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The Biggest Issues Mar­keters Face

August 14, 2009 | 2 Comments

Writ­ten by: Lee on August 14, 2009.

questionmarkI’ve put on my think­ing cap and cast my mind over recent years in the mar­ket­ing indus­try and what I con­sid­ered the biggest prob­lems mar­keters are fac­ing. A num­ber of issues come to mind which I discuss.

1. Data

From per­sonal expe­ri­ence, this has been a huge issue in a num­ber of ways. The first one is a qual­ity issue espe­cially if your data is cus­tomer based. Keep­ing your data accu­rate can be quite an expen­sive task. Sec­ondly is hav­ing a cen­tral, inte­grated mar­ket­ing data­base and lastly ensur­ing the data you are col­lect­ing is rel­e­vant and know­ing what to do with the data.

2. Mea­sur­ing Mar­ket­ing Effectiveness

Mar­keters are in an age where they are account­able and need to show mea­sure­ments and returns. There does not seem to be an estab­lished best prac­tice for mea­sure­ments (well some com­pa­nies pro­mote their prod­ucts as hav­ing best prac­tise met­rics). The prob­lem organ­i­sa­tions face is decid­ing what met­rics they should use as mea­sure­ments. Most organ­i­sa­tions adopt mea­sure­ments that make sense within their finan­cial mod­els. Could we be using old style mea­sure­ments and adapt­ing them to new efforts?

3. Infor­ma­tion Overload

It is impor­tant to keep a breast of what is hap­pen­ing in the world of mar­ket­ing, your indus­try and your organ­i­sa­tion. On top of this, you need to do your job. There are new medi­ums, meth­ods and tech­nolo­gies emerg­ing all the time and improved ver­sions of exist­ing ones. How do you keep up and make sure you are on top of your game? Your short-term mar­ket­ing strat­egy is prob­a­bly in dynamic state, as you need to be able to react to changes, which are hap­pen­ing at a rapid rate. Now I don’t mean that you irre­spon­si­bly embark on every new medium, method or tech­nol­ogy but you may need to react to them as well as chang­ing mar­ket conditions.

4. CRM

Maybe some would include this and data together. How­ever, I have sep­a­rated them as to me data is more than just for CRM. The prob­lem is inte­grat­ing all the touch points into a sin­gle view of the cus­tomer and stream­lin­ing them into suc­cess­ful auto­mated out-bound cam­paigns using the medi­ums (that work for you) that is best suited to each indi­vid­ual cus­tomer. Another issue is under­stand­ing the softer issues of CRM and cus­tomer experience

5. Inno­va­tion

Inno­va­tion is being lim­ited due to fear of hype and lim­ited think­ing. This may not be the case for all but cer­tainly for some it is. Are we allowed to think out of the box in a rigid tra­di­tional organ­i­sa­tion or do we always play it safe?

6. Bud­get Stretch

There are so many things to do and so lit­tle money to do it! Pri­ori­tis­ing spend in the best way max­imis­ing effec­tive­ness and return is a challenge.

7. Taken Seri­ously
How often is the mar­ket­ing depart­ment not taken seri­ously com­pared to depart­ments like IT and Finance? Mar­keters are some­times not seen in the same light as experts in the ‘other’ depart­ments. Could this be because many mar­keters lack the finan­cial knowl­edge or tech­ni­cal knowl­edge rel­e­vant to the busi­ness? I do think there are many pro­gres­sive organ­i­sa­tions where this is not the case and mar­keters are seen as a dri­ving force.

I am sure there are other press­ing issues out there and would like to hear your views.

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2 Comments so far

  1.    Chris Shallow on August 16, 2009 6:18 pm      Reply

    Leeann, thank you for your inter­est. I teach in Prague, Czech Repub­lic. I’ve taught at Prague Col­lege, Uni­ver­sity of New York, in Prague, Uni­ver­sity of North­ern Vir­ginia, in Prague, and, from this autumn, I will be teach­ing at Tif­fin Uni­ver­sity, Prague, too.

  2.    Chris Shallow on August 16, 2009 12:45 pm      Reply

    I 100% agree with this. I cover these in my Advanced Mar­ket­ing course at the uni­ver­si­ties where I teach.

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