The RACE is on! What should you do to succeed in your digital marketing efforts? [Monday: Marketing Marvels]
Miles Everson’s Business Builder Daily speaks to the heart of what great marketers, business leaders, and other professionals need to succeed in advertising, communications, managing their investments, career strategy, and more.
A Note from Miles Everson:
Happy Monday!
We hope you all had a great rest over the weekend.
Let’s start the week with a dose of motivation from our “Marketing Marvels.” Every Monday, we talk about outstanding individuals in business and marketing, and highlight their industry-related experiences, contributions, and insights.
Today, we’ll feature business partners who created a practical framework to improve one’s digital marketing efforts.
Keep reading to know more about these “Marvels” and their RACE to develop an omnichannel communications plan for digital marketing.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
Marketing Marvels
In today’s digital world, businesses need to track their key performance indicators (KPIs) at every step of customers’ journey and use data to quickly optimize their marketing funnel. These lead to:
- Better brand awareness
- Increased sales
- Improved lead generation
Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing allows firms to measure results, reach a larger customer base, and become more cost-efficient. However, despite the abundance of digital marketing tools, some businesses still don’t understand how to maximize their reach in the online world.
According to statistics from learning platform Smart Insights, 45% of organizations do not have a well-defined marketing strategy. One reason for this is firms have difficulty knowing where and how to start due to the many tools and tactics available for marketing.
To solve this dilemma, two industry professionals partnered up to create a systematic and easy-to-follow framework. The names of these gurus?
Dr. Dave Chaffey and Stuart “Stu” Miller!
Chaffey is the Content Director of Smart Insights and a leading author, trainer, and consultant specializing in digital marketing. Since 1994, he has specialized in sharing his knowledge on applying digital media and technology to marketing.
Chaffey gave his first training course on online strategy for the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 1997, created his first website in 1998, and wrote his first book, “Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation, and Practice,” in 2000.
Since then, he has been helping individuals learn some of the best business practices to improve their return on investment (ROI) through various digital and dynamic marketing channels.
Meanwhile, Miller is the CEO of Smart Insights. He has 20+ years of experience in creating and managing all aspects of various Internet service/software solutions. Throughout his career, Miller has been involved in a number of startups, both software-based and digital agencies, and has broad experience in operating a multinational business via the Internet.
His other experiences include overall strategy and direction of a business, setting of and reporting on monthly KPIs, sourcing and managing strategic global partnerships, and directing various marketing automation engines.
The RACE Growth System
Chaffey and Miller created the RACE model to help marketers effectively integrate digital marketing with other activities. This provides businesses with a simple framework for implementing omnichannel communications to drive inclusive growth.
What does RACE stand for?
RACE is an acronym of the 4 stages of Chaffey and Miller’s marketing framework—Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage. The stages all aim to move leads down the sales funnel to eventually become brand ambassadors or advocates.
Photo from Digital Insights
Take note: There’s a stage prior to any of the others in the framework—Plan.
Let’s discuss these stages one by one…
- PLAN
It’s important to begin your digital marketing strategy by planning and setting goals. One of the ways to do that?
SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant/Realistic, and Time-bound)!
Using this acronym will help you set goals for campaigns and projects that are trackable and lay foundations for success.
- REACH
In this stage, your aim is to generate exposure for your brand, products, or services using both online and offline media. Then, you measure the success of your efforts by tracking the traffic generated on your brand’s website or social media pages.
Reach KPIs:
- Unique visitors to your website
- Value per visit
- Social media followers
This stage is highly important when launching a new website or product because early exposure can lead to higher ROI.
- ACT
This stage is where you start generating leads for your business. How?
By offering something valuable to your prospects, whether in the form of a product, service, promise, reward, etc.
Act KPIs:
- Leads
- Lead conversion rate
- Time on website/web page
- Shares, likes, and comments on social media
Keep in mind that the more leads you capture and the quality of relationships you start with your customers will determine your brand’s conversion rate in the long run. So, this stage is a crucial one.
- CONVERT
This stage requires you to turn your leads into paying customers whether through online transactions or offline purchases.
Convert KPIs:
- Online and offline sales
- Revenue/profit
- Average order value
Adopting a data-driven marketing strategy in this stage will go a long way in personalizing your brand’s content and increasing conversion rates.
- ENGAGE
Everything in this stage is aimed at developing a long-term relationship with your customers. Besides, who wouldn’t want to turn their first-time buyers into loyal customers who are advocates of their brand?
No one!
So, you have to think of content and incentives that build customer loyalty, boost customer lifetimes, and increase the success rate of your goals.
Engage KPIs:
- Repeat purchases
- Satisfaction and loyalty
- Advocacy
You should also consider conducting customer satisfaction surveys at least twice a year. These will give you essential feedback on what customers like and where they feel there is room for improvement.
There you have it—Chaffey and Miller’s RACE Growth System!
We hope you find these insights helpful and insightful as you plan your next digital marketing strategy!
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According to Chaffey and Miller, the RACE Growth System was created in response to the dynamically developing direction of digital marketing. It helps marketers and business leaders break down their strategies into bite-sized tasks and encourages them to set easy-to-track goals.
That’s why it’s important to keep track of the changes you make in your marketing to benchmark your progress. This streamlining makes identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your strategy easier, allowing you to improve your overall performance effectively and efficiently.
So, what are you waiting for? Try using the RACE Growth System in your next marketing effort!
It’s simple! With RACE, you will increase your chances of boosting brand awareness among your target market, converting prospects into long-term customers, and establishing maximum loyalty.
It’s time to RACE your way to success with Chaffey and Miller’s framework!
(This article is from The Business Builder Daily, a newsletter by The I Institute in collaboration with MBO Partners.)
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Monday Marketing Marvels”
Too often, industry experts and the marketing press sing the praises of some brand or company’s marketing strategy.
… only for the audience to later find out that its product was a flop, or worse, that the brand or company went bankrupt.
The true ROI in marketing can’t be separated from the business as a whole.
What good is a marketing case study if one can’t prove that the company’s efforts actually paid off?
At the end of the day, either the entire business is successful or it isn’t. And the roles of marketing and communication are always paramount to that success.
Every Monday, we publish a case study that highlights the world’s greatest marketing strategies, marketers, and communicators.
However, the difference between our articles and the numerous ones out there is that we will always make certain that the firm really did generate and demonstrate earning power worthy of study in the first place (compliments of Valens Research’s finance group) in keeping with a person’s leadership skills in the area of marketing and/or communication.
We’ll also study the greatest marketing fails and analyze what they did wrong, or what they needed to improve. We all make our mistakes, but better we learn from others’ mistakes—and earlier, rather than later.
Hope you found this week’s marketing marvel interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next week’s Monday Marketing Marvels!
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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