Issues

Addressing change

Change is a constant in marketing. Today’s marketing leaders have to deal with changes in their market or industry and within their organizations. Neither is necessarily easy!

Change brings new opportunities.

Every change that comes our way internally is an opportunity to embrace and a chance to grow.

Working through reorganization

We need to make sure that our entire team is fully aligned and bought into what we’re trying to achieve because these changes are difficult to make.

Our industry is new.

Getting around competitors and figuring out how to differentiate yourself, as well as leap frog the competition, is becoming more and more of a challenge for our organization.

Information collection, regulation, and security

Security is starting to make companies retract on how they collect data. Lead gen and demand gen are now finding new ways to maintain their funnels and still deliver.

Global issues impact sales and hiring

The biggest issues come from the unexpected. When a market dries up because of a lack of confidence, we have to continue to push and do what we believe in.

Bridging tech and human interaction

Humor can help connect with the audience. For example, UC Health videos showcase Colorado Rockies baseball player Charlie Blackmon to bring a relatable message about health.

Marketing Drives organizational change

Marketing is not only the story we are telling our constituents, it’s the story we are telling ourselves and our teams internally.

Customer experience

When “customer experience” means different things to different stakeholders in your organization, the resulting mixed messaging can be a big negative for the customer.

Customer defined success

We bring our clients directly into their projects so they can see what our development teams are doing, visibility and transparency are the keys to our success.

It's larger than marketing

It’s important for marketing and sales to understand the challenges of the customer service team so they can get ahead of the customer need.

Consistent, customer-focused CMS approach

It is important that we understand the challenge we have and as marketers we are out there trying to bring everything back together.

Defining the experience

One challenge is when customer experience is in the hands of the engineers and support leads. Marketing must define that experience before visitors become customers.

It changes with company size

We need to have an experience for the one- and two-doctor shops, and then get into those larger organizations. We need a plan for those two very different client bases.

Building more value for membership

To create a better member experience, we’re moving to a subscription-based model. People are used to the idea of having everything included in that subscription.

Creating a memorable experience for members

At AMA Colorado, our tagline is “making marketers marketable.” Our goal is to equip our members with the tools they need to be the most marketable they can be.

Driving revenue

Marketers still struggling to balance shrinking budgets and higher expectations are challenged to change the perception of marketing from a cost center to a revenue driver.

You must understand costs to be effective.

It is a challenge to communicate costs and ROI to a board or upper management because they do not understand marketing. Bridging that communication gap can be difficult.

Tracking is difficult

Lead tracking and precise measurements don’t often get you to the actual value you deliver. That really comes from our people.

Aligning strategy and deliverables

The most important strategy elements can be found by working with partners and a partner community. This creates an extension allows us to accomplish more by taking advantage of their specialties.

Metric-driven approach

I find it refreshing to work and focus on the metrics. Not a lot of marketing companies get that down very well, but it is one of our strengths that we track the metrics so closely.

Measuring lead-to-sale for ROI

It can be challenging to be asked about leads and conversions over and over, but when marketers see the fruits of their labor, it is amazing to see how one campaign can make such an impact.

Marketing is a revenue driver

We are starting to see Chief Revenue Officers in companies, and CEOs and CFOs who are recognizing the revenue that marketers are driving.

Everyone measures ROI differently

Marketing teams have so many tools at their disposal and ways of connecting to consumers that they need to demonstrate ROI in a way that translates to the rest of the company.

Team/Partner management

For most marketers today, the question isn’t whether they'll need extra help from outside the organization, it's when and who they turn to. Building a productive workflow between inside and outside contributors requires skillful management.

Context is key – and difficult to gain

Usually with an outside partner you must do a lot of work to bring them up to speed to understand why you need them, and that context is important.

Does a new outside partner understand your business?

It takes time to time to bring in a new agency, SEO provider, or PPC specialist. You have to teach them because they don’t magically know how your business works.

Overcoming outside-partner issues

When it comes to working closely with SEO or web developers, we try to meet with them on a regular basis and do some education so they understand where we are going.

Treating partners as an in-house team

We want to make our partners feel like they are an extension of our team and not an execution arm. They bring tribal knowledge that you cannot gain from a siloed team.

Building shared understanding

It’s essential to stay in sync with outside partners through regular communication and education.

Partnerships based on specialization.

The power to connect

We connect people face to face and online. We have programs where you can come network and meet new people you might hire. And we also have a member and service directory that will help you find the right person for a needed specialty or position.

Creating continuity

Outside partners are bringing their own expertise—and that is why you hired them—but that does not always translate to fully knowing or understanding your story.

Leveraging Technology

With thousands of complex and intricate marketing technology solutions out there, marketing organizations often say they spend more time managing tech than managing their marketing programs.

Technology can be overwhelming and expensive.

I think you can overcome a lot of challenges by aligning the technology with your people and internal skills. You need the right people to own it, otherwise it will be a waste.

Know your audience

In our industry email is still the go to platform so we ensure we send email with useful content with strong value.

Seamless integration is easier said than done.

Finding a system that you could seamlessly integrate into your marketing strategy is really difficult.

Dealing with an overly complex CMS

It is important to identify a CMS that is web and mobile responsive and that provides you extensibility to deploy content to mobile, web applications, ecommerce, and outside your own domain.

We have control and budget challenges

Changing webinar platforms has been big challenge for my team. Budgets have limited the use of better platforms and that limits and challenges what we can do.

Will new technology deliver results?

I have seen companies over-promise and under-deliver on what their technology could actually do and integrate with.

Finding the balance

Marketing technologies are great when they are adding to your marketing and making life easier, but they take away when they are cumbersome and you are spending too much time using them.