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Oct 30, 2018
The Top 8 Digital Marketing Issues You’ll Commonly Face
You’ve done the best research, formed the best plan possible, and executed your marketing strategy with glorious perfection, like a boss. It’s a masterpiece, the Mona Lisa of marketing campaigns, and you are Leonardo da Vinci. And now, naturally, you sit back and enjoy the most smooth-sailing campaign to ever hit the market.
What’s that? The sailing’s not so smooth? You’re having trouble getting leads, training your team, and proving ROI?
It sounds like your perfect campaign sort of hit the fan, so to speak. But don’t worry.
So this marketing thing wasn’t as easy as you thought it would be. That’s the bad news. The good news is, everyone else, and we mean everyone, is having the same problems you are.
And here’s the even better news. We’re going to share with you all the most common marketing issues marketers face so you’ll know what to expect going forward. Aren’t we nice?
Read the list below so these marketing problems won’t catch you off guard.
Problem 1: Where My Peeps At?
When Hubspot polled thousands of companies about their top marketing challenges, only one was reported by more than half of all participants. 63% of them reported “generating traffic and leads” as the number one problem marketers face.
Companies are struggling to get enough demand for their supply of product or content. Why is this? Because the internet is just too darn big.
Here, your marketing choices are limitless and your audience is everyone in the world. It’s hard to know where and how to focus your efforts.
So what do you do? Pay deep and continual attention to market research and don’t try to be everything to everyone.
Know every statistic about your ideal audience. Know what devices and apps they’re using, when they’re using them, and for how long.
What social media platform do they prefer? What do they like to see there? Find out exactly what they want from you, and then give them the highest quality version of it that you can.
In short, marketing analytics are your best friend – IF you can interpret them, that is. (We totally rock at analytics, btw, so we’ll be your best friend if you’d like)!
Problem 2: Is It Working?
You have so many wheels turning in so many different campaigns. How can you track which ones are working and which ones aren’t?
This is the second-most common marketing problem. Proving the return on investment (ROI) of marketing activities is a complicated challenge. And if you can’t prove ROI, you can’t effectively budget or strategize your campaign.
The answer, therefore, is better analytics software. Lucky for you, analytics technology has gotten way better than it used to be at tracking sales.
It’s also grown to become more advanced at linking more types of analytics together. This gives a more accurate picture of what impacts your returns and how.
All your digital marketing analytics should be linked to the same analytics software. That includes social media marketing, ecommerce, and website analytics. If they’re not linked, you need new analytics software.
Problem 3: You Can’t Make the Scene If You Don’t Have the Green
Many companies, especially smaller ones, have trouble getting funds for their marketing campaigns. This is mostly due to the point we just covered. No one wants to invest in a marketing tactic with an effectiveness that can’t be proven.
But if you can prove the ROI of your marketing efforts, you’ll have no problem securing funds. And the key to proving ROI is top-notch analytics software (plus help from awesome nerds like us).
Problem 4: You Can’t Be Good at Everything
A successful website is essential to any digital marketing campaign. So why are so many companies having trouble with it? Quite simply, they either don’t have the know-how or manpower to do it right.
The ever-changing world of search engine optimization (SEO) is a whole other campaign all by itself. SEO refers to the tactics used to make a website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERP).
To create and maintain a successful website requires expertise and up-to-date knowledge of SEO. We know you’re an expert at marketing. But you can’t be excellent at everything.
Therein lies the problem. Many marketers try to manage their own sites without this in-depth knowledge or without knowledgeable people working on it.
The obvious solution is to get knowledgeable people working on your SEO. Either put your own, SEO-competent staff on it or outsource to professionals. Your website’s crucial to your digital marketing efforts; you can’t afford to skip this step.
Problem 5: Knowing What’s Good for You
Ok, let’s see how you’re doing so far.
You’ve gotten better analytics software, one that links all possible analytics to marketing returns, and you’ve hired the right people to maintain your website. You’re doing great!
But even when doing your best, you can’t anticipate changing technology, glitches, Murphy’s Law, etc.
New problems will always pop up, requiring some other app, software or device to solve it. The problem most companies have with this is figuring out what technologies they need and whether or not they’re reliable.
This is another situation where hiring awesome, professional help is a good idea. Pros are on top of the situation before you even find out about it.
You can straight-up ask them yourself if their software can solve your problem. They can even refer you to customers they’ve helped with the same problem.
Or, if you like to live dangerously, you can trust online reviews of marketing solution software and hope for the best. If it doesn’t work out, though, you might end up wasting a lot of valuable time.
Problem 6: Team Training Troubles
As digital marketing evolves, so must your company. Each change demands retraining or rehiring: two sides of one really sucky coin.
Both mean finding (and funding) the time for training. And turnover means starting from scratch.
The best solution is to set up an hour or less of training updates at the same time every week. You update your leaders, who then train the rest of your team. An alternative is requiring your team to take training courses.
New hires are more difficult. You want their training time to be short and intense.
The shortness will cost you less money (especially if they quit). And the intenseness will weed out those who might quit anyway.
Your other option is the next problem: hiring people who are already the best.
Problem 7: The Top Talent Gamble
Hey, wait a sec. Why not just hire better-qualified people?
It would save the time and money required for training newbies, right? You’d think.
But trying to find and hire top talent that isn’t already employed, may cost just as much as training from scratch. Then, add to that a higher salary.
The solution? Be as specific as possible in your career ad.
Think about the exact position in your company you need the top talent in. Require a very-specifically-described skill set for the position. That is, write the job description for that one, perfect candidate you want.
Post to a niche-specific job board that’s just for digital marketers, like growth.org, and voila! You let the perfect candidate find you.
Problem 8: Your Target Is Everywhere
Have you ever sent a text and then afterward realized it autocorrected to a completely wrong message? Then, you already know the biggest challenge of marketing internationally.
Most companies aren’t familiar with the markets and cultures of other countries. They don’t know how to appeal to them, so their attempts at advertising end up sending the wrong message.
Avoid this by gaining marketing expertise in the countries you do business with. There are several global marketing books and other learning resources you can learn this from. But it may be more practical to hire a qualified marketing expert for each country.
Next, optimize your website and ad campaigns for the language and culture of each target country.
Kick These Marketing Issues to the Curb
Now that you know the most common, current marketing issues, they won’t catch you off guard. Instead, you can face them and say, “Enguard!”
Ok, we’re sorry; that was terrible. The point is, plan for these issues now and you’ll be ready when they happen.
Now read 8 creative marketing strategy examples to inspire you.