Top 20 Marketing Pain Points for Advertisers

For advertisers , marketing and advertising decisions are becoming increasingly difficult to make.

On the one hand, under the great wave of digital transformation, the media communication market is becoming increasingly complex, with new media, new technologies, and new models emerging in an endless stream, and the rise and fall of old and new forces, which contains infinite variables; on the other hand, the overall business environment is not optimistic, the negative impact of the black swan event has not completely dissipated, the operating pressure of enterprises has increased dramatically, marketing budgets have been tightened, and they are more pursuing practical results.

So, specifically, what are the pain points that advertisers face in marketing? What are the demands on the media and the market? How to cope with the rapidly changing market ecology?

01. Digital transformation

How to find the transformation path that best suits your situation?

Digital transformation has become a general trend and a buzzword that corporate decision makers often talk about. However, knowing is easier said than done, and most companies have not found a transformation path that suits them. Accenture's latest "China Enterprise Digital Transformation Index Research" points out that despite the full implementation of digital transformation, only a few companies have achieved significant transformation results.

Although they are all digital transformations, the specific situations faced by each company and the paths they choose may be completely different. For example, some companies use new technologies to transform, such as moving traditional offline data to the cloud; some companies use digital methods to improve or increase the company's existing business processes; and some companies are more thorough in digitalization, making full use of the latest technical means to support the company's full-chain operations and open up new business areas.

02. Effect measurement

How to accurately evaluate the real effect of each marketing?

Without accurate measurement, advertisers don’t even know how to allocate their budgets and dare not spend money. Only by achieving accurate measurement and truly evaluating the effect of each marketing campaign, the value of each medium, and the effectiveness of each budget, can advertisers adjust their marketing strategies more purposefully, allocate budgets more reasonably, and optimize their return on investment in future campaigns.

However, the quantitative evaluation of marketing effectiveness has always been a problem that has troubled advertisers. There are two core difficulties: on the one hand, it is difficult to obtain and connect data. Some companies themselves have a low degree of digitization, and it is difficult to obtain data. The data fragmentation between major marketing platforms also makes it impossible to connect the front and back link data, and it is difficult to measure the overall ROI. On the other hand, in terms of the methodology and specific methods of effect measurement, the industry has not yet formed a unified standard. The different measurement methods between platforms have resulted in advertisers being unable to compare the ROI between different platforms, and the ROI of different media forms such as social, e-commerce, short videos, and live broadcasts.

03. Open up business

How can marketing truly serve the business growth of an enterprise?

In the past, corporate marketing and sales were strictly distinguished, and marketing was brand building. Now, with the development of new technologies and new media forms, full-link digitalization has become possible, and marketing platforms are constantly improving the back-end layout, allowing advertisers to complete sales conversion while marketing. In addition, the overall business environment has not been very good in the past two years, and advertisers have set increasing sales as an important marketing goal.

For enterprises, this requires a comprehensive transformation of marketing strategies, systems and ideas to adapt to shorter and more front-end transaction processes. They should not only focus on the front-end link and be limited to the purchase of advertising traffic, but should make a comprehensive layout from a business perspective, build a global online business system, and truly let marketing return to its essence of growth.

04. Content Creativity

How can we generate creative ideas that are tailored to the needs of different people, quickly, efficiently and economically?

Creativity is entering a new stage of mass production and mass consumption. Consumers' interests are shifting faster and faster, and they are getting bored with the old and liking the new faster. At the same time, consumers want to see different creative ideas in different scenarios and touchpoints. This results in the cycle of each communication project becoming shorter, but the requirements for the "quality" and "quantity" of the creative output are being upgraded. This requires companies to demonstrate rapid innovation capabilities and agile creative strength.

In an era of user communication with thousands of faces, brand creativity and content need to take into account both quantity and quality, brand and effect, in order to achieve the unity of user value and commercial value. In terms of the demand for creative content, companies are increasingly leaning towards “more, faster, better, and cheaper”.

05. KOL selection

How to choose the most suitable influencer in the vast ocean of influencers?

More and more advertisers are beginning to pay attention to KOLs and invest a lot of budget. On the one hand, in today's era, the traffic and attention of KOLs cannot be underestimated, and brands can no longer fully cover consumers by advertising alone. On the other hand, KOLs' influence on their fans and their ability to guide public opinion cannot be underestimated. Consumers' functional demands for products are fading, and they are more pursuing spiritual and emotional satisfaction, which KOLs meet very well.

