Day: November 26, 2024

"Just GPT it" is all the rage right now.

(Okay, okay. It hasn't caught on just yet. But my Uber driver said it, and I hope it sticks.) 

But our marketing leader this week isn't sweating it. She doesn't think SEO is going anywhere.

"I remember when people were saying up to 50% of queries were going to be handled by voice assistants. The SEO industry was in a tizzy over it," she told me with a laugh. 

"And the only thing I ask my Alexa for is the weather. So I wouldn't write [Google] off."

She's also HubSpot's senior director of global growth, so I'll take her word over my Uber driver's . 

Lesson 1: Go non-monogamous with Google. 

The HubSpot Blog team has been running on Google fumes for years, and we've racked up millions of views in organic traffic based on high-intent searches. It's also how we attracted many of our current customers.

Aja Frost, who started on the Blog team in 2017 (back when "SEO strategy" was based on our own personal whims that day), knows Google's value better than anyone. 

But she tells me it's time for a new playbook. 

"The encroachment of AI search has required us to lean into other channels like YouTube, micro-apps, and areas we see as more defensible against AI. And it’s pushed us to figure out new ways to be ultra-helpful to our reader," she says.

Frost’s tip for any marketing leader? Spread the love. Test out Substack, team up with creators, or invest in your own micro-apps.

Google is still a viable channel. It's just not the only one. 

Lesson 2: The days of reverse-engineering algorithms are over — and that's a good thing.

I asked Frost — in the same tone of voice you'd use to avoid scaring the neighborhood cat — if she's concerned about the future of SEO in the midst of AI search. (I asked timidly because, you know… SEO is still her job.) 

But she adamantly shook her head. "I think it's one of the most exciting developments over the last two years. For so long, we have all just oriented toward Google, and reverse-engineering the Google algorithm has, in many ways, stifled innovation in content marketing and SEO."

She adds, "If there is a more competitive landscape, then the relationship between SEO or content strategist and search engine could change pretty dramatically. It could be a much more collaborative, mutually beneficial relationship."

Frost sees the future of SEO as a shift from obsessing over algorithms to building real partnerships with search engines. 

Is there a world where Google takes input from little old me, a content creator? We'll see. 

Lesson 3: Stop writing off marketing channels as "dead." 

One of Frost's pet peeves is knee-jerk reactions to industry hype. 

"What bugs me is when people say any channel is dead, and this applies to search, too," she says. 

"I definitely don't think search is dead. I don't think podcasts are dead. I don't think any channels are dead. I think you can make any channel work really well for you."

I'm seriously hoping MySpace is "no longer with us", but I concede her point. 

She adds, "That doesn't mean we should all go out and invest in channels that aren't working for us — but it does mean don't write something off if your intuition says it could work."

Lesson 4: Focus on expertise. 

Questions like “How do I do XYZ?” get funneled straight to ChatGPT these days. So if your SEO strategy revolves around basic definitions or info keywords, brace yourself for a traffic drop.

But when it comes to complex or opinion-based topics, readers still want the human touch.

Case in point: my recent obsession with LED red light therapy. 

Those at-home LED masks cost about a bajillion dollars, so I wanted to know: Will I look like a newborn baby if I purchase the mask, or will I be shining a bright red light in my face for 10 minutes while the company's CEO laughs all the way to the bank?

I didn't turn to GPT for my skin aging concerns; I turned to Google, and asked, "What do dermatologists say about LED red light therapy?"

This isn't supposed to be an infomercial for red light therapy (although any brands looking to give one away, hit me up ✋), but the point holds: People still turn to websites for answers to more complex, nuanced questions. Not AI. 

Frost is all-in on adding expertise (the extra "E" in Google's new E-E-A-T rankings) to your posts. 

As she puts it, "You're talking to me because I have a ton of experience in SEO. This content wouldn't pack the same punch if you were chatting with someone who just joined the SEO team. In general, the more expertise the better."

She has some additional advice, as well: "Make sure you really outline that expertise in the post itself with relevant information and examples. Highlight to Google — and more importantly, the reader — that you know what you're talking about."

