What Makes Digital Marketing Difficult? A Comprehensive Guide

Customers are increasingly active on multiple devices and platforms, and it's no longer enough to focus all your efforts on a single strategy. Companies and non-profit organizations must compete in the digital landscape to succeed and survive. Having a strong presence in digital marketing is no longer a luxury, but an imperative. However, digital marketing isn't without its challenges; some are easier to overcome than others.

Below are some of the biggest digital marketing challenges faced by small businesses and how to overcome them. Before you can effectively generate quality leads, you need to know who your target audience is. This is a challenge because your target audience may not be a single demographic group, but could be serving multiple people, demographics, and types of customers. But knowing who your target audience is is very different from knowing your target audience; that is, knowing what they want, what they need and meeting their expectations. Knowing your target audience and what they expect from your business (especially online) can be a challenge.

And just as not all users are created the same way, everyone has different needs and expectations. Knowing how your target audience communicates, where they meet online and how they prefer to be reached is important to your digital marketing strategy. Developing a content marketing strategy is something that every company or organization should do and, possibly, that could be combined with their social media marketing strategy and other marketing initiatives. However, most companies don't really know where to start. To develop a content marketing strategy, you need to know what content is considered valuable to your target audience, and then how you'll share it.

For businesses and non-profit organizations that don't yet have content to share: blog posts, industry news, podcasts, videos, etc., it may seem impossible, especially if you don't have content ready. The first step in a content marketing strategy is to know your target audience. Next, you need to determine what content you already have AND if any of that content would be considered valuable to your target audience. If so, develop a plan to share it. Promoting brand awareness is probably one of the biggest challenges of digital marketing, because you wouldn't be trying to generate leads if you weren't trying to promote brand awareness. Promoting brand awareness in and of itself isn't difficult; however, doing so successfully can be a challenge.

Fast-growing companies that want to achieve and maintain engagement with their target demographic can't succeed without marketing automation. When it comes to generating effective online referrals to their brand's website, a digital marketer faces pressure to generate traffic. This is different from a referral since you want to identify the most efficient way to attract people to your site with a referral. Traffic generation refers to the total number of people who visit your site and how long they stay. By increasing traffic to your site, you increase the chances of convincing that consumer that they need to buy something.

How do you do that? You have to publish the RIGHT content as digital marketing experts will attest. SiteVisibility, a British £2 million digital agency has taken a slightly different approach by creating an in-house digital marketing recruitment agency. The approach has helped them meet hiring needs quickly and cost-effectively. While still viable, companies can no longer rely solely on traditional marketing tactics. SEO and cold calling may have helped you get through the early 2000s but two decades later you have to market to people not search engines.

And the best part is that by implementing a process that includes the 4 crucial components of GrowthStack (clear messaging, marketing automation, sales automation and campaigns) you save yourself some of the headaches that entrepreneurs face with traditional marketing. Here are 10 obstacles that business owners face with their marketing and how you can overcome them with digital marketing:

  • Generating Traffic & Leads: When you're brainstorming your content calendar for blogs offers emails or social media posts ask yourself what problems your audience has that you can solve. Always orient your content towards a specific problem that your customers have.
  • Creating Engaging Content: This will make it more attractive and beneficial. Next consider the type of content that modern consumers want - blog posts versus videos for example - according to this HubSpot report videos and social media posts are consumed more times than any other type of content.
  • Promoting Brand Awareness: For even more success consider including the video in your other pieces of content - are you writing a blog? Record a quick 30-second video on your phone and include it in the post - are you creating an infographic? Add a promotional video to the landing page to explain what's included.
  • Developing Buyer Profiles: Develop buyer profiles based on customer surveys market research and any other information you can get your hands on.
  • Using Free Online Tools: In addition you may want to take advantage of free online tools that help you better understand your needs as a digital marketer and brand and the platforms that exist that could help you.
  • Setting Goals: These goals may include earning certifications in your area of expertise reading a new marketing book or watching a webinar.
  • Learning How To Get Results: Learn how to get reliable marketing results with the best-selling book The Golden Toilet.
In today's constantly changing and expanding digital world all marketers face one challenge or another when trying to establish a successful presence online. However with the right strategies in place businesses can overcome these challenges and create an effective digital presence for their brand. Our digital marketing team has extensive experience in HubSpot and StoryBrand marketing.

We've created holistic marketing machines for more than 100 companies and our systems address the four components of the GrowthStack Business. Contact ROI Online experts for more information about how we can help create an effective digital presence for your business.