An enterprise marketer's worst nightmares

min read

As modern enterprise marketers we have a lot on our plate. Out of our numerous daily pitfalls,here 5 of our worst nightmares along with some quick remedies.

An Enterprise Marketer's Worst Nightmares

As modern enterprise marketers, we have a lot on our plate. Creating, optimising and constantly improving marketing strategies to attract and convert enough leads can feel like a real weight on our shoulders. Out of the numerous daily pitfalls that we are potentially be faced with, we’ve outlined 5 of our worst fears or 'nightmares'. To help marketers get rid of those nightmares, we’ve added some practical solutions. So here come the worst nightmares and how to overcome them:

Marketing and sales teams’ relationship resembles the relationship between a cat and a dog

In the world of Inbound Marketing, an asynchronous workflow between marketing and sales is more than a simply unproductive practice; today, it can actually turn out destructive.

Let’s imagine the following scenario: Maria and John work for company X; her occupation is in marketing and his is in sales. Despite their workflow differences, at the end of the day they both have a common goal – to acquire more customers, and hence generate more profit.

Here comes the problem: there’s bad blood between Maria and John. The reasons for that vary day by day, but most frequently John blames his marketing colleague for not generating enough volume and quality of leads, while Maria gets annoyed with John as he gets all the credit when successful conversions occur.

The bottom line is that having to work closely with her sales colleague is beginning to feel like one of Maria’s worst nightmares.

So what’s the solution? Simply:

  • Communicate
  • Use Marketing Automation
  • Resolve issues, as they appear
  • Define common ROI metrics

For a more detailed plan and further recommendations, I would suggest you go and take a look at our “Sales and Marketing Alignment Checklist”.

Content produced is not only insufficient; it also lacks engagement

As today’s modern marketer’s work life literally spins around the almighty King of Content, naturally two of our worst nightmares are strongly tied to:

  • Content volume and frequency - the questions of “How much and how often?”
  • Content quality and audience perception – the question of “High quality and engagement”

As stated in the “B2B Content Marketing 2014” report: “Aside from lack of time, B2B marketers consistently cite producing enough content and producing the kind of content that engages as their top challenges.”

 

 

What would the doctor prescribe to overcome content-related nightmares? Probably the pill called “Intelligence through automation and optimisation”, where automation assists marketers in mapping the right content, at the right time, to the right people, thus enabling content and channel optimisation practices. Speaking about right or high-quality content, you might as well consider taking a look at some great examples of enterprise content.

Additionally, in order to overcome the common challenge of content insufficiency, or the so-called “We need to produce more content!” nightmare, take the creativity pill and:

  • Repurpose: use old assets in a new context or channel
  • Outsource if necessary: especially when it comes to design
  • Curate frequently: but always use your voice
  • Keep consistency by means of Editorial Calendars and regular brainstorming sessions

Inability to measure campaign effectiveness

 Your boss rarely cares that much about how genius your last campaign was. What he wants to see are scalable results – how many leads did the campaign generate and what was the percentage of those successfully converted into clients? The nightmare of not being able to provide him with those exact numbers can be overwhelming.

How can you avoid this nightmare? Here are some of the most important factors that you should definitely never forget to include in the pre-initiation stage of your next campaign:

  • Add trackable call to action URLs
  • Optimise the forms in your Landing Pages
  • Make sure your CRM system and Marketing Automation software “speak to each other”
  • Make sure you and your sales colleagues are on the same page with all the technology involved

Lack of financial resources

The last, but far from least important nightmare for marketers is budgeting. Nothing has a greater power to destroy our day than having our creative genius slapped in the face by the harsh reality of low budgets. In fact, referring back to the “B2B Content Marketing 2014” report, 39% of Marketers point to lack of budget as one of the biggest challenges they face.

So, next time you get that brilliant campaign idea, but get asked to bury it in the ground due to financial obstacles, go ahead and:

  • Be persistent
  • Use convincing arguments (which brings us back to the importance of measuring the effectiveness of each campaign)
  • Predict the outcome of your future campaign with realistic estimations
  • Highlight competitive advantages and convince the board how this campaign will take the company one step further

Greatest challenges or worst nightmares: no matter what you like to call them, some parts of your everyday life as a marketer might surely put some extra pressure on your shoulders. So what about you, what are your own worst nightmares and what would you add to the list? Share them with us through a social channel below!