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Marketing in 2022 feels like a different world. We are seeing how businesses take shape in a post-pandemic world, and we’re witnessing some fundamental shifts in consumer behaviors and the rapid growth of a few specific channels. All these changes are going to keep companies on their toes the entire year, so here are the top challenges digital marketers may face and how to solve them:
1. Finding the ideal platforms to expand the brand
With so many social media platforms and digital ad strategies to choose from, it’s easy to get overwhelmed as a marketer. The growth of TikTok and Clubhouse has been astronomical while Twitter spaces and Instagram reels have come up with surprisingly good results. A successful expansion to social media shouldn’t depend on how popular a platform is, rather on how it aligns with your business goals.
How to solve it: Start by defining your budget. Look at past metrics and ROI and narrow down on the goals you want to achieve. If your audience prefers video content, Reels, YouTube and TikTok are your options. If you’re into the B2B space and want to cater to thought leaders, Twitter and LinkedIn offer great results. You should understand the cost per acquisition (CPA) of these platforms and constantly A/B test strategies to drive maximum ROI.
2. Creating creative content as a brand differentiator
According to Drift’s Marketing Leadership Benchmark Report, 53% of martech leaders think content marketing will be the key to their team’s success in the next five years. When properly executed, content marketing works wonders. However, extreme competition in high-value SEO, difficulty in attributing performance to content and fragmented structure pull most marketers down.
How to solve it: Start by defining the brand identity and creating a unique persona in the customer’s mind. From style guides and tones to logos, graphics and UI, everything should be consistent and distinguishable from competitors. Once you get the creative content right, focus on using user-generated content (UGC) and repurposing existing content. Turn blog posts into eBooks, lead magnets and podcasts into tweets and blog posts, and YouTube videos into TikTok and reels. Don’t be afraid to invest in tech and high-quality content creation to improve your reach.
3. Facilitating omnichannel marketing
Omnichannel marketing has been drummed up as the next evolution of customer experience and engagement journey. However, bringing different marketing channels together and integrating the customer journey to make a difference is easier said than done.
How to solve it: Thanks to GDPR and other geo-regulations, businesses are moving towards a cookie-less world. You need to focus on real data points to see how and where your customers are interacting with you. Build a lean but agile tech stack to support omnichannel marketing and integrate content marketing for consistency. Finally, keep measuring the KPIs to see how the tactics are faring. A good way to see whether your omnichannel marketing is working, try measuring customer sentiment analysis and understand how people perceive your brand as a whole.
4. Gaining visibility in data analytics
Marketers have long complained about the lack of proper tools to attribute and validate data. In 2022, the problem will only grow bigger because of the absence of data analytics.
How to solve it: Integrate data analytics across your marketing channels, from list segmentation to touchpoint optimization, better insights can push productivity up and costs down. Establish SOPs to analyze ROI, develop reports and build actionable tips to further optimize marketing campaigns.
5. Hiring the right people
Digital marketers are struggling to bridge the talent and skill gap in their organizations and 2022 will be the year when they’ll have to look inward to improve the onboarding process.
How to solve it: In a market as volatile as marketing, talents that stay ahead of the curve and bring results with new strategies are always in high demand. One way you can attract superior talents is by improving your company culture. Make employees your biggest assets and empower them with the right tech stack and resources. It’s hard to execute new campaigns without the right talent so now is the right time to work on your brand messaging and hiring budget.
It’s hard to predict how marketing will shape up by the end of the year but by following the steps above, marketers can solve the biggest problems hindering business growth today.
You may also like: 4 Marketing Trends That Will Be Big in 2022
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