An integrated marketing strategy means every element of your marketing plan must contribute towards your goals and objectives, or be cut out of the day-to-day workload

Lack of integration between strategic vision and the tactics needed to get there is a problem I often find when reviewing marketing strategies. That's why I created the RACE Framework as a simple structure to unify your marketing strategy through goals, objectives, and KPIs. You can see examples of integrated marketing goals and objectives planning below. This is true whether I'm reviewing student assignments or mentoring marketers creating real-world marketing strategies. More often than not, I find myself reading about different aspects of marketing objectives and tactics that just don't line up with each other - and leave you questioning why. These issues can be magnified by marketing strategy structure - the way the document is split up into separate sections. Without a unifying framework, it's not…

Using the RACE OSA process to structure a marketing plan

A marketing plan is an essential tool to compete and grow your business since it gives focus to your marketing activities by setting realistic, achievable priorities within your budget. It simply defines what you want to gain from your investment in marketing and how you will achieve these goals through selecting the best marketing strategies and channels to acquire and retain customers. A typical definition of a marketing plan used by traditional marketers is: "A marketing plan is a strategic document that specifies your organization’s target markets, marketing objectives, programs, and activities to achieve them, expected timescales, resources to be utilized, according to defined budgets, and how success will be measured". This is logical and simple and that's what we need to achieve through the structure of an effective marketing plan. However, for today's marketing where digital marketing channels are so important we need a…

A content marketing planning tool to help marketers generate a matrix of ideas for the most engaging content types for their audiences

We created our Content Marketing Matrix to help our members audit their content marketing assets as part of creating a content marketing strategy. It can also be used for content ideation, i.e. to brainstorm future content ideas to generate leads, nurture prospects, encourage sharing, and generate backlinks for SEO. Since we created it eight years ago it's been shared many times and has inspired many 'mashups' in different formats, as this Google search shows; great to see it's been useful! I think our Content Marketing Matrix is a powerful mindtool for marketers since it's a content mapping tool, structured to help you think through two key dimensions of which types of content will best support the path to purchase for your target audience.…

Examples and definitions of integrated marketing today. Find out why integrated omnichannel marketing is essential to the success of your business

Without getting too Aristotelian, with marketing, the whole is most certainly more than the sum of its parts - when it's done right that is. But what is 'Integrated Marketing done right'? The goal of practicing integrated marketing is to align your multichannel marketing mix. As channels and platforms continue to evolve, the concept has extended to include a structured approach to: Search Social media Display PR Landing pages Product catalogs Email marketing Direct marketing At Smart Insights, we define Integrated Marketing as follows: "Integrated Marketing is a strategic approach to integrating communications and interactive experiences targeting defined audiences and individuals which coordinates all aspects of marketing of a brand, including: Paid media (offline advertising, direct marketing and online display and programmatic); Earned media (Organic search fuelled by content marketing, PR…

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…

15 practical examples of GPT-3/GPT-4 prompts to support content marketing, email marketing, search and social media marketing

In Part 1, of my review of marketing applications of Chat GPT,  I reviewed the quality of output and interactions of the GPT-3 Large Language Model (LLM) on which ChatGPT is trained by asking: How can I use ChatGPT for marketing? I showed how you can use ChatGPT for learning more about digital marketing and marketing planning by creating plans. In this article, I will explain some practical use cases of how marketers can use Chat GPT for content marketing to support different digital marketing channels. We'll see that knowing how to Prompt ChatGPT will be a key skill, so I'll show different Prompting techniques before reviewing specific applications for the different digital marketing channels. Some of the key digital marketing channels that I'll describe are summarised in this visual from my book Digital marketing:…

Create a co-ordinated 'always-on' digital marketing strategy for the whole customer lifecycle to boost conversions and retention

It's no secret that engaging your customers is crucial to achieving continued sales, and it's also well known that it is usually far easier and costs less to get repeat business from existing customers than it is to acquire new ones from scratch. Customer relationship management (CRM) is well established as a process to try to achieve this, but this customer lifecycle 'relationship' begins with the first contact with the customer (when they are still a contact or prospect). We believe that the best way for a company or brand to build relationships is through a planned always-on marketing approach integrated across each 4 stages of your customers' lifecycles: Reach Act Convert Engage This renewed focus by marketers on prospect and customer engagement, conversion, and retention has led to the appearance of a new…

From SMART to SMARTER marketing objectives: Discover how to define marketing objectives, measure your digital marketing goals, and use data to inform your marketing strategy

When identifying specific marketing objectives to support your long-term goals, it is common practice to apply the widely used SMART mnemonic. You will know that SMART is used to assess the suitability of objectives set to drive different strategies or the improvement of the full range of business processes. By its simplest definition, an effective SMART marketing objective is: Specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound. But you will learn in this article that beyond this well-known acronym, there are different variations and nuances which you can apply to practice Smarter Marketing.

What is Smarter Marketing?

The SMART acronym is much more than a mnemonic since it defines a way of thinking about getting better results within business and marketing. This mindset is based…

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 shows that many businesses 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 for digital transformation. At a time when marketers are increasingly…

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…