In the traditional era, the KOL environment was relatively simple, and mainly referred to the centralized communication conducted by celebrities. In the digital age, everything has become fragmented and decentralized. Super-influential KOLs no longer exist. The number of KOLs has exploded, and the levels have become rich and diverse. In addition to stars and celebrities, there are also experts, Internet celebrities, core brand users, fanatical fans, and so on. It is not easy for advertisers to find truly suitable opinion leaders among the vast ocean of KOLs.

06. Global integration

How to efficiently integrate all media forms and communication touchpoints?

The overall media landscape is still evolving and fragmentation is increasing. The huge number of media, diverse media types, infinite media touchpoints, and scattered user attention also pose challenges to media strategy formulation and communication.

It is not just the explosion in the number of touchpoints, but also the personalized and precise management of each touchpoint that poses a huge challenge to brands. For example, compared with traditional media purchases, cooperation with KOLs is much more complex and richer in terms of cooperation methods and models. After all, each KOL is personalized and has a unique content style and fan audience. In cooperation with brands, some KOLs are merely information dissemination channels, some KOLs are suitable for enhancing brand tone, and some KOLs are suitable for directly selling products. Different purposes and set marketing methods also need to be customized, which is a huge test for the management capabilities of advertisers.

07. Technology Explosion

How to quickly identify and master emerging new technologies?

From user insights, communication strategies, creative realization, media placement, execution to CRM, technology has penetrated into the entire marketing chain. What technology can achieve has far exceeded our imagination.

Content marketing management, market analysis tools, CRM software, programmatic native advertising, marketing data management platform, demand-side platform DSP, immersive interaction, etc. In terms of business application software, no industry has as many industry-specific software as marketing. For enterprises, faced with an endless stream of new technologies, they need to be able to evaluate each new technology very quickly and accurately so that they can stay one step ahead, improve marketing efficiency, and enjoy the benefits of technological innovation.

08. Product-effect synergy

How to allocate brand and performance budget more reasonably?

In recent years, under the pressure of business operations, companies have placed too much emphasis on performance advertising when allocating marketing budgets, and have neglected the construction of brand advertising. Excessive promotions and low-price strategies will have a negative impact on brand image and long-term survival. The unreasonable allocation of brand advertising and performance advertising will affect the depth of the brand.

Advertisers are increasingly aware that a healthy growing brand needs to strike a balance between short-term marketing effects and long-term brand asset accumulation in order to make brand development more sustainable. However, how to grasp the budget allocation ratio between brand and effect, and whether brand and effect can be unified, also tests the decision-making ability of advertisers.

09. Transformation of discourse power

How to deal with the “digital kingdom” with increasingly powerful voice?

Although media touchpoints have exploded and the fragmentation of the marketing environment has continued to intensify, from the perspective of the media landscape, the head effect is prominent and concentration continues to increase. Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu, Tencent and other "digital kingdoms" account for more than 80% of China's Internet advertising.

This has also brought great troubles to advertisers: on the one hand, Party A and Party B have "swapped positions", and the buyer's voice is far less than that of the seller, so advertisers can only adapt to the rhythm of the resource provider; on the other hand, ATBB is growing into a "digital kingdom", and how companies can enter into cooperation, make good use of the resources of these large platforms, and open up the links on the platforms has also become a topic that requires in-depth research.

10. Price Cost

How to deal with media prices that are rising every year?

Media prices are mainly affected by supply and demand. According to GroupM's data, the Chinese market has never seen a drop in media prices, only price increases of varying degrees. Media supply mainly refers to the amount of audience attention. For example, the longer and more frequently users stay on long video, short video platforms and social media, the larger the supply inventory. In fact, the "shortage" situation on the media supply side has lasted for almost 3 years.

Media prices will still see a significant increase: first, due to rising costs in society and the industry as a whole, operating costs for businesses, including media platforms, will rise; second, the explosive growth of performance-based customers will continue to lead to an imbalance in inventory supply and demand, resulting in a premium growth in media prices; third, macroeconomic reasons will also have a significant impact, such as a looser monetary environment after the epidemic.

11. New media placement

How to identify whether it is a growth dividend or an investment trap?