Art and marketing are made for each other, and this week’s master proves that.

He's done collabs with brands like Nike, Heineken, Crocs, and the NBA … But it’s not all about advertising.

He‘s also a serious artist in his own right, a luminary at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and his work’s been spotlighted everywhere from NBC to The Washington Post to Hypebeast.

In the venn diagram of art, pop culture, and marketing, Matt Zaremba lives smack in the bullseye.

And it makes me think I should really get a hobby.

1. Want to sell your product? Personify it.

You get the sense that Matt Zaremba's mind is always in story mode.

Take a recent collab with ASICS on an older, previously archived running shoe: When asked how his team came up with the “Small Wins Add Up” campaign to show off the shoe, Zaremba doesn't even blink.

“First off, we know you can run in this thing, but 98% of people buying the shoe are not running. They're just trying to look cool, probably in a city somewhere… They want to be on-trend,” he tells me, effortlessly spinning a story of who this desired consumer would be. (He's not wrong — I just bought $160 Cloudnova shoes to look cooler while I run … errands.)

"So then I ask myself, ‘What’s the sentiment? This product walks into a room… What does it look like and sound like? Does it have an accent? How can we personify it?'"

From there, his team starts riffing — talking about the state of the world today, and how everyone is a little burnt out, and how sometimes just getting up in the morning is a major accomplishment — and voila. A campaign is born.

“Right off the bat, we came up with this idea that small wins add up. So then we go back to the drawing board… How do we visually represent small wins? How do we give a little wink to running, but keep the human element that people have all sorts of little wins they should celebrate?”

Zaremba does this for all his marketing campaigns, and it's sound advice: Get to know the ins and outs of your product, and what story people will tell themselves when they buy it.

And think outside the norms when it comes to that story: Are you sure you're selling a running shoe, or are you actually selling the message that little wins matter?

Because at the end of the day, a Stanley is just a water bottle with a really cool story.

2. Don't use the first idea that comes to you – find the fresher angle.

One of Zaremba‘s proudest campaigns is one he did with Nike a few years back. It was a big moment for him — at the time, Nike was one of the biggest brands he’d ever worked with.

Zaremba knew it would be easy to make a splash with a big-name celebrity. He could stick the shoes on LeBron and call it a day. (Relatable, I know).

But he didn't want to do that.

“The shoe reminded my team of our childhood — it kind of tapped into the Sandlot (the movie). So we decided to take a moment to reflect our own team. We did a yearbook shoot of all our actual employees wearing a special jacket we made, along with the sneakers. And we had the school-picture cloud background.”

"We presented the campaign as ‘This is who we are, and who we are is the same as you.’"

I‘ll admit most marketers aren’t regularly working with Lebron-sized budgets, but the takeaway still matters: Your first idea is probably the too-obvious one, and you should keep thinking. Unexpected angles will surprise your audience and make them feel like they're seeing something new.

And ideally, they'll see pieces of themselves in your marketing then, too.

3. Marketing should make your buyer feel confident — not insecure.

Fashion is a notoriously confidence-crushing industry. Plenty of major fashion and beauty brands thrive off making their consumers feel less-than. They want you to know you're not cool yet, but you will be when you wear those jeans or that jacket.

But Zaremba calls that kind of marketing “empty calories and empty suits.”

“Sure, you'll find a cohort of people who you'll grow with because you're showing them what they're not. But eventually they'll find a brand that makes them feel like they are enough, and they'll switch to that brand,” he says.

His MO? Being as humble and relatable as possible: "Fashion brands should offer tweaks to your journey of style and culture. I don‘t want to talk down to people and say, ’Oh, you don‘t know this musician?’ I‘d rather be like, ’You gotta check this out.' There should be no ego in it."

Whether you're a B2C or B2B marketer, the sentiment stands — personifying your brand as the “cool kid” works for some brands, but what works better for most is simply being helpful, curious, and encouraging.

To effectively lead a marketing team, you have to know what you’re working towards. Whether your focus is to increase revenue or improve your customers’ understanding of your products, starting with a clear priority helps guide all your efforts in 2025 and beyond.

