Businesses in their first year or two, are still validating their business model. Once they have met what they feel is their stability point, several challenges which repeat over and over keep haunting organizations, over and over again.

Marketing is a broad term covering multiple activities.

To narrow the scope of marketing challenges that businesses face while growing, here are a few of the top activities every company should pay attention to.

Build an Effective Marketing Strategy
You don’t need to be a genius to get this done. Further, just because rumors and common trends say: blogs, YouTube, videos, or spending hours upon hours on social media are the only way, doesn’t mean its true for every company. Other forms of marketing will benefit different types of business.
Potential obstacles holding you back are not having a strategy in place, setting KPIs, and having action items to move you forward.
Making the first step to refining your marketing strategy is important.
Don’t miss out.
Properly Allocate Your Resources For Marketing
You absolutely do not need to possess the know-how to get started. Many options are out there.

• Hiring a marketing team
• Have director of marketing
• Working with a freelancer
• Sign up with a marketing firm
• If you want to learn, hiring a coach is the way to go. This is good to understand and master but remember when you are working in your business, you are not working on it!

Different stages in which a business is operating, will require the use of marketing in various forms. The right strategy for marketing will reduce cayuse, causing little to no ROI, which then defeats the purpose of the activity. Do your research and seek feedback from multiple sources and make an informed decision.

Measuring What Works
Setting up the right KPIs (key performance indicators) is an art.
The most common response regarding KPIs is about income (revenue).
Revenue growth obviously is the ultimate goal for almost any business.
But it is achievable in multiple ways.
Lack of direction, a broad undefined strategy will not lead to a solid process, that works and is measurable.
Similar to a full business strategy, marketers outline a strategy which is broken down into several workable sections, over time, and with KPIs to measure success.

Building Your Brand
A great brand can take you a long way.
Most reputable and well-known brands achieved many bonuses as a result.
Brand building is a complex, long-term project. It is complicated to measure results. However, the results produced from a powerful brand cannot be argued against.
Branding is more than about getting someone to buy what you are selling.
Your reputation affects a company’s ability to secure good suppliers, vendors, and most of all, good employees.
Building your brand is not an overnight process. It takes time but if built right and consistent, it does not return void.

Relying On Marketing For Lead Generation
Part of marketing is obtaining leads for sales. As discussed a bit earlier, defining optimal strategies and measuring KPIs is complex. Businesses know marketing is an essential tool but struggle to understand how efficient or successful it is. Things you cannot rely on from marketing are abilities to grow your profitability or budget because as we all know, a budget is just a plan to follow that hopefully gets you close to your goal. It is never exact, really it’s just a guess.

What you can ascertain when having the right plan and processes in place, measuring the right KPIs, relating those KPIs to actual sales, and using the facts obtained to further invest in the right places to move the company forward.

Peshev. Mario. (Jan 2020). The 31 Biggest Business Challenges Growing Companies Face. Retrieved from: https://mariopeshev.com/the-biggest-business-challenges-growing-companies/#designingsystems