Global Marketing Challenges of 2021: HubSpot Report
A new report by HubSpot shows that the biggest challenges marketers face in 2021 is generating traffic and leads.
The company surveyed 1500+ marketers globally about their marketing strategies and priorities for 2021 and nearly half (47%) felt that they want to focus on getting more leads and traffic but are facing challenges on how to.
The pandemic has certainly shifted the way organizations do business, which also means that the way businesses market their products or service must also pivot based off of these changes.
Below we have outlined the top eight challenges found in HubSpot’s survey and some tips on what you can do as a business to make some improvements.
1. Generating Traffic and Leads (47%)
John Lee, Head of Evangelism at Microsoft Advertising tells HubSpot, “[…] marketers need to be vigilant in monitoring and understanding industry-wide acceptance of privacy protocols and updates to search, social, and display/native platforms (consumer-side and marketing/advertising-side).”
He also adds that with more platforms becoming available to market product and services, it becomes even more difficult to navigate where to put your focus.
To help combat this, you’ll want to focus on using analytics to help measure your campaigns. What are the numbers like when you share a blog post versus sharing a video about the same topic? By using these tracking tools, you’ll be able to cater your content to reach your target audience in the right way.
2. Providing ROI for Your Marketing Activities (21%)
Although tracking your analytics can help you understand what type of content your audience is more prone to use, tracking the profits made through these marketing campaigns is another story. HubSpot notes that it isn’t always easy to try and merge the two together, however there are tools out there.
For example, Kim Giroux, Director of Marketing at Beautiful.ai, says some platforms build ROI tracking tools into their technology. She tells HubSpot, […] marketers today can create and use pitch decks with built-in presentation analytics that offer real-time data — such as how much time was spent viewing individual slides.”
3. Delivering an Account-Based Marketing Strategy (8%)
HubSpot defines account-based marketing (ABM) as a “new trend, which is a growth strategy in which marketing and sales collaborate to create a personalized buying experience for an identified set of accounts.”
The report says there currently isn’t a lot of technology that focuses on this, which leads to having challenges delivering the personal experience (45%), knowing how to choose target accounts (41%), and knowing what content to use (40%).
4. Securing Enough Budget (6%)
The report states that it’s harder for marketers to get budget approvals, especially because of the COVID-19 pandemic, where some companies don’t have the means just yet.
HubSpot says it helps if marketers can show evidence, like the ROI rates on your campaigns, mentioning that “[…] organizations that can calculate ROI are more like to receive higher budgets.”
5. Managing Your Website (5%)
Creating and maintaining a website requires a lot of work and includes many different factors from designing it in a way that make sense to optimizing content for SEO purposes.
One suggestion from HubSpot is for companies to hire freelancers to help with content creation or contract out developers to help create the website.
6. Targeting Content for International Audience
If you are trying to appeal to a more global audience, you’ll have to tweak your content and become aware of things like changing units of measure, monetary changes, exchange rates, tariff barriers, etc.
A suggest HubSpot makes is hiring locally to help with these cultural challenges. Especially now after the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has never been more popular. Utilize this and hire someone who is based in the city, province, state, or country you are looking to market to.
7. Training Your Team
With the constant emerging technology, it can sometime be a struggle to train your team on these new platforms.
HubSpot suggests taking the time to analyze members of your marketing team and evaluate each of their strengths and weaknesses. This will help to better gauge what skills set each person needs to improve on.
There are tons of websites online that offer various courses and certifications in different industries – and many of them are free. Perhaps you can suggest a couple for your teammates to take? You can learn more about some educational platforms available here.
8. Hiring Top Talent
With so many companies becoming much more competitive like having four-day work weeks, offering remote work options, and being more transparent about job expectations and salaries, HubSpot says it’s harder than ever to hire talent with the many options available to employees.
Stefanie Grieser, Co-Founder of Shine Bootcamp, tells HubSpot “[…] marketers [need] to invest heavily in their employer brand for the long-term. Just like you need to market your product, you also need to dedicate resources, time and energy into marketing your company as an employer."
What are your biggest challenges as a business owner? Let us know by sending an email to info@torontoentrepreneurs.ca.
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