Top 5 challenges faced by marketers and brands

dubai - Brands must study the pain points of consumers and provide solutions

In today's fast-changing economy, marketing has acquired a new dimension. With rapid leaps in the use of social media on the one hand, and an economy that's unstable and challenging on the other, brands have to adjust to a new landscape and adopt a new strategy to be effective.

The first step is to look around and accept the challenge at hand and then create marketing plans to grow the business. Here are a few challenges businesses face as they endeavour to market their brands.

1. Fast-changing digital landscape
The digital landscape alters itself every day and businesses have to ensure they stay abreast of the trends. Social media provides an opportunity to businesses to connect directly with consumers. Your website and social media accounts are a bridge to your consumers, but you need to be clear about what you want to tell them. Unless you have a clear strategy, you will end up losing a major opportunity to get RoI on market spend and effort. In a world where, on a daily basis, 250 billion pictures are put up on Facebook and 100 hours of video content is uploaded onto YouTube, you have to cut through the clutter and stand out among the 2.3 billion active social media users.

2. Instant customer reactions
Content that bears your marketing message has to be engaging and connect emotionally with your consumers. Effectively-created content can potentially reach millions in minutes, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. You can make your consumers your brand ambassadors and enable them to get the message of your brand across. You need to know what kind of messaging consumers are receptive to, and then keep the tone of your message consistent. Your consumers now have several platforms to express themselves, and that can be a double-edged sword. A sustained negative feedback can kill a brand; you need a plan to counter negative sentiments effectively. Brandwatch statistics say that 78 per cent of people who complain about a brand via Twitter expect a response within the hour.

3. Finding talented marketers
Companies today require personnel who can roll up their sleeves and get deep into the minds of consumers in order to create effective strategies. It is difficult to find and retain people who can think like consumers, keep a close tab on trends, come up with plans based on what they glean, execute them seamlessly, monitor the execution and change track if the landscape changes. The average age of a new-age marketer has dropped significantly; just going by resumes may not find you the talent you need to sell your wares. Companies today need marketers who can think out of the box and hit the ground running.

4. Calculating RoI
Thanks to shrinking profitability and inelastic budgets, companies are always looking at ways to cut costs. Typically, marketing tends to take a hit in these scenarios. The challenge is to remember that customer acquisition and retention are the most important agendas for an organisation. Companies need to understand that marketing is an investment and not a cost.

5. Disruptive business models
Marketing is as much about reinventing yourself as it is about creating demand. When companies feel they are on autopilot, they forget to look at things from a consumer's point of view. When that happens, new disruptive businesses can make you go belly-up. Consider these examples: AirBnb has over 50 million users and it has changed the way people travel. It does not own a single property, and has yet managed to completely change the way people seek accommodation while travelling. Uber has changed the taxi-hiring business and has created a challenge for traditional companies. WhatsApp has eaten into the texting revenue of telecom businesses. Netflix, Amazon, Apple Music, etc., are examples of new business models that are shaking up traditional businesses.
Marketers need to study the pain points of consumers and question if there is an easier way to come up with solutions.
- The writer is CEO and Founder of Idea Spice. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policies.