Brand differentiation ranked as the #1 challenge facing marketers

LONDON, November 4, 2025 – Nearly a third (31%) of UK marketers say they’re struggling to differentiate their brand amid growing competition and a rise in AI-generated content.

That’s according to new research from Optimizely, which surveyed 100 UK marketers to uncover the top challenges marketers are facing as we head into 2026 and how they plan to overcome them.

While brand differentiation ranked as the #1 challenge, others include maintaining consumer trust and engagement (26%), scaling personalisation effectively (24%), budget cuts (22%), slow senior decision-making (18%), and proving ROI (11%).

Faced with these challenges, marketers are being forced to rethink how they operate and find new ways to keep customers engaged as complexity rises and budgets shrink.

Looking to the year ahead, 41% see better integration of AI with marketing tools as their biggest opportunity, while over a third (34%) are prioritising the creation of more consistent and engaging customer experiences. A further 30% plan to streamline workflows to save time and resources, with others turning to experimentation (28%) and real-time data (25%) to enhance campaign performance and decision-making.

Encouragingly, the research reveals that despite the pressure they’re under, marketers have made measurable progress in improving customer perceptions year-on-year (YoY).

According to Optimizely’s latest consumer research, customers are 6% happier with the personalised emails they received in 2025 than in 2024. Satisfaction with website personalisation has also increased from 59% to 62%. These improvements show that a focus on optimisation and consistency is starting to pay off, though the findings suggest there’s still some work to do to bring every channel to the same standard.

"Marketers today are under a huge amount of pressure to stand out in a market that is oversaturated, and they’re often doing so with limited budgets and stretched teams," said Tara Corey, SVP of Marketing at Optimizely. "That’s exactly where optimisation can make a real impact. The more marketers can bring their content, AI, and experimentation into one seamless workflow, the more marketers can shift from chasing attention to creating lasting impact.”

To see how Optimizely helps marketers stand out in a crowded market through a unified workflow, visit: https://www.optimizely.com/products/