Marketing is Hard: Meet Modern-Day Challenges, Improve Customer Experience, and Drive ROI

Marketers today are confronted with shrinking budgets and the need to constantly innovate and increase return on investment, with ever-more strict rules regarding privacy of data as well as a vastly scattered media and channel environment. It’s also a challenge to find clients, and this is more difficult than ever. In reality, while marketers spent an average of $9 to get the first customer at the time of 2013, the cost of acquiring a new customer has grown to $30. In essence, marketing professionals must concentrate on cost savings and effectiveness, as well as improve customer service, in order to be successful. One avenue that could aid with this is partnerships. Partnerships include any partner who provides recommendations and referrals to your customers, such as the creators of affiliates, your own brands, and the customers you own. It’s a fact that people do not want to hear companies discuss their products and services. They prefer unfiltered, honest opinions from other sources they are confident in. They’re turning to review sites, their networks or influencers, as well as their preferred publishers, prior to making purchases. This is why partnerships are important for acquiring new customers.

Recently, we spoke with prospects, customers, and other contact persons at U.S. enterprise companies, at the CMO or VP level, as well as at the head of marketing level, to discover why modern marketing can be so difficult and how we can reduce some of the pressure areas.

The presenters were top marketing executives, who shared the overall budgets they have for marketing in 2023 and also what their future prospects will be for their future ad budgets. It was a grim read. 46% of the respondents stated that their budgets for marketing had diminished, while 35% of them said that they had remained the same regardless of the increasing inflation. Just 19% of respondents said that it has increased.

No marketing executive has stated that they will see their spending increase in the coming six months. 61% of them say that it will remain at the same level, and the rest, 39%, believe that it will decline.

The most important priorities

When we talk to clients and potential customers, we have identified two major goals for us: increasing leads and sales, as well as boosting the revenue that marketing contributes to the company. However, it’s also evident that, based on our poll of marketing professionals and from our general discussions, marketers have a variety of obstacles when it comes to achieving their goals most of them citing their limited resources and budget as major barriers to achieving their goals.

Marketing professionals are being pushed to achieve more from less that is an ongoing challenge anytime however, it is particularly challenging given the geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges.

Anyone who is familiar with the more established partnership models are aware of the benefits they provide to aid in this regard, but it’s obvious that the benefit of partnership programs isn’t as popularly recognized as it should be. About half of the marketers interviewed had no form partner or affiliate program that was in place. For those who had they were mostly using internal sources or affiliate networks. The partnerships currently used were mostly with media companies, affiliates, as well as influencers.

Partnership program features

Partnerships help brands tackle many of the issues of marketing in today’s world in which traditional marketing costs a lot, is difficult to measure, and generally ignored by the public. Partnerships allow brands to access authentic networks of influential people and creatives that consumers are already turning for trustworthy, impartial products and recommendations.

Their capacity to directly connect with their customers and produce captivating and reliable content is what makes them an invaluable partner in today’s marketing. They offer a unique, genuine, and authentic perspective that sets them apart from the competition.

and are the most popular the social web and top platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are a major part of the lives of consumers, and is the most popular platform for brands to interact. Collaboration with influencers and creators can allow brands to experiment the possibilities of investing in new methods of communicating advertising, marketing and selling their goods and services.

In our survey of marketing executives what features they needed to have set up to allow them to begin using one the two most popular responses were the conversation: reporting and tracking for information on performance and allies that match their branding. Both are issues that a well-established partnership management system such as impact.com is able to handle easily, in addition to providing the platform you need to manage, create, and expand your relationships all in one location.

A second gap in our knowledge is in the areas that partnerships can bring the value of a company. Companies that have placed partnerships as a central element of their marketing strategy have a good understanding of the many benefits they can bring, however when we explained to prospects that a partnership program well-run and based on an established platform could increase efficiency of teams and reduce the manual work load, many of our leaders in marketing found themselves awestruck.

They also were interested by our explanation of how a partnership program could improve the customer experiences and increase customer loyalty. This will help in branding expansion, and boost businesses profits.

The capabilities are not a surprise for us or our countless partners that we collaborate with, including Microsoft, Walmart, HSBC, Adidas, Levi’s, and Uber and Uber. We create and maintain partnerships that not just those however, but a variety of other boxes as well.

If companies decide to form partnerships and partnerships, the results speak for themselves. Sephora has seen the highest growth of 101% the number of partners and a 3x increase in sales growth following a partnership with impact.com for just 1 period Solo Stove saw a 72 percent increase in sales, accompanied by the reduction of 7% in advertising spend. Likewise, the brand of vintage clothes Homage has seen a ROI of 485%.

Yes, it’s hard to do marketing and there’s no doubt about that. In the face of all the challenges that are facing marketing executives and their teams, the use of a collaboration program may help in a way, as the figures above demonstrate. The marketplace has changed and companies that are successful know they must engage with customers in a way that is appropriate for them regardless of in which they’re. That’s the essence of why is the Partnership Economy is about. Start right now, and you’ll find yourself wondering how you could have done it without it.