In the digital media communication environment, new media and new marketing emerge in an endless stream. New media means value gaps and marketing dividends. Advertisers also want to use the latest media forms to present users with a fresher experience.

However, opportunities and traps are often two sides of the same coin. New media also means that industry order and norms have not yet been formed. From the results perspective, many new forms are not satisfactory in terms of user sales conversion. The effect that advertisers hope to see is not just a bunch of simple exposure and interaction data, but that every penny spent should bring some specific and measurable effect to increase product sales.

12. User Journey

How to fully and vividly restore the user's complete journey?

"Data has become the oil of the new era." The Economist made such a judgment about the future: a new era of data science-driven decision-making is coming. The future is the future of data. In the ecosystem of the Internet of Everything, all consumer behaviors, all media touchpoints, and even all scenarios are digital.

However, the digitization of all user behaviors does not mean that these data can be connected to form a complete user journey map to guide the company's marketing decisions. Although digital media and digital marketing technology platforms have a large amount of data, this data is not advertiser-driven. Moreover, with data policies becoming increasingly stringent, it will become increasingly difficult to break through.

13. User sovereignty

How to handle the relationship between new users and brands?

Social media allows people and information to flow together more conveniently than ever before. In particular, the voice of consumers has grown exponentially. With the connectivity of social media, consumers are no longer alone. Their comments on brands, their love and anger for brands can all be amplified on a large scale on social media. On social media, any brand behavior that attempts to control public opinion will arouse users' disgust and disgust, and the effect is often counterproductive.

Joe Tripodi, former chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola, pointed out in 2011 that consumers always create more than the brands themselves. “Consumers are now given unprecedented power to spontaneously create content about our brands and across the internet through their own social networks. This has transformed my role as CMO of Coca-Cola and the way the company builds strong relationships with consumers.”

14. Data Falsification

How to do real marketing in an environment where fake data is rampant?

Where there is profit, there is data falsification. Especially on the Internet, the cost of falsification is very low. You just need to publish false data and everything seems to be a natural outcome. Impressions can be faked, clicks can be faked, and even sales leads and orders can be faked. Live streaming sales is a typical example, where fraud has penetrated into every data dimension of live streaming sales: ordinary machine-brushed popularity, advanced machine-brushed popularity, machine-brushed expert fans, entering the store from the live streaming room to follow the anchor, entering the store from the live streaming room to order products and add them to the shopping cart, real people entering the store UV, entering the store from the live streaming room to add to cart + following the anchor, real people entering the live streaming room to interact, real people entering the live streaming room to speak, front-end reading of pictures and texts, back-end PV of pictures and texts, back-end UV of pictures and texts, entering the store from the back-end of pictures and texts, video front-end, etc.

There are even brand owners who say that with more and more data and reports, brand placement is increasingly returning to human experience and judgment, and it is too dangerous to make decisions based on surface data. Big data marketing can be very effective, but it must be based on real and valid data and make good use of this data, rather than blindly pursuing huge amounts of data.

15. Data Privacy

How to deal with tightened data privacy policies and laws and regulations?

Looking around the world, since the GDPR, the "strictest data protection regulation in history", came into effect in 2018, overseas countries have intensively introduced or revised data compliance-related legislation. Such as California CCPA Privacy Protection Regulations, Nevada SB220 Data Privacy Act, UK DPA2018 Data Protection Act, Swiss DPA "Federal Data Protection Act", Germany BDSG "Federal Personal Data Protection Act", etc.

As the two major mobile operating systems that dominate the mobile phone market, the new versions of Apple iOS and Android have also made the most powerful upgrades to user privacy protection. Among them, Android 10 prohibits the acquisition of the unchangeable unique device identifier IMEI to protect privacy; Apple IOS14 changes the default authorization mode for applications to obtain advertising identifiers to require users to actively authorize. This will make it difficult to achieve target audience, conversion attribution, and precise targeting of advertisements in mobile systems.

16. Organizational Structure

How to set up marketing organizational structure and management model more scientifically?

17. Talent Challenge

How to build a professional marketing team that keeps pace with the times and is capable in business?

18. Long-lasting brand success

How can emerging brands move from being “Internet celebrity brands” to being “long-lasting popular brands”?

19. Brand Renewal

How can traditional classic brands win the sincere support of the younger generation?

20. Market decline

How can brands and products quickly penetrate low-tier markets?

Author: Media 360

Source: Media 360