10 Digital Marketing Challenges 

1.Building an Awesome Website

This is an obvious place to start – when a business decides to go online, the first challenge they have is building the best website possible.

Most small businesses start looking for professional web designers, who can make sites that both look pleasing aesthetically and deliver a great user experience (UX) “ user experience”.

The way your audience experiences your online presence is a huge factor in the success of your marketing efforts.

A poorly designed website will hurt your reputation and your ability to position your brand as an authority in your space,

75 percent of consumers say they judge businesses credibility based on their website design.

They will also leave if your site is not attractive to them.

Fortunately, if you’re working for a small businesses that has a limited budget, there are many options for building and maintaining websites at an affordable rate

  2. Understanding Their Audiences

Speaking of attracting the right visitors, many small businesses don’t fully know who their target audience is.

This is where buyer personas come in handy.

Buyer personas are essential in the digital marketing world. They are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers.

You use real data about your existing customers and market research to fully develop and build your buyer personas.

It doesn’t have to cost you a fortune and weeks of work to gather this information. Simply use a free survey tool and regularly conduct surveys to gauge their levels of satisfaction and gather feedback about your products and services.

Then, once you have all the information you need, you can build your personas by answering simple questions about your ideal customers. HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool makes this process easy and fun.

 3.Creating Valuable Content

Even if your small business has a good looking website, without valuable, informative content, your marketing won’t deliver results.

Overcoming this challenge usually involves hiring professionals to create content for you and to oversee all content creation, including video, blog articles, and social media shares.

 4.Promoting Content

Even if you’re creating awesome content that delivers value to your ideal readers, there’s another component that often gets overlooked – promoting the content.

There are several ways you can fuel your content distribution, all of which can take up a substantial amount of time to do.

• Social Media

One of the best ways to promote content is through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You want to build a strong following of relevant users who align with your buyer personas.

The best way to build and maintain this following is by hooking their attention by sharing insightful content that addresses their pain points and helps them pursue their goals.

• Email

Creating an email newsletter can deliver many awesome benefits for small businesses. First of all, by sharing snippets of content, you are able to drive more traffic to that piece content, like a blog article or whitepaper.Also you’re  keeping your audience engaged on a regular basis. For example, if you’re sending weekly newsletters, your brand is going to stay top of mind, especially when those newsletters help them solve an issue.

With the help of automation tools, you can make your email strategy efficient and easy to manage.

• Outreach

The term outreach marketing refers to the practice of connecting with people or companies that share an interest in what you and your organization has to offer. Your outreach strategy can consist of a few parts, like public relations or guest blogging.

One of the most popular approaches is connecting with influencers. Small businesses might be contending with bigger brands, so while they might not have the budget for big advertising campaigns, they likely can afford working with influencers.

This ongoing engagement in online communities can attract more readers to your site. It also gives you another space to showcase your authority and promote your content.

 5.Generating New Leads

The overall goal of content marketing is to earn the trust of your readers. When they trust you and seek out more information from you, they are willing to share some personal information in exchange for gated content, known as a content offer.

This is how small businesses generate leads. A visitor who reads your blog articles finds a call to action (CTA) at the bottom of one of your posts. The CTA is promoting a free ebook.

Once they click that CTA, they are sent to a landing page, where they fill out a form, giving their name and email address. After the form is submitted, they receive an email with the ebook attached.

The visitor becomes a lead as you add their contact information into your customer relationship management (CRM) system. They enjoy the free ebook, and you have a way of sharing more value with them and keeping them engaged with your brand.

 6. Driving Sales

you’re likely competing with bigger names that have much more brand recognition than you. Even in the smallest industries, you’re bound to encounter bigger competitors with deeper pockets.

The best way to drive more sales – commit to being helpful at every customer touchpoint and stay human in every interaction you have with your audience.

If people in your niche consistently believe they are learning from you and feel connected to you in an authentic, human way, they will eventually look up to you as an authority within your industry, trust you, and value your business enough to invest money in your products and services.

7.Funding

It’s a common challenge for small businesses to have trouble finding money to invest in their marketing strategies. It’s a real Catch-22, since you need marketing in order to get attention drawn to your business, but you need funds in order to bolster your marketing.

Thankfully, there are a lot of free or low-cost methods available to businesses of all sizes today.

Budgeting is the key to keeping your business afloat. Be wise and attentive with your funds so that, while you might have trouble with the amount of money coming into your business, you can always work on managing the amount of money you do have.

 8. Building Brand Consistency and Trust

For many small businesses, especially those just getting on their feet, establishing a reputation can be a pretty sizable hurdle. Entering an industry that’s already pretty saturated with other businesses means fighting to stand out from the rest.

Often times, the best way to earn brand recognition and awareness is through some of the practices listed above. Providing valuable content and building an online presence in an effort to generate leads has a complimentary consequence of generating familiarity as well.

 9.Mobile Optimization

Being mobile-friendly isn’t just about how your website looks on a smartphone or tablet. According to OuterBox, 79 percent of consumers have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last six months. With rates like that, it’s imperative that your leads are actually able to convert through mobile if they should so choose.

The mobile experience is too important to ignore, so make sure that during your design and optimization, you key into mobile best practices as well.

 10. Burnout

Running a small business is a large endeavor and practical management requires a lot of energy, time, and attention.

When faced with this challenge, the first thing is to remember you’re only human. If you lose sight of that, you’ll forget to monitor your exhaustion and adjust any bad habits you may be developing.

Be conscious of what contributes to burnout for you and create a list of actions you can perform to remedy it if you reach that point.