11 Tough Marketing Challenges

What is the biggest marketing challenge you are currently facing?

1. Keeping the Business Fresh

I’m in the bar business and some of my stores have been open for almost ten years. The biggest challenge I am currently facing is keeping the company fresh, which has a lot to do with staying on top of trends that I worry I’m out of touch with. So the people I hire are crucial to keeping us relevant. –Michael Sinensky, Village Pourhouse

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2. Name Recognition

The electronic health records (EHR) industry is growing rapidly and is a hot topic these days. So as a family owned business competing against the big guys, we are the underdogs and our biggest challenge is getting our name out there and being recognized as an influential force in the industry. –Shane Adams, Sagacious Consultants

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3. Positioning Our Brand

Positioning your brand is perhaps one of the hardest things to get right because it’s entirely based on perception. You can’t control what people’s perceptions will be of your products or services, but you can influence them. There is no exact formula, but it’s something I feel you can constantly improve on. Your brand isn’t just what it is; it’s rather what it’s perceived to be. – Andy Karuza, Brandbuddee

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4. Thinking B2B and B2C Simultaneously

When ZinePak launched, we were focused exclusively on B2B marketing: talking to management companies, record labels and movie studios. We soon realized that we needed to be thinking B2C, too, even though we don’t sell to end consumers. Our biggest marketing challenge is having separate narratives to these two distinct audiences and simultaneously messaging our product benefits to both groups. – Brittany Hodak, ZinePak

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5. Increasing Brand Awareness

Creating brand awareness outside of our industry is the most difficult marketing challenge we are currently facing. – Lane Campbell, Syntress SCDT

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6. Maximizing Efforts

We have some great marketing and PR opportunities available to us, but as a growing startup we’re short on resources. The biggest challenge for us is identifying the initiatives that will get us the best results for the smallest effort. It’s a lot of trial and error. We are constantly in Google Analytics seeing what’s driving traffic to our site so we can adjust our tactics. – Jared Feldman, Mashwork

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7. Progressive SEO

Google’s ever-changing algorithm haunts many digital marketers, but I view this as the ultimate challenge to develop content that truly answers people’s questions. These days, I don’t even keep up with the fine details of Google’s often contradictory updates. Instead, every day I challenge myself to conjure new ways to create value for searchers rather than produce gimmicks just for links. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

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8. Increasing Return Users

The biggest challenge we are facing right now is increasing the engagement of return users. We have plenty of user signup, but we need to work on better messaging to entice them to come back to the site. We also want to be able to better engage people who sign up and then drop off immediately. Email marketing will play a big role with that and it’s a key area we’re currently lacking in. – Tolga Tanriseven, GirlsAskGuys

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9. Consistency in Content

The biggest challenge for our marketing right now is producing a consistent stream of compelling content that’s fresh and unique. In the sea of publishers, it can be tough to stand out among the crowd. – Daniel Wesley, DebtConsolidation.com

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10. Kepping Up With Demand

Once the sales start flowing in, it can become difficult to scale. This is the challenge that we’ve been dealing with recently. – Timothy Schmidt,WebsiteRescue

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11. Changing Behavior

As Priori Legal is just shy of our one year anniversary, we conducted a survey of small business owners that confirmed that only a small percentage of these companies look online for a lawyer, instead relying on personal referrals. Our challenge is changing this behavior — making business owners aware that they can find a great lawyer online. – Basha Rubin, Priori Legal