But sometimes, you may struggle to identify your organization's most important goals. For this reason, we surveyed 700+ marketing executives to help you make the right decisions.

Let’s examine the top goals of marketing management for the upcoming year and share some advice from leaders at ClickUp, RocketReach, Uber, and more on how to achieve them.

Top Marketing Manager Goals in 2025

1. Increase revenue and sales.

According to our survey, “increasing revenue and sales” is the top priority for most marketing leaders going into 2025, with just over 20% reporting it.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Our core job as marketers is to impact a business’ bottom line by attracting the right audiences and driving leads down the pipeline for sales.

Gaurav Agarwal, ClickUp's chief operating officer, once echoed this sentiment to me: “As a fast-growing company with industry-leading NDR, adding new revenue sustainably is always a top priority. We have to be hyper-focused on building out different growth and sales capabilities to achieve that goal."

Tips to achieve this marketing manager goal:

To increase revenue, marketing leaders must identify areas of their customer journey that can be further optimized. Additionally, marketing leaders will want to focus on lead generation.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to effective lead generation. To improve your lead generation strategy, you might test out new landing pages or calls to action. Try creating stronger offers or re-focus your efforts on more powerful lead nurturing campaigns.

It’s also important to continually test new platforms — like TikTok or podcasting — to reach new audiences.

Reflecting on revenue as a goal, Michelle Keene, Vice President of Product Marketing at Rocket Lawyer, told me when years are “expected to be dominated by economic uncertainty, the shift to profitable growth [rather than growth at all costs] will only be accelerated — moving from a nice idea to a requirement.”

To combat this challenge, Keene offers five key principles for marketing leaders to follow:

1. Move from a revenue-only goal to a revenue and cost-of-acquisition goal.
2. Find technology solutions that enable CAC measurement at the program level.
3. Evolve your marketing attribution models.
4. Deeply understand your target audiences and their needs to deliver the right messages at the right time.
5. Encourage ongoing deployment of hypothesis-driven experiments and optimizations.

She added, “As a marketing leader, I embrace this challenge, prioritizing efficient growth. While any mindset shift is challenging, the benefits far outweigh the change management costs."

"It can transform the way senior executives view marketing — not as an expense, but as an investment — which is really empowering and energizing for me.”

2. Get a better understanding of customers and their needs.

Next, marketers leaders ranked “getting a better understanding of customers and their needs” as their second biggest priority in 2025.

This makes sense, considering they also said the industry's biggest change in the past 12 months has been an increased focus on the customer and their experience with brands.

Your happiest customers can be not only your most lucrative but also your strongest advocates for your brand out in the wild. Customers stay loyal to brands they love and want to recommend them on social media and to friends and family. But how do you build this kind of commitment?

Tips to achieve this marketing manager goal:

Jennifer Chou, Senior VP of Marketing at RocketReach, believes having a strong understanding of your customers is a vital first step in building brand loyalty.

She told me, “Marketing is about storytelling and helping people envision how your solutions can help them achieve their goals. Having a better understanding of your customers and their needs is critical to creating that intangible connection that builds affinity, consideration, and, ultimately, loyalty.”

She continues, “Customers want to relate to companies in new ways. They want to feel that ‘the company understands what I’m dealing with and is building products for me’…This means we need to know their challenges and goals as well or even better than they do.”

To cultivate a strong relationship between your brand and its community, also ensure your marketing materials convey your brand’s values.

People will feel more connected to your business if they believe your company cares about issues that matter most to them.

As Daniel Godoy, Microsoft’s Global Head of Programmatic Evangelist, says, “The best way to win trust is by upfront stating the values your brand cares about and having transparent communication that highlights your purpose commitments."

Create better customer experiences with personalization.

As more and more marketers are realizing, loyalty also really comes back to creating a great customer experience. In fact, according to Adobe, 86% of consumers will pay more for a superior customer experience.

We marketers need to dig deeper into what our buyers are looking for from our offering and their interactions with us. What would make being your customer easier or more enjoyable?

