IBM recently released ‘The State of Marketing 2012’ report. According to the report, companies across the globe foresee a number of marketing challenges in the coming years. These include customer collaboration and influence, increase in device and channel choices, ROI accountability, financial constraints, data explosion and more.
Expansion of device and channel choices topped the list of the biggest marketing challenges. With the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets, and exponential social media growth, this is hardly surprising. These changes make it necessary for business owners to adopt new channels like social media and content marketing to engage with customers over increasingly popular mobile devices.
To come up with an effective marketing mix, you need to consider changes in the marketplace and associated challenges, the direction in which your business is headed and integration of evolving strategies like mobile, content marketing and social media into the mix. While many businesses have adopted these evolving strategies, they are still in testing stages and do not have effective tracking systems. This makes ROI accountability a challenge. Although direct costs associated with these strategies are minimal, they require resources like web content writers and funds.