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The new year brings another exciting opportunity for us in digital marketing. 

The recent months have offered glimpses of what's to come—the rise of AI, Google's new EEAT search ranking factors, social media shopping, and several other trends that have made a significant impact this year. These trends are poised to dominate the landscape of digital marketing in the upcoming year.

But behind all these trends are some pressing challenges for digital marketers and businesses. Knowing these challenges firsthand gives you an idea of how to address them and keep your digital marketing efforts in the right place.

So, let's tackle and solve them all in this blog!

Keeping up with new technologies

Early-stage technologies like VR, AR, 5G, and blockchain hold immense potential to revolutionise marketing in 2024. Many businesses have already incorporated these trends into their digital marketing strategies.

Despite recognising the benefits for your business and customers, staying updated with these technologies might feel overwhelming.

To avoid this overwhelming feeling, read more about these technologies and find out what you feel is most useful for your business. Define your goals when choosing these technologies as well. It can come in the form of cutting-edge tech innovations that help you stay ahead of the competition, and provide value to your customers. 

Remember, the best innovations are the ones that work best for your business!

Synergy between sales and marketing

A business can best achieve its goals when its sales and marketing teams are aligned. However, uniting these teams can be a challenging task.

Both sales and marketing teams might have different goals and different approaches to meet them. They also track success differently, using separate tools and analytics, which leads to unclear definitions of success for the business.

However, aligning them is necessary to achieve unified business growth. Establishing clear goals and objectives that both sales and marketing teams can collaborate on is a key strategy to dismantle the barrier separating these two teams.

Transparent communication is also needed, strengthening their unified work towards meeting the business goals. 

Having a unified customer relationship management (CRM) system and data management are also essential to keep the two teams working together. 

Hiring top talent

Having top-tier employees within your marketing team is a crucial asset your business can depend on. However, finding such talent isn't always an easy task.

In addition, the higher demand for these skilled marketing talents has resulted in increased wages and compensations by employers in order to attract them into their business. 

Also, most employees nowadays are looking for businesses that offer strong work-life balance, enjoyable company culture, and options for hybrid working arrangements. 

Strengthening your recruitment efforts is one way to address this marketing challenge. Defining what attributes and qualities your specific job posting requires can help applicants determine if they're a perfect fit for the role. 

Privacy concerns and data safety

Customers are now more aware than ever of how businesses and companies handle their personal data and browsing behaviour. Even more so, government regulations have become stricter when it comes to handling personal data, hoping it lessens data privacy breaches and other violations. 

And this is where your business's marketing ethics come into play. As a business, you must properly ask your customers if they're willing to share their data for your marketing use. 

Transparency is also a must. Make it clear to them how you will utilise their data, and assure them that these will be safe in your hands. Respect their decision if they're not willing to share their data with you. 

Being aware of social issues

In a world where speaking up on social issues has become a norm, businesses must also take a stand on social issues concerning their audience. However, a challenge arises when a business lacks awareness of these issues or how they can effectively contribute to positive social causes.

To add to that dilemma, these issues and advocacies must also align with your business identity and brand values. Although much of your audience is vocal about the impact of climate change, directly addressing it might not align with your business's current trajectory.

To better find what social issues and causes you can participate in, thorough market research is imperative. Understand your customers deeply and find out what issues matter to them the most. 

Social listening tools are also helpful in gauging their opinions on most subjects of social relevance. Identify the issues that align with your brand or those with which your business genuinely resonates.

Creating content that attracts leads

This has challenged businesses like yours more than ever - creating content that generates valuable leads. With the recent changes in Google's search quality evaluator, most notably the EEAT where the new 'E' stands for experience, writing credible content is now more emphasised.

Even with AI writing tools on the rise, this problem still can't be mitigated. What AI writing lacks is personality and authenticity, two qualities of content that generate the most leads. 

Writing content with insights from subject experts is one marketing strategy your business can rely on. Answer their questions, pain points, and concerns when you create content. Be relatable and use AI to gain deep knowledge of your audience preferences.  

Tackle these digital marketing challenges now! 

A challenging year in digital marketing in 2024 is ahead of us. But it’s also an opportunity waiting to be unlocked! 

We hope that by giving you a preview of these digital marketing challenges, you’re in the best position to recalibrate your marketing strategies and make the most of your digital journey come 2024! 

Take your digital marketing strategies to the next level with Elephant in the Boardroom! Visit us at www.elephantintheboardroom.com.au and start your fruitful journey in marketing!