Content is vital if you want your business to survive online. Without content, you may not have the best ranking on search engines, and it could be difficult for your customers to find you.
Getting the right content and marketing it to the correct audience is absolutely necessary for your company’s growth.
You could run into trouble, though. You may spend down your budget on marketing that doesn’t really bring you new clients, or you could end up growing your business rapidly and be unprepared for shifts in the market as they occur.
Marketing challenges are a part of the business, but how can you overcome them? We’ve put together a list of the top 12 marketing challenges and the simple solutions that can eliminate them.
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What are the challenges of modern marketing?
Modern marketing is a challenge in and of itself. Marketers now have to understand a target audience that might include people from all over the world.
They have to think locally, but they may also need to understand how to grow the business to an international presence.
Getting the best return on investment (ROI) for your marketing activities requires you to think about some of the marketing challenges that businesses are dealing with and make a plan for overcoming them. If you cannot, then your business may not be able to flourish.
How do these challenges impact your businesses?
If you run into a marketing challenge and cannot address it, you could see yourself wasting money or losing customers or leads.
To help your business be more successful, you have to figure out how to target the right audiences, reach them with the right content, and convert them to people who support your brand.
Top 12 marketing challenges
We’ve put together a list of the top 12 marketing challenges you’re likely to run into and the solutions that can help.
1. Getting new customers for your business
Getting new customers is the entire purpose of your marketing campaign; you want people to find you, and you want them to buy your products or use your services.
If you’re not getting new customers with your current campaign, it could be time for an overhaul. Take a look at your campaign and think about how you’re targeting your audience. Are you trying to target an audience that is just too large?
Dial it back and target your local audience. Is the campaign’s imagery not lining up with the demographic? Try a new design to see if it gets a better response.
2. Training your marketing team to get the best ROI
Training your marketing team is an ongoing effort. What worked in the marketing world a decade ago may not be what works for you today, for example, so you do need to focus on researching current markets and the tactics that work to reach your audiences.
Understand the skills each of your employees has and then decide if you need to outsource any of your marketing work. You may be surprised at where there are skill gaps that still need to be filled.
3. Keeping up with the last global changes
Keeping up with global changes is another marketing challenge that many businesses run into. As the globe becomes ever more connected, people are getting influenced by content from all over the planet.
Keeping up with those influences isn’t simple. If engagement differs across markets, then you need to think about why some countries are recognizing your brand more easily than others.
The solution for this issue is to focus on getting to know your audiences, targeting the right audiences, and making sure you have content that follows, at least in some ways, current trends.
4. Expanding your brand into other countries
Expanding your brand in another country isn’t just about offering it there. You also need to think about how to promote it, get to know your local audiences, and be sure you’re keeping up with the competition.
To help yourself, define your target audience. Then, consider taking action to resolve language barriers. Using content creators to help with promotion could be supportive of your efforts, too, since they know the local lingo.
5. Budgeting for your marketing campaigns
It can be expensive to market to more than just your local community. It also gets expensive when you start expanding into different marketing modalities, such as going to live ads or marketing across multiple social media channels.
Budgeting issues can be resolved by staying focused on your campaign. Start small and go slow to see which campaigns get the most interaction.
Then, double down on those options. You should see a better return on investment by doing this, which can help you reduce budget issues caused by trying to reach too many people too quickly.
You can also use Google Analytics or other analytic software to figure out which campaigns are pulling the most weight for your business.
6. Struggling with a lack of resources
Not every business is going to start with the same resources to cover all the markets you want to reach. Even if you have enough budget, you may not have the staff needed to carry out your campaign to its fullest potential.
The solution? Expand slowly, and outsource anything you can’t do in-house. That might mean outsourcing your content, for example, so you can focus on other aspects of your business.
7. Database management: Keeping your data accessible
Your database is going to grow larger over time as you gather more information. You need to keep it organized, so you can access the information you need when you need it and see if you are getting a good return on your investments (ROI).
Using a unified marketing and analytics platform will keep you organized. If you take this database on the cloud, you’ll be able to access it from anywhere where you have internet access, making it easier to do your job in or outside the office.
You may also want to look for automation software and artificial intelligence that can automatically sort data and send you reports.
8. Handling market changes as they arise
The market is constantly changing. A competitor could go out of business, or the wants and needs of your customers may shift.
Studying market trends can help you stay apprised of changes and help you adapt quickly as they occur.
9. Standing out from the crowd
Another serious marketing challenge that people run into today is the problem of too much choice. Customers can become overwhelmed when there are too many choices out there, and having so many options on the market can cause disruptions in sales and services rendered.
The same is true of marketing strategies. You have many options to reach customers, but it can get overwhelming to try to reach everyone through every marketing technique.
Stick with just two or three marketing tools to start with, because sometimes you can do more with less.
10. Increased competition
Of course, the fact that markets are now global means that you have increased competition in your niche no matter what it is. There are not only the old markets you used to use but also new markets that are starting to develop.
As you build your marketing campaign, think carefully about where you want to be seen. Starting locally may help you get a stronger foundation for your company, and then you can expand out as you become profitable and well-known enough to compete with competitors.
11. Diluting your message
A big problem you could run into is diluting your message too much. The last thing you want to do is segment your campaign in a way that reaches a lot of people but doesn’t lead to conversions.
Your solution to this issue? Be as specific as you can be when you create a campaign.
12. Generating the right leads and better traffic to your website
Finally, there is the challenge of getting people to your website. Generating leads from those who visit your site is necessary if you want to convert people to buyers of your services or products.
It’s a challenge to generate leads and traffic because Google and other search engines are always changing how they approach searches.
Focusing on strong search engine optimization and solid content can help you get your business ranked higher in search results.
If you can’t keep up with the demand for more content, consider hiring content professionals to handle the workload and help you stay fresh on people’s minds when they’re ready to buy.
Wrap Up
Marketing is an ever-evolving industry, and it’s normal for business owners to run into some trouble when they first begin looking into marketing their businesses.
Though you may run into some challenges as you work on your marketing campaign, we know that you can overcome marketing challenges with the right information and support.
Do you want to learn more about content marketing? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing to learn more.