Challenges Ahead for CMOs in 2023

In the market of tomorrow, political instability, great resignation, and inflation will all contribute equally in affecting businesses. On the other hand, customer intelligence is on the rise. It is becoming increasingly difficult to convert the customer. Several brands and their marketing campaigns are vying for attention at the same time through personalized messaging. But this may or may not help as consumer trends are also shifting and marketers need to address a segmented landscape. Let us look at some of the marketing challenges that CMOs will face in 2023 and how they will overcome them.

Difficulty creating lasting relationships with new customers

According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of the customers. So it pays to have a large number of loyal customers and every company must try and retain them for as long as possible. Now your brand can establish a meaningful connection with a new customer by:

1. Focusing on lead nurturing strategies that work across the sales funnel
2. Shifting from broad-reach to hyper-focused content
3. Creating meaningful content that focuses on customer pain points
4. Creating a seamless digital experience that facilitates conversions

Marketing teams can use newsletters, advertisements, and targeted sales pitches to directly connect with the customer. They can also streamline the CTAs and introduce dynamic elements within emails so that the customers can easily enter information within a mail and swipe to submit an enquiry or request a quote.  

Too much data and too little time

Your marketing team gets a lot of data from ad forms, emails from customers, and lead-gen forms. In addition, if your team uses data analytics tools, then there will be even more data that needs to be taken into account. Making sense of all this data is quite a hard marketing challenge. There are two great ways to solve this problem: 

1. Marketers need to use the power of Big Data analytics. It can help make better pricing decisions, plan better marketing strategies, display more personalized content and provide better customer service.
2. Leverage machine learning to help with lead scoring and predictive analytics. Segment users on your website and send them automated responses based on their actions. 

Hiring and retaining the right talent

Sometimes the marketing challenges faced by a CMO are due to factors internal to the company. The difficulty is finding the people with the right skills for your marketing strategies. Digital marketing is highly sophisticated now and tomorrow it will be even more so. So whether you are hiring a content marketer or a marketing analyst to join your team, make sure you find the right individuals. There is no dearth of talent; however, there could be a shortage of the right attributes that would be useful to your company. How do you get over what is at the same time a hiring and a marketing challenge? You of course need a process that helps you assess and determine the best of the lot and shortlist them. But apart from that there are three other things that can help you: 

1. Provide a value proposition. Convince your new hires that yours is the right place. Pick the best talent and give them a reason to not leave you.
2. Reduce the turnaround times in the hiring process. Make sure that each round in the hiring process is spaced by only 48 hours.
3. Advertise it well. Putting it on every major platform that is widely used, so that your ideal hire wouldn’t miss it, is a great marketing strategy.
4. Find your niche. You would be posting a job requirement on job boards. But say you are a gaming creatives company, then you could technically post your job requirement on a gaming forum as well.
5. Network with jobseekers at events that highlight your niche and also at job fairs. If you are an interior design agency, then meet jobseekers at a real estate meet. Place a stall and post your job requirement. Of course put the requirement online as well to reach more people.

Security concerns, especially around data privacy

Customers are very concerned about the data that they provide you. They always fear that it may fall into the wrong hands. This is why CMOs must discuss with CIOs and the IT teams in their companies on how best to manage and secure customer data. Some of the steps that can be taken are:

1. Make sure that the company confirms to GDPR and US legislations around consumer data privacy. Make this a part of your brand policy. 
2. Ensure that your websites are protected with an SSL certificate. This will ensure that whatever data the user enters is scrambled and can only be read by the owner of the website.
3. Make sure that the cookies that are used to store and analyze customer data are from your website (first-party). 
4. Invest in email encryption software, so that every communication over email goes out secure to the customer and back.
5. Make sure your employees follow a multi-layer authentication process before they have access to sensitive customer data.Have a set of best practices for handling and securing customer data that everyone in the company follows.

Inflation, political instability, and other market-related concerns

External factors beyond a company’s control form another great marketing challenge. Inflation is already here. Rising cost of food grains and fuel prices means that not only is processing affected in the manufacturing industry, but managing logistics too could be a pain for leaders in this industry. And after all this, how does one ensure that the marketing is going according to plan? How do you ensure that the consumer does not have to bear the brunt of the increased costs? You might think that no marketing strategy is going to succeed. However, there are some things you could do.

1. Inform the customer ahead of a change in pricing why it is happening, so that the customer is better prepared and not dissatisfied by it.
2. Redefine your value statement. Be sure to clarify to the customer how your product or service will add more value to the customer tomorrow. 
3. When in a crisis, fight to your strengths. Put your money in the right channels in your annual marketing spend. Use promotions where the ROI is greater.
4. Subscription plans could help you weather the storm if your business model supports it. Allowing customers to register for your service at a lower cost could be a lot better than offering a hefty discount.

Closing words

We are molded to become better leaders in the fire of challenges. A difficult situation, a tough client, a recent market upheaval, all help separate the best marketing leaders from the rest. Let us hope getting to know these marketing challenges will hold you in good stead for the year to come and give an edge above the competition as you chase your goals.