Using the RACE Framework to Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy
The RACE model in marketing is used as a summary of the key digital activities that need to be managed as part of the marketing funnel for brand advocacy.
The model provides a useful customer-centric approach and covers the full customer lifecycle. Thanks to the impact of COVID, we’ve seen a massive increase in spend and activity across digital marketing and it’s been an essential lifeline to maintaining revenue. But how can you implement the RACE framework to create an effective digital marketing strategy? We’ve broken down each stage and detailed the things you need to consider at each stage below…
Plan
The RACE model is sometimes referred to as PRACE to reflect the very first stage; planning. This stage is arguably the most important as it gives you the opportunity to gather all of the information you need, set your objectives and build the foundations for your campaign.
Activities that take place during this stage include competitor and market research, keyword research, identifying your target audience, defining KPIs and how you intend to measure them and much more. This is also the stage for establishing your budget and considering how you need to spend it in order to generate maximum return. A thorough and deep understanding of the preferences and behaviours of your target audience is critical at this point, and more significantly, how these may have changed in recent years.
Reach
The first official stage of the model is Reach, which is all about getting your brand in front of your target audience and building awareness. Using a multi-channel approach to this stage is key for maximising brand touchpoints, reaching a wide audience and allowing you to deliver the right message to your audience at the right time.
Key things to consider during this stage include:
Identifying the channels which are going to enable you to reach your audience and how they are going to work together to build brand awareness.
What messaging you are going to serve your audience - whilst aiming to encourage audiences to respond to your brand at this stage, sales messages should be avoided and instead you should focus on providing emotive content that adds value .
The execution of the messaging across the channels - e.g. social media, email marketing, paid media and other touchpoints where your audience spends time.
When it comes to metrics, look at things like paid reach, impressions, website visitors, social followers etc. The exact metrics you need to base performance on will vary depending on which channels you’ve adopted.
Act
The next stage is Act, short for interact. Once you have successfully generated awareness and curiosity around your brand, you need to begin to encourage your audience to engage with you. The messaging you serve at this stage needs to persuade your audience to take the next step in their customer journey, whether that’s clicking through to your website, sharing a post, signing up for your newsletter etc. Getting your target market to interact with your brand is key for ensuring they continue their journey down the marketing funnel.
At this point, you need to provide your audience with engaging content that educates, informs, inspires or entertains. It is this content that is going to encourage them to take the next step. Key metrics to look at include average time spent on your website, number of likes and comments on your posts, ad click through rate (CTR) etc. Again, exact metrics will vary depending on the channels you’re using.
Example
A great example of a brand that uses their digital communications to encourage high levels of customer engagement is Gymshark. Their use of social media content is relevant to their target market and results in extremely high levels of engagement, this in turn leads to more clicks to their site and encourages potential customers to act.
By using various content types to create engagement and encourage their customers to act they are providing a seamless experience which pushes existing and potential customers down the funnel. Gymshark is also a great example of a brand that knows their audience extremely well. They have an understanding of the types of content their target market is looking for and they utilise that so well across all channels. Below are a few examples of the different content types used which generate high levels of engagement.
Convert
The next stage of the model is Convert. This involves encouraging your audience to take the next step which turns them into paying customers. At this stage, your messaging can change from being informative and helpful to more concrete and ‘salesy’ in order to encourage the conversion. This could be in the form of a targeted Facebook campaign, a product specific email or a remarketing campaign.
Key metrics to measure at this stage include:
Online and offline sales
Revenue and profit generated
Average order value
Abandon basket rate
Conversion rate per channel
Example
Hubspot does the convert stage extremely well with their highly effective content marketing strategy. The brand has a very wide funnel and they provide very broad content to their audience. As potential customers begin to move down the funnel, their content becomes more and more specific until the reader eventually converts.
Hubspot's use of this CTA is a clear example of how brands can encourage potential customers to convert after the ‘act’ stage.
Engage
The last stage of the model is Engage and this is all about building long-lasting relationships with your first-time customers and developing loyalty. The aim for the Engage stage is to drive repeat purchases and brand advocacy, both of which can be extremely effective for future profitability.
During this stage, you need to maintain communication with your existing customers over various channels, this will keep your brand fresh in their minds. One of the main metrics to keep in mind here is Customer Lifetime Value as this will show you how much each customer is worth to your business.
Example
A great way of engaging your existing customers and developing loyalty amongst your customer base is through user-generated content. User generated content is a great way to make your customers feel valued. A brand that does this exceptional well is Lick and as a result, they have developed a tribe of loyal customers.
By displaying their customers photos across their social media accounts, Lick has developed and built a tribe of loyal customers and followers. This builds long term brand advocacy and helps ensure that each customer returns to Lick more than once.
Closing thoughts…
At each stage of the RACE model it’s vital that you continue to monitor the key metrics to ensure the activities you are carrying out are bringing results. Additionally, by monitoring your results you’ll be able to adapt and change where necessary to increase conversion rates.
