5 challenges all marketers face

If you’re a marketer who sees the same challenge each year, it might be worth raising this on your radar. However, some challenges can be industry wide.

Challenges across the industry are incredibly important to note, address and subsequently grow. For that reason, it’s important to pause for a moment and reflect on the biggest challenges marketers feel they’re facing this year.

Here are 5 industry-wide challenges that marketer:

1. Generating Traffic and leads

Having the ability to generate traffic and leads is always important for marketers, and tends to be a common objective that marketers share. Even if teams are doing well with metrics, there will always be room to improve with them. 

In a survey, 27% of marketers across industries believe generating traffic and leads will be their top challenge in 2022 – Dawson Whitfield – Hubspot, 2021. 

When it comes to creating content that generates enough traffic and leads, marketers should ask themselves: Are you truly creating high-quality content, the type of content people would pay for? And do you know the type of content your audience wants?

Understanding your audience is key for this, 69% said they would prefer to watch a short video (Wyzol, 2021) over a text-based article, infographic, or eBook. This means, if most of your product-related content is in eBook format, you could be missing out on many consumers who prefer video.

To ensure you're creating content that resonates best with your audience, you should often refer to the analytics. Use effective tools to properly track the types of content that perform best with your audience to generate more leads

2. Getting New Clients

Generating leads with content marketing is achievable but knowing who your intended audience is helps you improve your content creation and digital marketing approach. 86%, good customer service turns one-time clients into long-term returning customers. (Franny Harold – Khoros, 2021)

In terms of content, start publishing articles on noted online marketing publications that you know your audience reads. This will help you broaden your reach, further establish authority and credibility in your space, and tap into a broader audience.

Using a customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing software allows you to fully understand where your potential customers are and how they find out about your business. This gives you the ability to offer discounts and incentives for new clients.

3. Retaining Current Clients

The average client lifespan is just 0-12 months for 30% of businesses. And that’s a big issue, considering that existing clients spend more and cost less than new ones. (Khalid Saleh – Invesp, 2021) So how do you keep your clients on board for longer?

It starts with your content. Send your existing client’s resources that can help them get the most use out of your products and services. Send personalised perks, gifts, and/or exclusive promotions, and use milestones like birthdays and customer anniversaries as excuses to send offers and messages.

Don’t be afraid to change your approach to individual clients over time. Be creative with your customer retention strategies, know that as their plans change, so should yours. It’s better to keep a returning customer which can also help benefit your brand in other ways that just money such as leaving a great online review. Social proof is powerful, and new customers are more likely to give your business a try if they see others praising it. As 68% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand known to offer good customer service experiences. (Gladly, 2018)

4. Time Management

After generating new clients, managing time is the most common challenge businesses face. Less than 1 in 5 people (approx 18%) have a sufficient time management system in place (Ben Richardson – Development Academy, 2021)

There is a lot to juggle when it comes to digital marketing, and while the workload is getting bigger and more complex, the teams and spending need to always keep up. 

Tips for effective time management:

• Give yourself a time limit when working on a task. When you exceed that time limit, stop, and move on to the next task on your list, then revisit it at a later point.
• Divide projects and prioritise tasks that are more urgent.

5. Understanding Metrics

As a marketer, part of your job is defining goals and ensuring that plans are set to ensure the set goals are met. While this sounds simple, it can be complicated, particularly if the team doesn’t understand the key performance indicators (KPIs) for marketing success. 

Remember, subjective metrics such as organic traffic growth and click-through rates are important. However, you must assign a financial goal and measuring the ROI are the most important indicators to gain optimal benefits from each campaign.

Besides that, follow these rules when identifying the metrics to track:

• Explain metrics to the key persons and make them easy to understand and use.
• Make sure the metrics are easy to replicate.
• Collect internal data and back it up with external sources so that each metric delivers useful, actionable insights that impact the business

A thorough analysis of your marketing strategy and its current performance will help you discover where your biggest marketing opportunity lies. This will allow you to focus on improving the areas that need the most attention, so you can start making your marketing more effective. If you can figure out how to navigate a reoccurring industry challenge effectively, you can be a step ahead of the competition. 

Image credit: Headway