Personalization can be key to this.

Zendesk found that 70% of customers expect anyone they interact with at a business to have the full context of their previous engagement and actions.

And, in our survey, 86% of marketers admitted a personalized experience increases sales moderately or significantly.

What are some ways you can personalize your marketing?

• Address your buyer by name in all interactions, including email, website, phone calls, and in-person meetings.
• Make recommendations based on their specific needs, concerns, demographics, or past behavior.
• Have team members respond personally to all social media engagements. While AI can be very helpful with personalization, this is one use case where it can come off as robotic.

But these are just a few ideas. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers what they want and need. Ask for feedback after interactions or purchases. Good or bad, the insights can only help you improve.

Additionally, create opportunities for your customers to interact with each other.

You might create a Facebook or Slack group so your customers can engage with each other, share industry best practices, and get ideas or suggestions to help them work through their business challenges.

Back in 2019, HubSpot’s Social team created a Facebook group and has since leveraged it to foster a stronger sense of community among its members.

3. Increase brand awareness/reach new audiences.

This arguably goes along with our first two points, but according to our research, the third priority of marketers in 2025 is increasing brand awareness and reaching new audiences.

I mean, think about it. Of course, this is to help increase revenue and sales, but its success depends on understanding your audience.

If your business is entering new markets, you must take the time to understand your new customers so you can effectively show how your product helps them.

Tips to achieve this marketing manager goal:

According to our survey, marketers think the most important information to know about their customers is:

• How they consume content (33.43%)
• Their demographics (31.77%)
• Products they’re interested in buying (27.9%)

Based on this information, you can better understand the value your marketing must deliver and what new audiences would be attracted to.

Every audience is different, of course, but in general, there are some trends you can use to start testing. For instance, more than half of consumers prefer to learn about products by searching the Internet or social media.

That means a strong SEO or social media strategy is a great place to start when trying to build brand awareness and increase reach.

Creating product-led content on your website and social media can help show prospects what your product is all about and how it works long before they make a purchase.

Let’s say you work for a video editing company, for example.

By writing content like “Why Video Marketing Matters” and “5 Ways to Create Higher-Quality Videos,” people interested in video will be introduced to your brand as a player in the space.

But you don’t want to stop here. Go further by creating comparison articles that target high-intent X vs. Y keywords. Even if your software isn’t well known in buyer cycles, you can compare yourself to popular competitors and, once again, help explain your role in the industry.

Once readers learn that you are an option for them and find value in your content, they’ll be more likely to explore your site further. It’s content marketing 101.

If you’re marketing to Gen Z or millennials, it’s also imperative you use social media for product education. It’s Gen Z’s favorite channel for learning about new products and millennials’ second favorite (right behind search engines).

More on that in: Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Top Marketing Manager Objectives Based on Trends

Our survey also revealed several emerging trends that marketing leaders are intrigued by and planning their strategies around. Here are the top three.

4. Invest in personality-led content and creator partnerships.

Where there’s social media, content creators can’t be far behind. Thus, it should come as no surprise that marketing manager objectives also include investing in influencer and creator partnerships in 2025.

Influencer marketing has been proven to foster engagement, drive traffic and clicks, and generate conversions and sales. Modern consumers tend to trust influencers more than brands, finding them authentic and relatable.

That’s likely why Sprout Social has found that 49% of all consumers make daily, weekly, or monthly purchases because of influencer posts. Knowing this, it’s wise not to sleep on the marketing power of influencers and creators.

But how do you get started?

Tips to achieve this marketing manager goal:

Influencer marketing campaigns can take place on a variety of platforms (Instagram, YouTube, etc.) and come in all different shapes and sizes, including:

• Affiliate or Discount Codes
• Contests and Giveaways
• Sponsored Posts
• Gifting
• Takeovers
• Collaboration

Start by identifying the platforms your audience is most active on and who they are engaged with on them. From there, fellow HubSpotter Ramona Sukhraj breaks down the different possibilities and how to develop your influencer marketing strategy in this article.

