3 Major Marketing Challenges for 2021 (and How to Solve Them)

Advertisers continue to adapt and innovate marketing efforts to serve a public still dealing with pandemic safety measures and procedures. As marketers reevaluate their focus and their customers in the face of new challenges, some winning trends have emerged. Here are three difficulties facing the digital marketing landscape in 2021, and how marketers can best respond to stay ahead of the curve.

How Data Privacy Regulations Can Benefit Your Business

Evolving privacy policies and decreased reliance on third-party cookies has marketers placing a heavier focus on collecting and utilizing first party data. While initially a significant disruption to the digital marketplace, this new emphasis on permissioned data can be the basis for stronger, more accurate customer profiles. Implementing easy ways for users to “opt-in” to your brand eliminates some of the guess-work previously associated with netting new customers and creates a highly qualified audience more receptive to your brand’s messaging.

The overwhelming majority of customers are willing to provide basic personal data for a better brand experience — and even more are willing if a business is open about how that data is used. Fully integrating first-party data into a marketing strategy allows brands to properly segment audiences and create actionable plans to better personalize the customer experience.

Raising the Bar to Win Customers Post-Pandemic

Customers have grown to expect more from their relationship with brands and businesses. According to a survey from Ketchum, 45% of consumers will change brand preferences as a result of the pandemic. Ethics and safety have become a top priority for consumers as well, with 88% of consumers stating coronavirus has made it more important for businesses to engage in ethical practices, and 90% of consumers prefer brands who prioritize customer and employee safety.

The “Why” behind these figures isn’t too complicated — customers want to see brands stepping away from exploitative self-promotion and toward more humanized messaging. Handling these increased expectations requires listening to customer needs and responding with forward-thinking content tailored to each marketing channel’s distinct audience.

Utilizing data gathered from active campaigns to cultivate a unified look across paid social, search and branded webpages establishes your brand as a steady source of trusted information, in touch with changing user preferences.

Using Data to Stand Out From the Crowd

Standing out in a growing digital marketplace is crucial for brands of any industry —  competition for qualified engagements and audiences is often fierce, with more businesses joining the digital space each year. The challenges posed by shifting trends, market saturation general fluctuations due to unforeseen circumstances (like a year-long pandemic lockdown) can be mitigated by adapting campaign efforts to meet customers where they are, rather than remaining static.

For example, despite an uptick in digital ad-spend last year, CTV and OTT spending (ads accompanying streaming video or services on both large screens and personal devices) is still being overlooked — more than 60% of advertisers have not yet spent on CTV/OTT advertising, though many consider it to be a “top priority” in the coming year. Advertisers failing to expand their strategy to include CTV ads are missing out on the 80% of U.S. households now streaming video to a connected device.

In addition to adding new, less-saturated channels to the mix, advertisers can employ existing campaign data to answer which trends resonate with an audience, what content is perceived as engaging or useful, and where best to allocate ad spend across channels to score wins while other businesses fail to adapt. Whether in an economic expansion or recession, allowing data to influence marketing decisions keeps your campaigns active and efficient.