Report: Business Growth Tops List of 2016 Marketing Pain Points

As the new year approaches, marketers already have an idea of what may lie ahead in terms of challenges and pain points. In fact, the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Advisory Council recently published a survey revealing that business growth was named as marketing teams’ most troubling pain point heading into 2016.

Budget, lead generation, and data and analytics were also near the top of the list. In terms of marketing challenges, 33.97 percent of respondents said that data and analytics are keeping them up at night, while business growth (33.33 percent) and content marketing (33.55 percent) were close behind.

However, marketers are gaining confidence in several areas as 2016 arrives. Nearly 11 percent of respondents believe their content marketing efforts are in a position to succeed in 2016, leading the way. Customer engagement (7.69 percent), customer experience (6.62 percent) and brand management (8.33 percent) were also areas where marketers exhibited confidence.

Identifying the Marketing Challenges of Today

The “2015 B2B Lead Generation Report” from BrightTALK showed that many of these forecasted challenges are already creating problems for marketers. For example, the report found that 59 percent of B2B marketers cite lead generation as a top issue in 2015.

However, marketers were already predicting change in the coming year at the time of this report. About 58 percent stated that they expected their lead generation budgets to increase within the next few months. Furthermore, 77 percent claimed that having a knowledgeable sales rep on hand during the conversion process could help them in their most challenging situations.