How to Overcome the Biggest Sales and Marketing Challenges and Brew Up Your Brand

Businesses Face These Common Sales and Marketing Challenges—Here’s How to Come Out On Top

Consumer-focused businesses have three key challenges:

• Understanding what the customer/market wants
• Targeting the right segments
• Differentiating what they offer from what their competitors offer

In all my years creating marketing plans, these challenges continue to pop up. And the product, service, size of the business or the number of employees makes no difference.

Okay, practically speaking, there are still many consumer sales and marketing challenges that creep in, like:

• The business’s lifecycle stage
• Strategic planning
• Management of a team’s level of marketing sophistication

But ask any CEO what’s important to them, and you’ll hear these:

• Increasing sales
• Generating more revenue
• Achieving growth

Facing Consumer Sales and Marketing Challenges Head-On

But what does this mean for a small business, professional service providers or businesses that need marketing help?

Let’s take my coffee client as an example. My client sells specialty coffee from legendary, coffee-producing countries around the world:

Coffee has become like wine or craft beer. Its flavor profiles, price points and manner of consumption vary by individual preferences. Coffee manufacturers therefore will have to consider the following:

• Building a distinctive strategy
• Positioning their brand
• Focusing to compete for consumers
• Gaining a better understanding of market needs

The challenge is this: what coffee drinkers want is all over the board! For example, the ways that individuals consume coffee fall into several categories:

• Brewed at home: Ranging from ground coffee to gourmet specialty whole bean.
• Made for them: From the $1 a cup at a deli to a large, half-caf, soy, sugar-free, double mocha Latte (and you can only venture to guess what that costs).
• Specialty: Organic, fair trade, single origin, flavored, decaf, you name it. Plus, there are dozens of ways to brew it.

All these various consumer desires meant we had to focus. Together with my client, we chose gourmet coffee that was organic, fair trade and non-GMO in whole bean and k-cups. And not just good coffee, but some of the best and rarest coffees in the world.

Focus, Differentiate and Create Brand Value

We targeted the aforementioned segments to increase profitability by tapping into a fast-growing and underserved niche.

We also differentiated our brand by adding a charitable donation for every purchase. Why? Because we know consumers like brands that align themselves with a good cause. “Cause marketing” can create additional value for consumers. In fact, one consumer culture study found that over 80% of Millennials believe it is important for a brand to align with their values, and 71% are willing to pay more for a philanthropic brand. Ultimately, your company should be thinking beyond the product, to the value of the brand.

Companies, financial planners, lawyers or accountants must focus on their target segments and being true to their brand. This will help develop consumer-oriented strategies that deliver. They will also help address the inevitable consumer sales and marketing challenges head-on.

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[Editors’ Note: To learn more about this and related topics, you may want to attend the following webinars: Choosing, Building & Protecting Your Brand and Digital Marketing Tips for the New (or Old!) Business Owner. This is an updated version of an article originally published on August 15, 2018.]

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