4 Marketing Challenges Faced by Executives and their Marketing Teams and the Solutions to Effectively Tackle Them

Marketing executives and their teams face a variety of challenges every day. Some are new, others recurring, but one thing all the challenges have in common is that they are a burden to business growth. To grasp what marketing challenges executives are facing today, we surveyed executive leaders from start-up, mid-size and enterprise organizations about their biggest sales and marketing challenges and the resources and strategies they have to address them. These executives spanned a variety of industries, organizational sizes, geographic locations and revenue thresholds, but a common theme emerged: growth. Discover what leaders have grappled with and their vision for sustainable, effective organizational growth.

4 Marketing Challenges and Strategic Solutions

Marketing Challenge #1: Differentiating From Competition

A strong market presence and differentiated messaging are essential to a foundation of growth and building that presence can take significant time and resources. A third of the leaders we surveyed reported struggling with creating unified, relevant and effective messaging that made them stand out. In an increasingly competitive business landscape, it is more important than ever to be able to differentiate your product or service offerings from competitors. Many of these executives led large teams at enterprise organizations that lacked a standardized process of communicating and revisiting company messaging.

Solution: Craft Comprehensive Company Messaging and Use it as a Guide

Your messaging should be rooted in company values and mission while also taking into consideration the values and pain points of your target audience. For messaging to be effective, it is critical to consider multiple viewpoints, including perceptions from people outside of your organization. Doing this will ensure your messaging does not reflect internal biases, opinions and culture. Conduct interviews with people in your target audience to gather more information on their pain points, familiarity with competition, perceived differentiators and more. Getting your messaging right is also important for marketing and sales strategies. The information gathered when conducting interviews will provide valuable insight into all your marketing activities and strategies.

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Marketing Challenge #2: Creating Relevant and High-Quality Content that Aligns with Marketing Efforts

Almost half of the leaders we surveyed reported struggling to create content that is relevant and compelling to their audience. Executives surveyed at larger organizations commonly cited an issue with the lack of cohesion across content efforts. As teams grew larger and marketing resources stretched thin, sales and marketing teams adopted reactionary approaches to content marketing rather than aligning with a unified strategy.

Solution: Build a Cohesive Content Strategy and Leverage Knowledge from Team Members to Generate Content

Effective content marketing starts with a cohesive content strategy. This acts as the guide to what content should be created and when for what audiences and more. 91% of organizations say that content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing, so it is essential to have a strategy that guides your efforts. With a strong content marketing strategy in place, you can then look for the resources to make the content possible. Think about what content would help marketing drive more leads, better educate your audience and help sales do their jobs more efficiently. Repurposing content is a great way for marketing teams to create new content. For example, turning an eBook into a series of blog posts, creating an infographic from research statistics and creating an article from white paper snippets. Whatever types of content your team chooses to focus on, clear and consistent communication across marketing and sales is essential to a content marketing strategy that supports your sales goals and helps educate your audience and differentiate your company.

Marketing Challenge #3: Providing Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) to Sales

Company leaders we talked to have teams that are stretched thin; nearly half of the executives discussed their plans to hire more sales team members over the next year. Data shows that only 56% of B2B companies do not qualify their leads before sending them to sales. Of these leads passed to sales, 27% are not qualified. This means that sales teams are spending time talking to unqualified leads, leaving them frustrated with the time they wasted when they could be pursuing more qualified leads.

Solution: Establish Lead Scoring and Clearly Define MQL and SQLs

To ensure sales is receiving the most qualified, sales-ready leads, you must establish lead scoring and build a well-defined marketing qualified lead (MQL) to SQL process. Start by organizing a stakeholder group comprised of key members of sales, marketing and operations. This internal team is critical to help identify what an MQL and SQL look like within your organization as well as define the lead flow process to move leads through the sales funnel. Lead scoring, contact and account data and decision-making power all play important roles in building definitions of MQLs and SQLs. Distinguishing an MQL from an SQL takes a close partnership between sales and marketing and serves as the foundation of the lead hand-off.

Marketing Challenge #4: Developing Processes that Ensure Seamless Sales and Marketing Alignment

Nearly two-thirds of the executives we spoke with cited communication breakdowns between sales and marketing that ultimately affected the quality of the company’s relationship with prospects and customers. This issue was especially prevalent among companies in early or rapid growth stages. We also discovered that almost 70% of executives expressed a need for more training and marketing alignment with their sales teams.

Solution: Formalize Processes, Training and Technology

Laying the groundwork for sales-marketing alignment is vital to success, and investment in these processes and resources is critical. Data shows that companies with strong alignment are 67% more effective at closing deals and 58% better at retaining customers. When investing in technology for your organization, you should consider evaluating a technology stack that will reduce friction among your team members by enabling them to work more efficiently and effectively together. You should also consider what kind of training and resources will allow your teams to fully leverage your technology. Regardless of the approach you decide to take, it is important that it serves your team to be the most productive and enables your company to grow.

Overcoming Marketing Challenges to Increase Business Growth

It is difficult to build and commit to growth strategies without the right people in place. Nearly half of the startup company leaders we talked to plan on hiring marketers in the next year and many of the mid-size and enterprise company leaders have pivoted their focus to hiring the right people and ensuring their internal teams maintain capacity for projects like messaging and content marketing. Having the right team to execute the crucial elements that directly impact your company’s growth is essential, whether you hire internally or outsource your marketing to a marketing firm or other resources.

Contact us today, request a free marketing consultation or sign up for our Growth Blocker Workshop to get assistance from our B2B marketing consultants with identifying your biggest marketing challenges and overcoming them. You can check out our marketing services in Austin here.