Today, marketing is so fast-paced that it’s hard to know which areas you'll want to focus on or improve upon in 2023 and beyond. To help you plan accordingly, we did detailed research to discover the top challenges global and U.S. marketing leaders predict for 2023.
1. Adopting a data-driven marketing strategy.
Effectively Combine First and Third-Party Data
First-party data can ultimately help you ensure you're reaching the right audiences with your ads and turning those audiences into high-quality leads.
Develop Unique Messaging that Resonates with Your Prospects
Ultimately, preparing a powerful data-driven marketing strategy in 2023 will be essential for outperforming competitors — especially since data can help your team remain flexible and adaptive as trends or consumer preferences shift over time.
2. Keeping up with the latest trends.
14% of marketers believe keeping up with the latest marketing trends will continue to be their biggest hurdle in 2023.
What Can You Do?
Reviewing up-to-date marketing reports like HubSpot's 2022 State of Marketing Trends can help you stay informed on which marketing trends matter most to consumers.
3. Facing increased competition from other brands.
Why It's a Challenge?
As social media and the SERPs become increasingly saturated with branded content, many marketers struggle to create content that stands out.
In our HubSpot Blog survey, 13% of marketing leaders report increased competition from other brands as their biggest concern for 2023.
What Can You Do?
To combat this challenge, marketing leaders will want to conduct a competitive market analysis, which can help implement stronger business strategies and identify potential opportunities to outperform your competition.
4. Leveraging your CRM to its fullest potential.
Why It's a Challenge?
12% of marketers believe their biggest challenge in 2023 will be leveraging their CRM to its fullest potential.
What Can You Do?
To make the most out of your CRM, take a look at our ultimate guide to using a CRM. You'll also want to consider purchasing a CRM that enables you to integrate all your other tools in one place.
5. Having to pivot your marketing strategy due to major events (e.g. recession, pandemic, political turmoil).
Why It's a Challenge?
The past couple of years have required businesses to demonstrate new levels of flexibility and adaptability.
The pandemic, for instance, greatly impacted users' expectations and preferences when it comes to social media. Now, users' spend more time watching videos online than they did pre-pandemic, and they crave more fun and authentic content than they used to.
What Can You Do?
Agile marketing can help your team become more adaptable when global events upend your previous plans and force your team to shift focus. And it can help teams rebound more quickly from potential revenue losses.
Consider, for instance, how Doordash reported an operating loss of $616 million in 2019 — and then grew to $2.89 billion in revenue in 2020. Their agile approach during the pandemic enabled them to respond to their consumers' needs by delivering COVID test kits and launching the #OpenforDelivery campaign to support restaurants.
Most marketers are goaled on two metrics: Traffic and leads.
Which is why it makes sense that 11% of marketing leaders expect that generating traffic and leads will remain their top challenge in 2023.
Even if marketers are doing well with these metrics, they'll always want to improve them.
6. Generating traffic and leads.
Why It's a Challenge?
Google search features like featured snippets and images have made it increasingly difficult to get traffic to your site at all. In fact, 65% of Google searches now end without a click.
What Can You Do?
More than ever before, people are being flooded with content. Consumers don't even need to use a search engine to find answers anymore. Instead, articles fill their news feeds or buzz in their pocket via mobile notifications. To keep up, consider exploring alternate distribution methods — like SMS or podcasting — to increase brand awareness.
Additionally, you might test out influencer marketing to generate more traffic and leads. Micro-influencers, for instance, have high rates of engagement and are often seen as experts on certain niche topics — so finding a micro-influencer that aligns well with your brand can help you generate high-quality traffic and leads effectively.
7. Hiring top talent.
Why It's a Challenge?
11% of marketing leaders report hiring top talent as their top anticipated struggle of 2023. And Jamie Gilpin, Chief Marketing Officer at Sprout Social, agrees. She told me that hiring and cultivating top talent is a key focus at Sprout Social as they head into the new year.
What Can You Do?
To attract top talent, you'll want to focus on your employer's brand.
As Gilpin puts it, "To attract talent with unique skill sets, our company has worked incredibly hard to build a strong employer brand that clearly communicates our values and culture to current and prospective employees. One way we’ve been able to amplify that message is by leveraging the social influence of our own employees."
Top U.S. Marketing Executive Challenges
While global and U.S.-based participants from both of our recent studies anticipate a similar list of challenges, the way they’re prioritizing them shifts when sampling just U.S. executives.
Luckily, whether you're dealing with any of the global or U.S.-based challenges, many of them can be navigated with the insights and takeaways above, such as:
Collecting the best analytics possible to make data-backed decisions, ideally by merging first-party data and GDPR-approved third-party data.
Knowing how your buyer is continuing to evolve. You can also use data and sales-marketing alignment to stay in touch with what your customers and audiences are focusing on.
Ensuring that you approach marketing strategies or investments strategically by asking yourself, "What is the ROI, business impact, or revenue opportunity here?"
Preparing to pivot. The only constant thing in marketing is change and many of us have already started working backup or pivot-planning into our strategies for when trends or circumstances around us change suddenly.
Building a great employer brand. By doing so, you'll attract all sorts of marketing talent that can navigate many of the challenges above.
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