Use our digital marketing strategy template integrated across the RACE Framework to plan and get ahead in your digital marketing

We all know the old saying “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”, but when it comes to digital marketing, this really is the case. It has never been more important than it is now to create a digital marketing strategy template so you can plan, manage and optimize your online activities. Today, digital media is vital when it comes to driving leads and sales, meaning marketers need to understand how best to engage and convert online audiences. Despite this, our research into digital marketing trends for 2024 shows that many businesses (around 40%) still don’t have a digital marketing plan. As a result, companies are missing out on the benefits of having a digital marketing plan integrated into their overall marketing plan or as a separate roadmap…

Using re-brandable digital marketing tools and templates can help small marketing agencies and consultants compete with the bigger players - here's how

The concept behind white labeling/private labeling in marketing is simple. It's a business arrangement in which one company produces goods or services, and another company rebrands them as their own and offers them to their customer base. The big benefit of white labeling in marketing is that it allows agencies and consultancies an easy way to quickly expand their service offerings to their clients, without having to develop marketing specialisms in-house. With the ever-increasing demands for specialization and the emergence of new marketing technologies, it can be a daunting task to keep up. So, partnering with a trustworthy and reputable specialized service provider is a popular solution enabling marketing agencies and consultancies to offer their expertise under your agency's name and brand. To consider: Within this B2B transaction, there is an underlying…

Discover how a customer experience strategy that enhances digital experiences across all touchpoints can help build brand loyalty and improve ROI

In today’s fast-paced digital world, providing a seamless customer experience strategy is no longer a luxury but a necessity. As consumers have more options than ever on where, when, and how to interact with brands, ensuring a consistent and positive digital experience can significantly impact your business's growth and competitiveness.  It’s easy to forget just how many touchpoints your business may have. The Smart Insights customer lifecycle visual highlights just some of the many paid, owned, and earned media omnichannel options available today to communicate with prospects and customers. There’s a lot!  The diverse array of channels highlights the amount of avenues we need to effectively manage to create effective customer experience,…

If you're using AIDA, DRIP, To/Mo/BoFu, STP, or any marketing mix models, but not integrating RACE, you may be missing out

At Smart Insights, we are proud to champion our internationally acclaimed, practical, strategic RACE Framework of Plan, Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage. But of course it's not the only framework that modern marketers are using. Our Free Members' Essential marketing models guide covers 15 other models, which we encourage members to use at different stages of assessing and improving their marketing plans. Of course, paid members can also access our best-practice library of 250+ processes, templates, and tools - many of which dip into marketing expertise outside of the traditional realms of RACE. Professional Members regularly book account reviews to talk through which solutions would best suit various elements of their RACE strategies. If you're not sure where to start, you can read through some basic pointers in our Free…

An example of how to structure a digital marketing strategy plus examples from other sectors

We launched Smart Insights in 2010, to help marketers develop digital marketing strategies, since we saw that many businesses faced the challenge of where to start when creating a digital marketing strategy. The most popular downloads were templates for structuring a digital marketing strategy. We quickly found from member feedback that examples were important, and we now have examples of digital marketing strategies in many sectors, which we cover at the end of this post. Although digital marketing platforms and technology has changed immensely in this time, particularly with the recent growth in use of Generative AI, the fundamentals of creating a digital strategy are the same. Some of the AI recommendations on digital marketing strategy and many of the human ones fail to get these essentials right, they go straight to recommending different digital marketing channels…

Prompt AI-generated campaign insights on marketing strategy, optimization, audience analysis, and performance metrics

We all know that feeling of staring at a blank screen. Maybe you have an idea but you don't know how to articulate it. Or maybe you're clear on the objectives, but you can't align them with any new creative ideas. It's in these moments where the best marketers can stand out by choosing to adapt and improve.

AI marketing opportunities

If you've found yourself reading this blog, you're likely already considering using AI to optimize your campaign planning process. It's an exciting time, with AI regularly producing clear, trackable improvements on human-written content (such as a study where AI-generated email headlines demonstrated a 68% increase in engagement). And, with increasing demands on budget and time for so many marketers, the opportunities are game-changing for the early adopters.

AI marketing risks

But, with so much to consider, it can be daunting…

Our recommended process and tools to help you grow your marketing career with strategic skill development

As marketers, we understand how challenging it can be to keep all your plates spinning. You’re trying to manage your day job, while staying up to date with all the latest industry and platform changes, while making sure you are fed and watered and clean and getting enough sleep to keep your brain in gear. Not to mention remembering Auntie Wendy’s birthday and making sure the dog has had enough exercise. With all this going on, setting time to learn marketing skills is often pushed to the back of your priority list. Over time, you drop the plate. There are a few reasons for this. From speaking to marketers over the years, Continuous Professional Development (CPD), feels like something you should be doing, but often gets ‘saved for later’, while we try to keep…

From executive presentations to digital channel spreadsheets, we've got examples of digital marketing plans for early startups through to multinational enterprises

Whether you're starting from scratch, or improving your existing plans, examples of digital marketing plans help marketers see the how, not just the why, of structuring their approach to digital marketing. Because of this, we have always included examples with our templates, regardless of the type of plan. Sharing examples can also be useful for onboarding your team in the marketing planning process, or getting marketing strategy buy-in from senior management. In this blog, I'll share examples of different types of marketing plans to help you decide how to scope and structure your own plan.

Marketing plans - the hardest part is knowing where to start

We regularly receive feedback from our members that step-by-step templates and guided examples are useful resources for marketing planning. For example, our Free Member digital marketing plan template…

Do you, or does your organization, use SOPs for digital marketing activities?

You may not have heard of SOPs, since the technique seems to be more widely used in the US and in markets where the sales process is more technical (think E-commerce or B2B rather than consumer brands and smaller businesses). But I believe they are a powerful technique that any business in any market can benefit from. They are particularly useful for agencies and consultants to use when working on client activities. In a larger team, in particular, they can help achieve consistency of approach and results by everyone following best practices and can support training of less experienced team members.

What is a Marketing Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)?

So, what is an SOP? In short, an SOP defines a repeatable procedure for how a business process task should best be completed by defining a series of steps or sub-tasks. In marketing,…

It’s not enough to create buyer personas and leave them getting dusty on the shelf. Find out how to apply customer personas to inform each stage of your marketing strategy

What are marketing personas?

Customer or buyer personas are fictional people who represent target customer segments. Personas are used by marketing teams to segment and target key demographic, psychographic, and behavioural traits of their target audiences. The term ‘user personas’ is also commonly applied when analyzing particular online users’ behaviours, such as website experience (CX, UX) or in response to marketing automation (e.g. email or mobile campaigns).

Why create customer personas?

By researching and creating customer personas, we as marketers, managers, and business owners can gain valuable insights into our buyers’ preferences, motivations, pain points, and online behaviours. Persona-based marketing techniques enable businesses to tailor their digital marketing campaigns and always-on…