Marketing Pain Points and How To Overcome Them

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” - Peter Drucker

But marketers encounter barriers on a daily basis as they strive towards this ultimate goal.

In commissioning the ‘Marketing Pain Points and How To Overcome Them’ report from Econsultancy, we wanted to gain insight into key pain points and examine how best to help solve them.

Data is the fuel that powers any contextual marketing engine. Yet, the report reveals 40% of respondents say they are at migraine level ‘struggling with multiple data sources’.

Some CMOs cannot even identify when a customer has made a purchase, let alone anything more sophisticated. The main problem appears to be data sources that have been added to a system for operational use over time with no common key.

Having data in silos is like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle while keeping the pieces distributed in five different locations; it is impossible to get a complete picture and the version you have in front of you will tell a different story every time. This also makes it difficult to include 3rd party feeds effectively and align them with the tangle that is your proprietary data ecosystem.

And if the data you are using is anything more than one second old, your marketing is not contextual and could even be damaging your brand. For example, Jennifer buys an umbrella at 4.42pm but Karen the marketer sent a campaign for a discount on that same umbrella at 4.41pm. By the time Jennifer opens the email, she’s already bought the umbrella and instead of feeling pleased with the offer she feels resentful that she has overspent. The margin of time needn’t even be that small. Many companies find it difficult to resolve overnight what has been purchased and react accordingly.

Data empowers marketers to identify exactly what customers want at the right moment. Which means that the foundation of any contextual marketing program is a rich data set that includes shopping habits, demographics, preferences, time, location, price, past purchases, and behaviour.

As contextual marketing increasingly drives customer engagement, successfully addressing the ‘data pain point’ will be key for marketers who want to deliver a truly omnichannel customer experience.

More information on Marketing pain points and the hardest challenges currently facing the worlds top marketers can be found here.