How Can I Use the RACE Framework In Digital Marketing?
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Arushi Kapoor
- 14 Sep 2020
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- 14 Sep 2020
Digital Marketing works on strategy like any other marketing concept. Without a road-map you will be just beating about the bush posting on social media, paying for ads not being able to gauge your results. Digital Marketing is not about coming up with good content & posting it. But, it is engaging your audience and converting them into customers and generating revenue. Different Tools for digital marketing help in bringing more traffic to your website with the objective of generating revenue.
To help digital marketers plan and manage their digital marketing activities Dave Chaffey along with Smart Insights came up with a framework called the Race Framework for Digital Planning. RACE stands for the systematic steps in a digital campaign that are:
(Plan) > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage
The Race Framework summarizes the various online marketing activities along with the customer lifecycle & the marketing funnel. A brief summary of the concept is given below in the infographic by Smart Insights.
How Can We Apply Race Framework In Digital Marketing?
The Race framework explains to us the key steps that a digital marketer needs to take in different customer lifecycle stages. The Race framework starts with the initial planning stage that involves making a strategy roadmap & defining objectives. The planning process is followed by Reach, Act, Covert & Engage. Each step is explained in detail below:
Reach
Reach involves the initial step of building awareness about the brand, product or service. The buyer is in the exploration stage trying to know more about the product & looking for various alternatives.
The basic objective is to make your target audience aware of your product on the digital media. The main objective of the digital marketer is to start driving traffic to the website through social media, SEO, advertisements and other paid and unpaid means. The key performance indicators at this stage are the number of unique visitors, the number of followers or fans or social media platforms and audience value & cost.
The digital marketing team should focus on building a community online, adding more followers and fans with the purpose to drive traffic to the website.
Act
Act stands for interact. The buyer is in the process of decision making at this stage. The main objective of digital marketer at this stage is to encourage interactions from the target audience on the website or social media. The audience should comment, like & share the social media content. They must enquire about the product or service. This helps in generating leads for the company. This can be done by posting & sharing highly engaging content on various platforms & giving reasons to the audience to visit your website.
The key performance indicators in this stage are leads or leads conversion rate, time spent by the people on a website & the likes & comments on the social media posts.
Convert
This means converting the leads into sales either online or offline. This is the stage where the audience becomes the paying customers. In the buyer journey process it is the stage when the buyer actually buys a product.Focus should be on marketing automation & making the sales process smoother for the buyer. Various KPIs at this stage are sales, revenue & average order value.
Engage
Marketing doesn't end once the sales deal is closed. Retaining your customers is equally important. Do you remember the rule of 1:5 that says acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an old customer. This is the stage of Advocacy in the buyer buying process when the customer decides if he will repurchase the product and forms an opinion about the same.
Engagement helps in developing long term relationships. Digital marketers should take the advantage of thrilled customers to promote the product online. Customer testimonials can be shared on social media. Happy customers can post a picture of themselves using the product and do a free promotion. KPIs in this stage are repeat purchases, customer loyalty & advocacy.
These for stages of the RACE framework helps digital marketers plan their work keeping in mind the objectives & KPIs. Race is a practical, customer centred & a multi channel framework. Cut throat competition in today’s digital world has made the Race framework extremely essential for the digital marketers.
To help digital marketers plan and manage their digital marketing activities Dave Chaffey along with Smart Insights came up with a framework called the Race Framework for Digital Planning. RACE stands for the systematic steps in a digital campaign that are:
(Plan) > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage
The Race Framework summarizes the various online marketing activities along with the customer lifecycle & the marketing funnel. A brief summary of the concept is given below in the infographic by Smart Insights.
How Can We Apply Race Framework In Digital Marketing?
The Race framework explains to us the key steps that a digital marketer needs to take in different customer lifecycle stages. The Race framework starts with the initial planning stage that involves making a strategy roadmap & defining objectives. The planning process is followed by Reach, Act, Covert & Engage. Each step is explained in detail below:
Reach
Reach involves the initial step of building awareness about the brand, product or service. The buyer is in the exploration stage trying to know more about the product & looking for various alternatives.
The basic objective is to make your target audience aware of your product on the digital media. The main objective of the digital marketer is to start driving traffic to the website through social media, SEO, advertisements and other paid and unpaid means. The key performance indicators at this stage are the number of unique visitors, the number of followers or fans or social media platforms and audience value & cost.
The digital marketing team should focus on building a community online, adding more followers and fans with the purpose to drive traffic to the website.
Act
Act stands for interact. The buyer is in the process of decision making at this stage. The main objective of digital marketer at this stage is to encourage interactions from the target audience on the website or social media. The audience should comment, like & share the social media content. They must enquire about the product or service. This helps in generating leads for the company. This can be done by posting & sharing highly engaging content on various platforms & giving reasons to the audience to visit your website.
The key performance indicators in this stage are leads or leads conversion rate, time spent by the people on a website & the likes & comments on the social media posts.
Convert
This means converting the leads into sales either online or offline. This is the stage where the audience becomes the paying customers. In the buyer journey process it is the stage when the buyer actually buys a product.Focus should be on marketing automation & making the sales process smoother for the buyer. Various KPIs at this stage are sales, revenue & average order value.
Engage
Marketing doesn't end once the sales deal is closed. Retaining your customers is equally important. Do you remember the rule of 1:5 that says acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an old customer. This is the stage of Advocacy in the buyer buying process when the customer decides if he will repurchase the product and forms an opinion about the same.
Engagement helps in developing long term relationships. Digital marketers should take the advantage of thrilled customers to promote the product online. Customer testimonials can be shared on social media. Happy customers can post a picture of themselves using the product and do a free promotion. KPIs in this stage are repeat purchases, customer loyalty & advocacy.
These for stages of the RACE framework helps digital marketers plan their work keeping in mind the objectives & KPIs. Race is a practical, customer centred & a multi channel framework. Cut throat competition in today’s digital world has made the Race framework extremely essential for the digital marketers.
