Discover how to use our customer journey mapping template to create actionable insights to improve your marketing

In today’s digitally connected world, customers have a myriad of choices when it comes to connecting with brands and businesses. There are many benefits to this, such as greater reach and more touchpoints to connect with customers, but there are also some drawbacks.  When looking at customer journeys, there is rarely only one route available, making understanding how your customers find and interact with you more challenging.  Consider the London tube map. Let’s say you want to get to Oxford Circus. You know you can always get the Central (red) line, but you could also get the Bakerloo (brown) line or the Victoria (blue) line, depending on where you are coming from. Each journey is slightly different, and will give you a particular type of experience. …

Learn how to identify and leverage your brand position to create a competitive advantage with our actionable template

Think of some iconic brands. What pops into your head? Perhaps it's Coca Cola’s distinctive bottles, Apple’s sleek, futuristic presentation, Amazon’s UX (User Experience). These businesses realized and harnessed the power of brand positioning, and as such are easily recognizable and distinctive. Of course, these examples are of some of the world’s powerhouses - with a whole heap of money at their disposal. But any business has the opportunity to carve out their brand position and identity at any time to create a competitive advantage. And if you haven’t already, we’d suggest you start right now.

What is brand positioning?

Brand positioning involves enhancing the positive differentiation your brand offers against competitors and the perception of value in your customers’ minds. While it comprises of elements like your company name, logo, etc., successful brands incorporate…

Structure your next big marketing campaign using the 5-step RACE Framework to inform your strategy. Integrated across plan, reach, act, convert and engage, our marketing solutions are proven to win more customers and accelerate your ROI

Have you got an up-to-date marketing campaign planning process? Creating ad-hoc campaigns, or re-using previous successful approaches, can be the time-saver you need to get a new campaign up and running. But, without understanding the wider PESTLE issues before planning a campaign, you could target the wrong audience with incorrect messaging, or even cause offense. Keep reading for examples of marketing campaigns that do just that, plus our recommended tools for your marketing campaign PR management.

What is the RACE Framework?

The RACE Framework supports managers and marketers to integrate all their key channels and tactics into one plan. Apply the RACE Framework to streamline your marketing strategy today, so you can clearly track and manage your campaign…

How to use Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP) to develop marketing strategies

Today, the STP marketing model (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) is a familiar strategic approach in modern marketing. It is one of the most commonly applied marketing models in practice, with marketing leaders crediting it for efficient, streamlined communications practice. STP marketing focuses on commercial effectiveness, selecting the most valuable segments for a business and then developing a marketing mix and product positioning strategy for each customer group. As Martech continues to develop, so do opportunities for segmentation, targeting, and positioning. So whether you're brand new to STP or a seasoned veteran, it can be useful to take stock and double-check you're utilizing every chance you get to reach, interact with, convert, and engage customers.

But, how do you know which customer segments to focus on? We recommend using personas to identify your…

Simon Sinek explains how to use the Golden Circle model to truly differentiate your brand's value proposition when most fail

Leadership expert Simon Sinek is perhaps best known for giving one of the most popular TED talks of all time, which you can view at the end of this post. The Golden Circle theory explains how leaders can inspire cooperation, trust and change in a business based on his research into how the most successful organizations think, act and communicate if they start with why. I think that marketers will find the most value in his Golden Circle model, which helps give focus to how a business can stand out from similar competitors by communicating its differences. I was prompted to check it out after a workshop when discussing the importance of developing a strong digital value proposition as part of a digital marketing strategy a few years ago. One…

How to streamline your planning and measurement of integrated digital marketing using RACE

Smart Insights created RACE as a practical tool to help marketers and business owners plan, manage, and optimize their digital marketing using a more strategic, structured, and data-driven approach. Our RACE Growth System for improving marketing effectiveness has two parts which we will introduce in this article through two different visuals: 1. The RACE Planning Framework: defines the essential activities and measures businesses need to master to survive and thrive in today’s marketing world. 2. The RACE OSA improvement process: defines the three steps needed to build and implement your growth plan - either for your overall marketing plan or for an individual channel, such as organic search, social media or email marketing. Use our free, planning template download to get started with using RACE to grow your business. These will help you create a 90-day prioritized plan to improve your results from…

How to use the power of the 70:20:10 rule as a marketing model to prioritize your digital marketing strategy

With new marketing tools and techniques available to us almost daily, it can be difficult to know where to prioritize your marketing activities to get the most 'bang for your buck'. This is where the 70:20:10 rule can really help, since it's a simple device which helps us think through how we prioritize the time and budget we put into different marketing activities. As marketers, we need to be agile through reacting to new developments in order to gain an upper hand on competitors, but at the same time, we need to avoid being 'technology magpies' following seductive, shiny new tools that may distract us from working on optimizing the most effective channels. By splitting your spending or output into three differently sized areas, it helps you to identify priority areas, and allocate…

What is PR Smith's SOSTAC® marketing planning model, what is the RACE Growth System, and how do you use them to win more customers?

If you don't know PR Smith's SOSTAC® model, it's worth getting to know if you're involved with planning marketing strategies or campaigns. SOSTAC® was voted the third most popular model in the CIM poll on marketing models because it's easy to remember and it makes it easy to structure plans for different planning activities. So, whether you're creating an overall marketing or digital marketing strategy or improving individual channel tactics like SEO or email marketing, SOSTAC® is your friend. In this article, we will talk through applying the SOSTAC® planning model to your marketing strategy, with the RACE Growth System.

What is SOSTAC®?

SOSTAC® is a planning model, originally developed in the 1990s to help with marketing planning by PR Smith, who is my co-author on Emarketing…

Learn how to create a PESTLE analysis to identify threats and opportunities in the macro environment to guide your marketing planning

You may have heard PESTLE mentioned when studying marketing theory or in your workplace. It is a powerful, yet simple, analysis tool for overall business and marketing planning. In this blog we explain what it is, why it is useful, and how you can create your own PESTLE analysis for marketing planning today.

What is a PESTLE analysis?

PESTLE is an acronym that covers 6 key areas in your macro (external) environment. Each letter stands for a different factor, as shown in the graphic below: Did you know? Sometimes it is referred to as a PEST analysis, or spelt ‘PESTEL’, but the most common acronym is PESTLE. A PESTLE analysis is a framework to help you identify external factors - happening outside…

What is the 7Ps Marketing Mix and how should it be used?

The marketing mix is a familiar marketing strategy tool, which as you will probably know, was traditionally limited to the core 4Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion. It is one of the top 3 classic marketing models according to a poll on Smart Insights. It's an essential part of a marketing plan structure that defines the tactics to be used to implement the marketing strategy. The traditional 7Ps of marketing consist of: Product Promotion Price Place People Process Physical evidence [si_guide_block id="95323" title="Free marketing plan template" description="Download for recommendations on how to structure different types of marketing plans including marketing plans, campaign plans and digital plans. Join Smart Insights as a Free Member to download our marketing plan template today"/]

Who created the 7Ps marketing mix model?

The 7Ps marketing model was originally devised by E.…