Marketing Challenges in 2020: Their Causes and Solutions
Despite the immensely hard work of marketers, there is always something to work on, be it a lead generation, technology optimization, or team management. There is always room for improvement to have a stronger strategy and better efficiency. While some will say that new and evolving technology is making it easier for global marketing to achieve greater results, recent statistics have proven the opposite. The leading marketing challenges throughout the last few years are almost the same. While it is a positive sign that there are no atypical barriers for the marketers, it is also a fact that they have been held back by the same factors for quite a long period of time. Let’s dig into some of the most common issues marketers face today, giving it a proper explanation and, of course, a durable solution.
Traffic & Lead Generation It has always been difficult to get enough traffic and quality leads for the business. It was the main challenge in 2018 and did not leave the position in 2019 with more than 30% of marketers reporting it as their top issue. 2020 is likely to be the same, with companies defining lead generation as their priority in terms of marketing goals. As marketers struggle to produce demand for what they offer, the competition becomes bigger with time as more and more brands are entering the market with more products to compete with. Besides, the number of available ways of promotion, take, for example, constantly evolving social media
platforms, can be overwhelming. Someone focuses on one of them only, while others try to cover all, shooting for the stars. The solution here is creating relevant and worthy content, the one that clients actually need and would gladly pay for. The most popular tactic, nowadays, is generating exclusive content. However, it will only work if this is what your customers are looking for. According to recent research, more than 55% of people want video content, while only 15% of them want more articles and blog posts. Once you get to know what type of information suits your target audience, the whole focus will shift to presenting it in a way that encourages people to notice it.
ROI Measurement Another significant challenge is understanding how successful the marketing campaign is and measuring returns on it. Knowing whether a particular article, an advertisement or the whole marketing strategy are effective or still need some improvement is important to achieve the highest potential. On the other hand, good results mean a good budget. The solution here is establishing clear communication when it comes to sales and activities in marketing. Using the right software along with a CRM will help you tie together the company’s efforts in terms of marketing and sales. This is a great opportunity to measure how effective are the conducted activities and see the exact number of generated leads.
Budget Determination The goal of any marketer is a successful marketing campaign. The base of any winning campaign is a secured budget. But in order to get the budget, the company needs to showcase that the idea is revenue-generating and worth the money spent on it. The challenge proves the effectiveness of the previous solution: measuring ROI. Those companies that can review their results and come up with good numbers in terms of returns have more chances to get enough finances for further activities. Effective marketing strategies can produce good results, give confidence, and provide the team with higher budgets.
Website Management The challenge here is in providing customers with a relevant and up-to-date site with good navigation and overall performance. According to statistics, more than 60% of businesses are planning to upgrade their website in 2020. In fact, a company’s website is an asset that works to attract new people, convert them from potential to loyal customers, and help to hit the desired goals. Hence, the aim is to provide consumers with a good web page with relevant content, timely design, and convenient navigation.
Before making an upgrade, it is essential to conduct a good analysis of the website performance, considering everything from page load time, site security to mobile-friendliness, and SEO. Once you know which areas are doing great and which of them are still lacking some perks, it will be easier to set an optimization plan and make sure everything is covered.
International Targeting Many companies nowadays extend their services and start operating internationally. Despite the transportation challenges, there is quite a lot to consider. First of all, companies need a separate strategy, the one that targets an international customer. It means a completely different buyer persona, purchase behavior, and general preferences. At the very beginning, it might be quite a big challenge to organize a website for other countries and set the correct exchange rates. Global marketing can be tough, but, if treated right, yielding. Start with investigating. Explore the local trends in the countries you plan to target, identify the most suitable localization providers, and start with the website optimization. Apart from the ability to speak multiple languages, the website should function according to certain time zones as well. Moreover, the content for foreigners should correspond to seasonal preferences, have relevant measures, and simply be internationally relevant.
Team Training With constantly evolving technologies, the companies now need to pay more attention to their team members and make sure that they are keeping up with the pace and have all the tools, know the concepts, and understand the trends. In order for each employee to reach their greatest potential, they require constant motivation, regular training, and around the clock support. Believe it or not, some will consider it a challenge as not every company pays enough attention to coaching, while others simply do not know where to start. Your first steps should include evaluating every team member, defining their strong sides and weaknesses, asking what they are passionate about and what they lack. Once you have a full picture of your employees’ expertise levels, rate the importance of their contribution to the company's main objectives. This is a great way of identifying who needs more training or, on another note, a push to take new heights. Making sure that each person gets all the required tools and resources for productive work will eliminate many potential issues along the way.
ABM Strategy Account-based marketing (ABM) is one of the recent trends and implies a plan of providing a personalized experience for a certain group of clients. The main thing here is a combination of smart
management of data and the delivery of customized content. However, many companies still struggle with achieving the biggest ABM potential, trying to do things manually. Companies can start with choosing software that is ABM-focused so as to successfully combine marketing data and the sales one. Once a company can achieve two teams’ collaboration, they will be able to provide more personalized and customer-oriented information and set targets according to consumer preferences, increasing ROI and conversions.
Conclusion Marketing trends come and go, encouraging businesses to adapt, optimize, and improve. The same goes for challenges. While some of them are impermanent, others stay with us for quite some time. The only difference here is that with time, companies change their approach, dealing with things in a different and more efficient way. Any challenge is a great chance to grow. A thorough review and analysis of the current activities and ongoing marketing campaigns and the way they perform will help enterprises with identifying their best marketing opportunities, eliminating any risks, and improving the overall performance to reach their best ever potential.
