The everyday challenges faced by yesterday’s marketers aren’t the same as the challenges faced today. Additionally, today’s challenges will make way for a new set in the future. Growing return on investment will always be a challenge. However, problems will continue to evolve as inbound marketing grows. In addition, there will be technology changes and building branded online communities will become a priority. Below are some potential first world marketing problems you may witness in 2013.
1. Community Managers get mad when the RSS feeds they syndicate via a branded Twitter account have advertisements.
2. Closed-loop marketing pros figure out their CRM API connection has reached its daily limit every day for over a month. Thousands of new leads are will sit in a queue and won't be reported.
3. Marketers realize that none of their email marketing campaigns are mobile friendly. In addition, they don't link to a landing page with a mobile version. Oops, they’ve just potentially eliminated 36 percent of their opens.
4. Digital PR folks struggle to decide where to place their homerun piece of earned media – The Wall Street Journal or Entrepreneur?
5. Designers asking themselves, “Is this infographics long enough?”
6. Conversion Rate Optimization professionals second guessing whether 97, 98 or 99 percent certainty is good enough for their A/B testing program.
7. Content marketers with tens of thousands of blog subscribers get burned when Google unplugs Feedburner.
8. Marketing thought-leaders struggling to decide between speaking at Blog World or PubCon.
9. Chief Content Officers having to tell their CEO that the blog post doesn’t meet the editorial requirements of the brand’s inbound campaign.
10. Finding the budget to pay Facebook after it charges companies per post to be considered by its EdgeRank algorithm.
Seen any of these yet? If you haven’t, expect to in the New Year. The use of technology and big data is exploding in agencies and marketing departments throughout the first world. This trend is not going away. Additionally, if you’re a marketer on the front lines of this evolution, attention to detail will help prevent some of the above. If you’re leading the charge with a team of inbounders, be aware of the above and ask the right questions in 2013.