5. Diversify paid media across direct, indirect, and brand models.

With more competition on search engines and social and increasingly elusive algorithms across them all, the importance of paid media can’t be ignored.

In 2023, advertising their products and services effectively was one of the top goals of marketers, and now that focus has turned to diversification.

Advertising isn’t what it used to be. This isn’t the days of Mad Men’s Don Draper and creating quippy billboard slogans — at least, not entirely. Beyond the more classic channels like print, TV, radio, and direct mail, many brands now advertise almost exclusively on digital platforms.

Many digital advertising platforms offer helpful tools for nice targeting, creating engaging ads, and iterating quickly if something isn’t working.

Google’s responsive ads feature, for instance, tests various headlines and descriptions and ultimately displays the combination that performs best with an intended audience.

Meanwhile, Facebook allows A/B testing and is known for having one of the most robust audience-targeting tools available for social media.

Tips to achieve this marketing manager goal:

Overall, marketers today have a wealth of paid advertising options, and it’s smart to experiment with them. Like influencer marketing, start by identifying where your audience consumes content and looks for answers.

Next, see what advertising options it has that are relevant to your goals.

For instance, if you’re trying to boost downloads on a particular offer, perhaps you want to run a Facebook Lead Ad. Mix and match your options while being mindful of your budget and see what delivers the best results.

Learn more about your paid advertising options in: The Ultimate Guide to PPC Marketing

6. Update SEO strategies for AI-driven search.

You didn’t think we’d talk about 2025 and not mention artificial intelligence (AI), did you?

Rounding out the top goals for marketing leaders, according to our survey, is updating SEO strategies for AI-driven search.

AI search isn’t limited to assistants like Alexa, ChatGPT, and Claude anymore. It’s also being adopted by leaders in the space, such as Google, with AI overviews.

Source

HubSpot’s Kieran Flanagan expects AI to shift SEO in three main ways. It will:

1. Decrease click-through rates on search engines.
2. Force search engine experts to be more holistic digital marketers.
3. Make customer-centric strategies more important than keyword-focused ones.

So, what can we do?

Tips to achieve this marketing manager goal:

Here’s what Flanagan advised in a recent article:

• Create high-quality, expert content: Your content can't just answer common questions with relevant information anymore. Everyone can do that. Now, it needs to provide credible perspectives, authoritative tips most readers won‘t find elsewhere, and other elements that comply with Google’s EEAT philosophy.
• Optimize for featured snippets: Structure your content so it's easily scannable and provides direct answers to common queries. As AI overviews are slowly replacing featured snippets, we believe the criteria for appearing here may be similar.
• Focus on user intent: Tailor your content to address specific user needs, which can improve your chances of being recommended as an answer in LLM-generated search results.
• Build authority and backlinks: Like search rank in general, high-quality backlinks and mentions can signal to LLMs that you're a trusted source. Keep making this a priority.

You can also check out these resources from HubSpot:

• How to Write Content that Generative AI Search Engines Will Cite, According to Experts
• 6 Steps Bloggers are Taking to Prepare for AI in Search [New Data]

Setting (And Achieving) Goals Like a Marketing Leader

Determining your top goal depends on your company’s needs.

If your company seeks visibility, an increase in traffic may show you are moving in the right direction. If your company is struggling to meet its financial goals, revenue from your marketing initiatives may be your core goal.

Your goals and KPIs should incorporate many thoughts, but some priorities and focuses also remain universal in today‘s market. So, use the trends and advice in this article to explore your business’s possibilities and the best opportunities to achieve its goals.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2022 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

I’m not sure which social platform is winning the algorithmic gymnastics competition this year. Is it Instagram? Maybe TikTok?

Either way, it seems like all of our favorite channels are actively competing for gold, which presents quite the range of social media marketing challenges for us.

From algo updates to unpredictable trends, we’re always left wondering: Which platforms will provide the highest return? Where's our audience hanging out now? And how can we create content they’re actually interested in?

These are all fair questions. In fact, our latest social trends report shows that they’ve manifested into the biggest challenges social media marketers are facing this year.

