4 major challenges for Marketing managers of 21st Century

Everyone faces problems and challenges in their jobs. And a marketing managers job has gotten tougher with more and more introduction of different media vehicles and different costs of advertising present in the market. In general, a marketing manager of the 21st century faces the following challenges.

Budget allocation is a challenge for marketing managers from day one 

Where do you use your budget? Do you use it for TVC’s, hoardings, radio, online or where else? There are so many media vehicles today, and so many variant frequencies of advertising, that media planning has become a big challenge for marketers. If you select the right message but a wrong media, then the message will probably be lost.

1) Differentiation

The second challenge is differentiation. A customer sometimes watches 6-7 ads in a single minute. If the ads are longer, he will still watch 2-3 ads in every minute of advertisements. So how do you differentiate yourself? What is the message that needs to go along with the advertisement? And remember that the message needs to be effective enough to penetrate the noise and reach the customers mind. Thus, Differentiation is another big challenge for marketing managers.

2) Brand Recall

You got the perfect message. You even advertised it through the right channels. But now what do you do about the brand recall? After a month or so, the customer is going to forget your ad. So how much budget do you allocate for the brand recall? A smart tactic to learn here is from Vodafone, which always has a 15-20 second ad which can be run at anytime to increase the brand recall. Similarly Intel has a small jingle, which makes customers remember them in seconds.

3) Positioning 

Another target of a marketing manager, is to achieve the right positioning for the brand. Off course, positioning has now become a holistic activity. A company like Apple or Samsung has to ensure that each of its various department is upto mark (including sales, service and others) to achieve the correct positioning in the customers mind. However, marketing is at the helm of positioning and the message sent by the company to its customers through advertisements, majorly forms an impression on the customer. The brand needs to be number 1 in the customers mind, or at least 2nd or 3rd. If it drops below that, it directly affects the sales of the product. Thus, positioning is no easy challenge to conquer.

The above challenges for marketing managers are such that each of them involves 100 decisions to be made and 100 options to be rejected. And even then, at the back of the mind, always remains a doubt, what if we had selected the other option? What if we had shown the other marketing message? This is the exact reason why so many advertising agencies and media planning agencies have cropped up. Because marketing managers need as many minds working on the right strategy, as possible and affordable by the company.

Thus a marketing managers job is filled with challenges. And the above 4 marketing challenges are the toughest for him.