s attention, and with this much distraction, they can only focus on one brand for a limited time. The digital space is overflowing with content, making getting your content seen or heard above the noise nearly impossible.
If you’re a marketer, professional or rookie, it may feel overwhelming. Take heart in knowing that you’re not alone. There are plenty of pains faced by marketers today. Here are the top six challenges they face in today’s market.
Managing the website
Audiences are picky. If they log onto your website and it’s not visually appealing or user-friendly, they are likely to go off searching for another site. For a lot of marketers, the website is a significant priority. Ideally, all content generated by the organization should lead back to the website. It is so that audiences can purchase a good or service from you using the ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Get a quote’ icons on your site. Those who make contact are what we call leads. From there one can get a sales conversion.
Investing in this asset pays off, yet it is often one of the most overlooked tools of the trade by companies. Some of the issues in web management are the user interface, the writing, optimizing the content, or whether it’s informative. The three main areas to look at are SEO, average load time, mobile phone compatibility and website security.
Solution
While managing a website take a lot, this is one area no company, including small businesses, should neglect. Managers ought to do what they can to secure a budget to hire a professional to do work on the design, content, optimization and manage the back-end of the site. Thankfully, there are cheaper ways to create your website, but if you have no experience, consider working with a professional who can train you.
There are two ways to go about this; get a freelancer or agency partner. Tap into your networks to get recommendations. Additionally, you can post an ad on your platforms highlighting your specifications.
Generating traffic and leads to website and social sites
As mentioned before, getting your company’s content is quite the task. Companies are continually coming up with smarter ways to engage their audience. That is mainly the case because nowadays people have endless platforms to choose from. For the market, finding the right one or even how to promote it can be hard.
Solution
Some marketers are great at content creation but often wonder why their efforts don’t pay off. Two questions any professional should ask themselves are if they are producing what the audience wants and if it’s high quality. Understanding your audience is vital to creating the right content. Do they want more text or videos? The material, though free, should be worth paying.
Once you have the right content, find the proper channels to promote it. The critical part is not to assume what increased traffic and leads before will keep working. Trying a mix and see what works.
The “dreaded” ROI
You may have great ideas, but are they bringing a Return on Investment? For someone who’s not familiar with marketing, it’s tough to convince them you need to spend money and time to get profits. After establishing what your audience likes and how to promote the content, the hard part is proving that they work and therefore require the resources to go through with them.
Solution
The ROI goes hand in hand with getting a budget increase. If you have no ROI, you won’t get a budget. What makes it more complicated is that tracking it is not always easy. Having a comprehensive report requires working with the sales team to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing activities. That requires coordinating efforts between both departments. An example of a tool you can use is HubSpot to create a service-level agreement to close the gap between the two.
Using the right technology
No same technology works for every business. If you work for an educational institution promoting, for example, a tutor for physics, the platform you use will be different from a teen’s retail store. Find out what your peers use to get the best fit for your business is not always the best approach.
Solution
Find what marketing technologies every company should use and pick a few to concentrate on. Having an analytical tool allows you to fetch data that lets you know what’s working and what isn’t. Most of all get a marketing automation tool that brings everything together. It offers what feels like endless marketing options including aligning sales and marketing, managing email campaigns, online forms, analytics, monitoring audience activities to your website and personalizing website content only to mention a few.
Audience targeting
Whether you’re a local or an international company, assuming your audience persona is the same could be detrimental to your marketing efforts. Given that one side doesn’t fit all in marketing consider creating, tailoring and targeting content to specific areas.
Solution
If the company chooses to expand internationally, optimizing the website for suit each country and the marketing content can be quite challenging. Many marketing tools provide you with the option of choosing a geo-location to push your content. The quickest way to do so is hiring a third-party agency especially if you don’t have the capacity in-house. The other option is getting a guide with some helpful pointers on global marketing.
As you move forward, you’ll learn that not each area or country requires the same marketing intensity. Select the top three markets with the highest growth potential and prioritize them. Exploring local trends makes you relevant, an aspect many multinationals have come to master.
It is however not as easy as it sounds. It requires factoring in each visitor from all the countries when creating a marketing strategy. Regional tailoring comes about after you have the bigger picture. From there, you have to consider the culture, time zone, seasonal preferences, and monetary differences among other aspects. When working with localization providers, you’ll have to provide them with the necessary tools and permission for optimal customization. That way, the content they produce is adaptable within a specific context.
Securing a budget increase
If you’re working for a small organization, a marketing budget is often viewed as a ‘by the way.’ The difficulty of securing a budget is, however, a global problem, but it need not be permanent.
Solution
The best approach is to justify your marketing ask with your ROI. Every business will happily spend more money on means that generate more revenue.
Take away
An effective marketing strategy is essential in aligning your activities and efforts. Be confident in your methods- the CEO needs to know they are indeed making the right move in increasing your budget. Also, don’t let a slow start discourage you, instead, double your efforts.