Here’s what the data says.

Top 6 Social Media Marketing Challenges in 2024

1. Creating engaging content.

As someone who creates content, I can tell you firsthand that creating good content is hard. And the standard for good content is always changing.

It looks like I’m not alone in this thinking because our survey shows that 17% of marketers said creating engaging content would be their biggest challenge this year.

The key to high-quality content creation is meeting your audience at the intersection of what they care about most and what’s trending on their favorite platforms.

Sprinkle in a few fickle social algorithms, and you’ve created one of the most complicated recipes of all time.

That’s why it’s no surprise to me that this feels like a pressure point for marketers.

How to Overcome This Challenge

Rachael Samuels, director of social media at Sprout Social, believes dedicating time, resources, and headcount towards social media is vital for long-term success.

As she puts it, “The social landscape is becoming increasingly saturated with new networks and seemingly endless potential audiences to engage. Social teams of one are no longer enough to keep up with the demand.”

Samuels adds, “As consumer preferences and expectations continue to grow, social marketers require greater investment in their teams and resources to be successful.

Brands must ensure social is prioritized as a critical communication tool and provide their teams with the resources needed to produce creative, relevant, and authentic content.”

As a former social media team of one, I wholeheartedly agree that lack of time and resources are blockers for content creation.

However, if you’re not in a position to increase your social media headcount, here are a few more ways you can beat the engaging content challenge:

• Repurpose content across channels to get the most bang for your buck. For example, take one of your 1,800-word blog posts and rework it into punchy short-form content for channels like Instagram or TikTok. HubSpot’s free AI paragraph rewriter is great for this.
• Use social media AI tools to streamline content planning, creation, and posting across your social channels — and to open up time for more creativity.
• Pull tips from the video below on how to create an effective social media content calendar:

2. Keeping up with features and algorithm updates.

I already mentioned the fickle social algorithm, and here it is again, rearing its not-so-pleasant head in challenge number two.

Our data shows that 16% of marketers are having trouble keeping up with new social media features and algorithm updates.

After looking at just one example of Facebook’s algorithm from Meta, I get it. (Not the algorithm, but why this is giving social media marketers a headache.)

Source

And coming from a blogger who has been quietly beefing with Google over their all-too-regular algorithm changes, you can trust and believe that I understand the struggle.

How to Overcome This Challenge

As marketers, we can’t stop the algorithms from changing. But we can take steps to be proactive, stay informed, and adjust our content to meet new demands. Here’s how:

• Get to know the algorithms on your most frequently used channels. It’ll be easier to navigate the changes if you already know the basics about how things operate.
• Stay up to date on the latest algorithm changes. Sources like HubSpot (cough, cough) Sprout Social, and Hootsuite are great resources here.
• Create content your audience wants to engage with. Content relevance is a big ranking factor for most algorithms, regardless of platform.
• Post on social media at the right time. The more engagement, the better your chances of showing up in-feed — so catch your audience online early and often.

3. Finding ideas for new content.

Based on our survey, 16% of marketers also reported that finding ideas for new content is a big challenge this year.

Why? It can be exhausting (and tricky) to consistently pitch new ideas for social platforms, especially when they already feel overcrowded with content.

Luckily, we’re at a point now where we can tap AI to help generate new content ideas if we’re feeling stuck. In fact, the below ChatGPT prompt is one of my favorites as a writer:

“Give me [number] of [content type] ideas about [topic] that would appeal to [target audience].”

Here it is with the blanks filled in: “Give me five blog post ideas about social media that would appeal to marketers in 2024.”

And here’s the response I got:

I also talked to an expert about this challenge — let’s see what she recommends.

How to Overcome This Challenge

Christina Garnett, former principal marketing manager at HubSpot, suggests researching what already exists when looking for new ideas.

"When trying to find the new you must consume and see what kind of content is already available and then look for gap opportunities.

Are there questions not being answered? Different perspectives not being shared? Maybe the content exists but not in a format that is tailored for a specific learner or audience," says Garnett.

