We are at the precipice of enormous potential - don’t be afraid to jump in

With opportunity often comes uncertainty - but the best in our industry aren’t letting that hold them back. ADMA CEO Andrea Martens reveals the questions that are keeping marketers up at night. 

If you ask any marketer what keeps them up at night, they may say any number of things - wrangling budgets, finding audiences, innovating technology… The list could go on and on. But at the end of the day, I would argue it all comes down to relevance. 

This is the “holy grail” pursued by every marketer. The struggle marketers all face is to battle their competition and to emerge as the frontrunner in front of the audience every single time, to stay present in their minds despite all the many things consumers have to think about. 

But, relevance is something of a fickle beast. Every week, it seems there’s a new channel, platform, regulation, consumer outrage, or technology solution to master in order to keep it. The backdrop of an uncertain economy makes relevance an even more challenging goal.

The best brands seem to be able to not just maintain relevance, but dictate what it looks like for the rest of us. Those brands are invariably led by world-class marketers, the kind of people we see on big stages at conferences and profiled in our trade media. 

What separates these marketers from the crowd is their ability to see opportunities around every corner. To detect the potential behind any problem, and to deliver a strategy five steps ahead of the rest.

At a recent industry roundtable, a group of top CMOs discussed what keeps them up at night, revealing that we are in a period of burgeoning potential. 

1. Privacy: Proposed changes to the Privacy Act could change the way we’ve worked for the last decade at the stroke of a pen. With $50m+ fines on the table for anyone not compliant, it’s no surprise that how you get your team and business ready for these changes is bringing people out in cold sweats. But given we may not see another review for many decades, this is a chance to become a leader in privacy compliance - to do a deep dive into your operations, eliminate risks, and set your company up for success well into the future.

2. Skills: The marketing we do today is, in many places, unrecognisable from 30 years ago, and it’ll continue to evolve apace. But by upskilling in the areas we know will be high-growth means investing in the future. It also means you can help prepare the marketers in your team for the jobs you don’t know you need them to do (yet).

3. Tech platforms: Buying new martech is easy enough, the issue is implementing it. Few vendors are upfront on the true cost and complexity of integrating potentially game-changing skills with your existing stacks, leading to real and very expensive headaches for CMOs and their teams. On the other hand, finding a martech partner that matches your long term plan makes them one of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal. 

4. AI: Marketers are looking for clarity on how the recent rapid developments are going to manifest itself in our working lives. For all the hype and hyperbole, it seems there is a lack of live examples of how marketers are using AI effectively now. That means, if you are the one to provide some of these examples, you have a chance of being seen as a trendsetter across the entire industry. 

Because at the end of the day, what keeps us up at night is often what gets us out of bed in the morning. If you have the motivation to find the perfect solution to the challenges you face, you can deliver the most creative, innovative results that will send any competitor scrambling. 

Plus, there’s a common thread among all these issues - it’s clear all marketers need to be thinking about the tools they need to be future-fit. Proactivity is the key to tackling these opportunities, and all of these challenges are avenues in which to prove your brand’s relevance.

Let’s look at the martech issue for a moment. It’s a massive and hugely complex topic area that is constantly developing. Staying on top of it in detail is a full-time job, but having a fundamental grasp of the core concepts and capabilities is imperative for any marketer, particularly when we can only expect this field to become more complex.

AI, I would argue, is different. It is something that will affect all of the other areas of concern and pretty much every area of marketing in ways we can’t quite predict yet. From creative through to media buying and customer journeys, no silo will be immune from its impact. 

Not staying on top of this area is non-negotiable - using the wrong tools could find you breaching Privacy laws, while not using it will put you behind your peers in terms of skills. This is certainly a crossroads for our industry, and while no one is certain which road our industry will go down, the only way to find out is to test, learn, and evolve.

Being world-class isn’t an easy ask. Being relevant is arguably even harder. Both require dedication to your craft, a hunger to innovate, and the rare skill to transform challenges into opportunities.