Top 8 Marketing Challenges & Solutions for 2023

There have been quite a few business changes in 2022. With the aftershock of COVID-19, businesses have had to find ways to source resources and conquer the world of eCommerce. To help businesses better prepare for the new year, Pyxl surveyed marketing and business professionals to better understand the state of digital marketing for 2023 and provide valuable insights and predictions for what businesses can expect in the new year.

We discovered that businesses will face many obstacles when it comes to navigating the uncertainty of what 2023 has in store. There are 8 main marketing and industry challenges businesses are currently facing and will continue to face in 2023.

We’ve listed the top 8 marketing and industry challenges, including some solutions and resources to help businesses prepare for 2023.

1. Challenge: Gaining new customers

As a result of the pandemic and a competitive business environment that is constantly changing, gaining new customers and increasing sales may be difficult for many businesses.

Solution: 

Offering better content and utilizing paid media will help your business stand out to your audiences and gain an upper hand over your competitors. Understanding your target audience becomes prudent here. In order to gain new customers, it’s important that you first understand their wants and needs and are able to showcase how your business is the right solution for them. There are several tools called Make My Persona from HubSpot that simplify the process of creating buyer personas.

As for creating content that stands out, try creating content your audience actually wants to engage with by utilizing your blog to answer their questions and social media pages for questions and polls that get your audience talking.

2. Challenge: Standing out from competition

The ever-changing business landscape and the emergence of new businesses make it difficult for businesses to stand out from the competition.

“More and more [businesses] are joining the [market].”

With a large number of businesses putting emphasis on digital marketing, consumers are seeing more advertisements than ever before, and the need to stand out and differentiate is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses.

Solution: 

Refresh your brand for 2023. A well-defined brand increases brand recognition and can help score more customers. For many businesses, their brand is no longer represents who they are as a company or is no longer resonating with their target customers, which is why brand awareness has been such a struggle.

Here are a few articles on how to rebrand your business to help increase brand awareness in 2023:

1. Is your brand message getting across?

2. Positioning your brand for the new year

3. Factors to consider when implementing a rebrand

3. Challenge: Keeping up with the changing COVID-19 expectations

For digital marketers (and most businesses), COVID-19 will continue to have an impact.

“The impact of the pandemic has not passed and continues to affect the industry this year.”

Businesses find it difficult to remain flexible and make long-term decisions because of the constant fluctuations caused by the pandemic. Businesses will have to adapt as the business environment continues to shift.

Solution:

In this era of the virtual world, engaging the online audience requires brands to be transparent and authentic, regardless of whether they’re finding new social media or creating new content to post. Focus on creating quality content that increases brand loyalty and allows content to be repurposed efficiently for the future as well.

Here are a few articles on how to create engaging content in 2023:

1. Where to Reach Generation Z with Marketing and Advertising
2. 5 Must-Know Tips for Content Marketing and Your Content Management System
3. How to Create Compelling & Optimized Content

4. Challenge: Managing various marketing channels to expand brand.

Another marketing challenge that was reported from the survey was the struggle to manage multiple marketing channels for brand expansion. With so many digital strategies to consider it may leave businesses struggling to understand what direction to take with the limited resources available (see Challenge #6 below). Unfortunately, there is no secret formula for determining marketing success. The best way to prioritize and drive focus is to create a business strategy based on the target audience’s needs and business goals, then test and gather data on what actually performs well!

Solution: 

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a successful marketing strategy that will help in managing marketing channels more efficiently:

1. Identify the target audience

2. Analyze past marketing metrics

3. Perform a SWOT analysis 

4. Define your marketing goals

5. Determine your marketing channels

6. Keep in mind the lifecycle stages and marketing funnel

7. Create a marketing plan

8. Report and measure progress

Here are a few articles on how to prioritize the marketing channels on the basis of ROI:

1. Paid Media KPIs to Help Measure Advertising ROI
2. Understanding Which Social Platforms Will Drive the Most ROI for Your Business
3. Using Marketing Attribution to Measure Marketing ROI

5. Challenge: Budget concerns

Another reason why it’s difficult to determine the most effective marketing methods is that businesses struggle with their marketing budget.

Without a clear marketing budget, it becomes difficult to determine the direction of your marketing strategy and where to allocate limited resources.

Solution:

Start by having access to reporting and analytics tools that offer easy-to-understand marketing and business reports and metrics. This would help you to analyze what is working for your business and how to allocate your marketing budget accordingly.

1. Google Analytics

2. HubSpot Analytics

3. Marketing Budget Templates

Also, here’s a list of the top marketing metrics to track and why.

6. Challenge: Lack of resources

Businesses are constantly seeking ways to deliver quality products and provide excellent customer service in order to retain existing customers. Businesses are also struggling to keep up and stand out amongst their competitors in the digital world, but are also seeing a decrease in marketing budget due to lack of consumer spending. This means businesses are trying to do more with less. 

Solution:

Hire a digital agency, like Pyxl, to manage some or all of your digital marketing projects.

Here are a few benefits of outsourcing to a digital agency that might help with business’s current lack of resources:

1. Cost savings: The cost of outsourcing to a digital agency is far less than hiring a full-time employee who has the skill sets required to compete with other businesses. This means businesses can do more with their budget.

2. Save time: Time is a huge factor. Businesses want to do more, but usually realize they just don’t have the resources to do everything well. By outsourcing projects to a digital agency, frees up hours that can be dedicated elsewhere within the business.

3. Team of experts: A digital agency is a team full of experts who specialize in all things digital marketing, so a lack of quality talent is no longer an issue.

7. Challenge: Lack of industry awareness and education

Another industry challenge that was reported was a lack of industry awareness and education. With so many emerging businesses it can be hard for consumers to stay up to date with what new technologies and solutions are available. How can a business market to their target audience if their target audience doesn’t even know their business has a solution?

Solution: 

Understand your audience. The best way to market to a consumer that doesn’t know about your product or service is to provide content that is tailored to your key audience. What are their challenges, motivations, how do they consume information? By understanding and defining your target personas you can start to connect with your audience by answering their questions and communicating your product or service as the solution to their problems. Try communicating through a variety of channels to see where your audience is most engaged: create content that answers their questions, use highly relevant hashtags in social media, and promote your content with paid media to reach a wide audience.

8. Challenge: Struggling to keep up with the changing marketing needs

As the market changes rapidly and new trends emerge, it may become more difficult than ever for businesses to gain new customers and increase sales. Moreover, it seems like new marketing laws and regulations are popping up every day, making it difficult for marketing and business professionals to keep up. And breaching these compliance regulations can result in serious penalties.

Solution: 

To stay up to date with the latest marketing rules and regulations, follow industry newsletters like Pyxl’s to ensure you’re receiving the latest digital industry trends and updates. Or partner with a digital agency to ensure your marketing efforts are always following best practices.

Also, here are a few resources to ensure you’re maintaining compliance right now:

1. How to Create a GDPR Compliance Strategy

2. ADA Website Compliance Regulations: What You Need to Know

3. Steps to Ensure Your Website is ADA Compliant

4. Facebook Privacy Issues: What They Mean for Consumers and Brands

Partner with Pyxl

Is your business facing any of these marketing challenges? Hopefully, we’ve provided enough resources to get you on the right track for 2023. Or if you feel like you need a little more guidance, feel free to contact us! We’re a 13-year award-winning digital agency that specializes in creative problem solving and delivering full-spectrum digital solutions to help take your business to the next level.

Updated: Apr 27, 2023