She adds, "Once you determine what you can create, you need to determine who needs it, and how it can best be packaged to improve their experience. Content has the same need to find product-market fit as products and solutions do.”

4. Reaching their target audience.

Up next, 15% of marketers also identified reaching their target audience as one of their top social media challenges.

Creating engaging content and finding new content ideas are great, but what’s the point if your audience never sees it? (Like if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it … )

The good news is we already have a great piece on the blog that explains how to find your social media target audience. I’ll summarize a few of the action items below.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Identify or create buyer personas. Think about who your current customers are. What are their jobs? Age? Income?
• Find out where your audience is most active. This will help you prioritize which social media platforms to focus on.
• Look at your competitors. Who are they appealing to? Who's responding to their posts and engaging with them?
• Survey your customers. Ask what type of content they consume, what social media sites they like, or who they follow.

Then, use all of this info to meet them where they are on social.

5. Creating content that generates leads.

Lead generation is also proving to be a hurdle in 2024. 14% of those surveyed report creating content that generates leads as a top social media challenge this year.

Lead generation is a job all on its own. Group that with content creation, trend monitoring, and community management, and you’ve just described the duties of the quintessential social media marketer.

To take some of the pressure off, here’s how you can build a strong social media lead gen strategy.

How to Overcome This Challenge

To start, consider driving your audience from certain social platforms back to dedicated landing pages, or track clicks on specific CTAs for each of your social media campaigns.

Let’s say you're running a campaign aimed at driving revenue towards a new product offering, create a product landing page and link to it on each of your social profiles. That way, you can track how many clicks come from each page, and alter your strategy accordingly.

For example, if you’re seeing most clicks coming from Facebook, that may indicate that it’s a good idea to put paid advertising behind your Facebook strategy.

Speaking of paid advertising, social media ads and influencer marketing are also powerful ways to generate leads through social media.

Talkwalker's former CMO Elena Melnikova emphasizes the importance of reading the room when creating ads for social media:

“Too commercial, and this young audience will scroll past your brand, looking for the next dance routine. Read the room. Follow the trends. Be spontaneous,” notes Melnikova.

And when it comes to influencer marketing, Melnikova says:

“Savvy brands will work with influencers to create content. And with the majority of TikTok influencers being Gen Z, they‘ll understand how to ensure their content stands out, and increase a brand’s engagement figures.”

6. Keeping up with new trends.

Last but certainly not least, our data shows that 14% of marketers cited keeping up with new trends as one of their top challenges for this year.

At this point, almost everything materializes as a trend — whether it’s a new platform, an old meme, or even just a sound (I’m looking at you, TikTok).

But the reality is this: Every trend isn’t a good fit for every brand.

Sometimes the most popular social platform isn’t the right place to find your audience. Or maybe your customers aren’t familiar with, and therefore wouldn’t appreciate, that trending phrase that everyone is using in their videos this week.

(For example, I said “sometimes, you need to eat an entire cucumber” to my mom yesterday, and she had no idea what I was talking about. Shoutout to @logagm on TikTok.)

The constant struggle between what’s current and what resonates with your audience makes it difficult to determine which trends to tap into.

How to Overcome This Challenge

I have two nuggets of advice for this one.

First, find a way to keep a pulse of the latest social media trends.

Follow industry leaders like Sprout Social, sign up for expert newsletters like The Marketing Millennials, or see what your audience is currently talking about on forum sites like Reddit.

Also, track the latest news and releases from your favorite social media channels (or curate a network of insiders like Annie-Mai Hodge on LinkedIn) to be the first to know about new features and algorithm updates.

The second is to choose the methods with the highest ROI. And if you don’t know how, take a look at HubSpot's free lesson on How to Measure Social Media ROI to learn more.

Like I said earlier, it’s not worth it for every brand to hop on every trend. If it can tie back to your audience’s interests and your biggest business outcomes, you’re in the right place.

Challenge(s) Accepted

There you have it! The six biggest challenges that social media teams are facing in 2024.

Now that you know which challenges you’re up against, take the time to brainstorm solutions that will help you level up your social media strategy — for next year and beyond.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.