A manifesto and ten-point checklist for delivering more relevant online and offline communications
To gain the best results from integrated marketing communications needs a deep understanding of the multiple touchpoints that a brand has with its prospects and customers on its own sites, partner sites digital, and traditional media.
Integrate your marketing communications with the RACE Framework
To fully join up your marketing communications, you will want to consider the focus of your marketing strategy - do marketing activities happen independently, or within a sales funnel, or are they integrated with a structure focused around your customers' omnichannel experiences?
Use the RACE Framework to break this down further, what are the key messages and platforms at each stage of your customers' journeys? Which marketing activities are most efficient at meeting your objectives, what can scale up or down?
Integrated marketing is all about asking these bigger picture questions, and using these insights to plan integrated…
The Ansoff Model is a matrix that helps marketing leaders identify business growth opportunities for their marketing strategies in a challenging market
What is the Ansoff Model?
Also referred to as the Ansoff matrix, due to its grid format, the Ansoff Model helps marketers identify opportunities to grow revenue for a business through developing new products and services or "tapping into" new markets. So it's sometimes known as the ‘Product-Market Matrix’ instead of the ‘Ansoff Matrix’.
The Ansoff Model's focus on growth means that it's one of the most widely used marketing models. It is used to evaluate opportunities for companies to increase their sales through showing alternative combinations for new markets (i.e. customer segments and geographical locations) against products and services offering four strategies as shown.
How to use the Ansoff Matrix
Strategic questions that can be answered using the matrix include:
Market Penetration:…
Don't get left behind with your digital marketing strategy, follow these 7 steps to brilliant B2B marketing!
Many Business-to-business (B2B) companies are already successfully getting great results using digital marketing tactics like SEO, PPC, landing page creation, social media and email marketing linked to a CRM marketing automation system or a simple email autoresponse system.
But often, B2B organizations are not getting the most from today's marketing since they don't have a planned approach based on an integrated inbound marketing plan. To create an infographic showing the latest research on how companies are using inbound marketing, we've researched how B2B companies are using digital marketing. The results across different studies show that while many companies are delivering brilliant results, many could do more.
Our updated infographic shows a planned approach based on our B2B digital marketing planning workbook.
We originally published this infographic back in 2012 when a longer guide was available, but we hope…
Tap into your customers' evolving relationships with technology and the financial services industry and seize new opportunities to strengthen your financial services digital strategy
Globally, the financial sector is facing significant challenges as new online services are created and improved. As consumers' demands and expectations continue to increase, marketers and managers must adapt their financial services digital strategy to stay ahead of the competition.
In this blog, we explore the latest innovations in the finance sector and how they apply to both business- and consumer-facing markets, ranging from established financial services brands and new fintech startups to IFA intermediary markets. And, more importantly, what you can do about it.
Opportunity, Strategy, and Action for financial services
Our simple OSA model helps marketers, managers, and business owners identify challenges and opportunities in their current situation, inform their strategy, and take action. As we discuss the latest developments, it can be useful to refer back to…
McKinsey's consumer decision journey model helps you identify the moment of purchase, while the RACE Framework helps you build a strategy to get there. Use these customer journey models to win more customers
Based on empirical research, in 2009, McKinsey & Company suggested dramatic alternative customer journey models to the traditional purchase funnel. Their research was founded on interviews with 20,000 businesses in the USA, Germany, and Japan.
They recommended a loop model instead of the usual straight-line approach from awareness, purchase, and loyalty. This was a dramatic change although many companies are still, many years later, working on the usual linear approach in a non-linear world.
This is one of the most widely referenced digital marketing models mentioned by brands and agencies, so we use it to start this section. It has spawned many imitative customer journey models including Google’s ZMOT and The Loop from the Pedowitz Group.
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Use the RACE Framework to review and improve all aspects of your competitor benchmarking
When I train or give talks to marketers on digital marketing, I see that competitor benchmarking tools are popular. Often people will reach for their pens when I mention a tool to help inform their marketing. New, free tools are naturally the most popular!
I thought it would be useful to break down and categorize the most important aspects of online benchmarking, so you can check out tools you could use to support each stage.
Today, there is a great breadth and depth of paid and free benchmarking tools available for marketers. Sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start.
That's why our competitor benchmarking guide and template includes a full list of free and premium online benchmarking tools integrated across the RACE Framework.
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Direct to consumer retail and e-commerce marketing strategy case study: Warby Parker
Warby Parker is a glasses designer, manufacturer, and retailer taking the world by storm. Their direct to consumer (D2C) model allows this company to build relationships directly with customers and benefit from retaining them, without expensive intermediaries and partners.
"By circumventing traditional channels, designing glasses in-house, and engaging with customers directly, we’re able to provide higher-quality, better-looking prescription eyewear at a fraction of the going price."
- Warby Parker
In this post, I'll be exploring Warby Parker's marketing strategy and offering our recommendations to develop customer relationships within your retail e-commerce business. To do this succinctly, I'll be using the RACE Framework to highlight WP's strategy at 4 crucial stages in the customer journey - Reach, Interact, Convert, and Engage.
The RACE Framework for direct to…
With this much search and social media activity every minute, content shock is increasing as a challenge for marketers in 2021. Take a step back and ask, what happens online in 60 seconds?
When planning your marketing strategy, it can help to look at the bigger picture of what's going online these days. In this post, we ask what happens online in 60 seconds to help visualize the impact of the internet and digital technology on your customers' lives. The number of Google searches, Facebook posts, and WhatsApp messages sent in a mere 60 seconds is truly phenomenal!
What's more, digital media presents a huge opportunity for marketers, but that you need quality content to compete using digital marketing.
Managing Content shock in 2021
All that content and constant bombardment with messages presents an equally huge challenge…
Three essential steps to kickstart Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation is a focus for many organizations right now and as you can see from the Google Trends search volumes, it's increasing in popularity recently. As with any change within an organization, there are many challenges, so once you've identified digital advocates in the organization, it's time to map out the journey.
In recent months, several companies have mentioned to me that their CEO is committed to digital, but they're having challenges at middle management levels, where it's harder to gain commitment. This can be easier if there is a clear plan shared with all. You can, as many do, call this your digital roadmap, it describes where the business is now and where they're going.
There are several models available, for example, Dave Chaffey recommends the Carnegie Mellon Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in his post 'Using capability maturity models to…
The push and pull model is popular for optimizing sales tactics. E-commerce, manufacturing, and branded goods marketers in particular must employ a mix of both push comms an inbound pull factors
What is push and pull distribution strategy?
Push and pull distribution strategy is all about directing your promotional route to market. Either by the product being pushed towards customers or your customers pulling the product through the retail chain towards them.
This method is crucial for supply management for manufacturers, brands, and online retailers planning promotional strategies. Here are the tactics associated with push and pull distribution strategy:
How to use the push and pull distribution model
There are many advantages and disadvantages of both models, as it depends on your business. For instance, manufacturers tend to use a push strategy for finding distributors to promote their products.
For example, …
