7 Reasons why this is the most challenging time to be in marketing

I’ve worked in marketing for about 40 years so I can say with some authority that it’s very difficult to succeed in our profession these days! In fact, this might be the most challenging time to be in marketing.

Today I’m connecting a few dots to provide a perspective on why it seems so hard to be successful in marketing today.

Before we get into these challenges, let me emphasize that I think marketing is an amazing field of work! I could not imagine a more rewarding career. But it is a challenging time to be in marketing …

1. Information density

On June 24, 2009, an important milestone was achieved. Individual creators were publishing content at a volume that exceeded traditional media companies. From that moment on, the amount of creator content exploded, easily outpacing corporate efforts. In his book The Context Revolution, Mathew Sweezey calls this the Era of Infinite Media.

And it’s almost impossible to stand out in this field of overwhelming information density.

I explore this pattern of content waves in a recent post. Even relatively new social media platforms like TikTok quickly fill with content to make connection and engagement daunting.