RACE Marketing Model

Businesses need to track KPIs at every step of the client journey and use big data to quickly optimize their marketing funnel to increase brand awareness, increase sales, or improve lead generation. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing allows you to measure results, so you can play the far-sighted marketing game without being blind.

When it comes to spending money on marketing, ROI decides whether your campaign was successful or not. Digital marketing brings you the best ROI because it is more cost-saving than traditional marketing and advertising. 

Traditional marketing models are limited in many ways, but one of the limitations is the inability to reach beyond a regional or local audience. Your business may not be geo-referenced, so why limit your reach?

However, 45% of organizations do not have a well-defined digital marketing strategy. Our 3D rendering company has worked with many successful marketing agencies. That’s where we learned how to develop and implement a flexible strategic approach to digital marketing and use the most popular and effective RACE marketing model for review.

What is the RACE model?

Dr. Dave Chaffee of Digital Insights created the RACE marketing model to provide companies with a simple framework for implementing digital marketing and omnichannel communications to drive inclusive growth.

RACE marketing model includes four stages: R – reach, A – act, C – convert, E – engage. Your potential buyer goes through this funnel. First, they land on your ad (R), then they land on your website and click the right button (A), then they sign up or make an order/purchase (C), and finally, they get into your loyalty program or follow your social media pages (E).

Everything is simple. Using this model RACE, you will increase awareness among your target audience and grow it, involve it in communication with the brand, convert visitors into clients and form maximum loyalty.

#0. PLAN

Some marketers put a “P” at the beginning of RACE, emphasizing the importance of the planning phase. You must define and organize your company’s marketing goals and objectives using SMART. It is used to assess the suitability of objectives set to drive different strategies or the improvement of business processes.

In short, this is one of the most effective goal-setting approaches. The SMART goal should be: S — Specific; M — Measurable; A — Achievable; R — Relevant; T —Time-bound. 

• set specific goals to define milestones of your campaign more clearly;
• decide how to measure the success of the set goals;
• make sure all of your goals are achievable;
• evaluate how relevant your goals are regarding your own business and the market in general;
• determine the timeline of the campaign, set deadlines.

RACE essentially shows the entire customer journey from the moment of being unfamiliar with the company to the moment of becoming a loyal client. Each of the stages has its own goals, however, for direct response advertising, it is better to set a goal for the final steps and build earlier steps of the funnel from them. This way a marketing team achieves the conversion of each stage.

For example, the goal of an advertising campaign is to attract 100 customers in 1 month. To do this, you need to:

100 customers in 1 month <- 1000 leads (with a conversion of 10%) <- 20,000 users to the site (with a conversion from a site visitor to a lead of 5%) <- 200,000 users to see the advertising message (conversion of 10% - CTR ads).

We have shown each stage of the RACE marketing model, presenting its objective, opportunities, strategy, activities, instruments, metrics, and also provided examples from the furniture business for our readers.

#1. REACH

The first formal phase of the RACE marketing model aims to promote your brand, product, or company in areas outside your control but not beyond your influence.

Objective: raise awareness of the target audience and redirect consumers to the website, landing page, or social media page. The key here is to maximize your reach over time to create multiple touchpoints with paid, owned, and earned media.

Most of the site visitors leave at the stage of reaching the target audience. Through targeting, you can minimize your bounce rate and continue to improve your customer experience. Of course, segmentation of the client base according to the criteria of the real needs of consumers is indispensable here.

Opportunities:

• review of current activities;
• clients reviews;
• comparative analysis of competitors;
• analysis of the influence of intermediaries;
• selection of marketing goals and performance monitoring.

Strategy:

• selecting target market segments and approaches to targeting;
• determining brand positioning and integration with traditional channels;
• overview of the marketing mix.

Activities:

• development of a plan to attract customers;
• development of a content plan for marketing campaigns;
• development of a sales optimization plan.

Instruments:

• search engine optimization (SEO);
• cost per click (PPC);
• partnership programs;
• PR and advertising;
• social media promotion.

Metrics:

• website visitors;
• leads;
• links and clicks.

#2. ACT 

An act is short for Interact. At this stage of the RACE marketing model, give customers a value proposition that initiates your interaction with each other.

Objective: create high-quality interaction with the target audience.

It’s time to convince clients to take the next step in their buying journey when they first land on your website or social media. It could be getting more information about the company or its products, searching for a product, or reading a blog post.

In 2009, McKinsey consultants, who formulated the model of consumer-brand interaction, concluded that the goal of marketing is to “grab the attention of consumers at the moments that most influence their decisions.” The goal is still relevant now, but there are more moments, and it is more difficult to attract the attention of consumers. 

You should make sure that the consumer not only understands the value of the product but also enjoys interacting with the brand at every stage of the journey to purchase.

Opportunities:

• overview of the movements of clients on the site, depending on the device used;
• review of interaction with social networks;
• determining goals for measuring and analyzing customer interactions.

Strategy:

• determining a target audience portrait;
• outlining a content marketing plan;
• creating a social media presence plan.

Activities:

• creation of a company plan and coverage plan;
• content creation, including innovative methods such as 3D product modeling and rendering, animation, virtual and augmented reality, etc.;
• creation of landing pages.

Instruments:

• conversion cost optimization;
• lead generation;
• site optimization;
• landing page optimization;
• AB and multivariate testing.

Metrics:

• time spent on the site;
• click tracing in-between website pages;
• “like” marks;
• shares and reposts.

#3. CONVERT 

In the third phase of the RACE marketing model, you achieve the conversion of your goals, such as increasing sales from potential buyers both online and offline.

Objective: selling, i.e. converting marketing goals into a specific result and leads into buyers.

Converting is a stage of making a deal and receiving payment. Essentially a macro conversion. Your messages have changed — from informative and useful to more specific and targeted. It could be an email campaign promoting a particular product, a remarketing campaign, etc.

Opportunities:

• creation and review of the conversion funnel of the site and the path to purchase;
• viewing multi-channel interactions;
• analysis of buyers’ feedback.

Strategy:

• determining the approach to conversion rate optimization (CRO);
• choosing key online communications (search, email, social networks, and mobile devices) for driving sales;
• identifying ways for online purchase i.e. customer journey.

Activities:

• optimization of e-commerce sales based on analytics;
• implementation of CRO through a test plan;
• introduction of the program of interaction by email.

Instruments:

• conversion rate optimization;
• lead generation;
• running tests of landing pages.

Metrics:

• orders;
• sales revenue;
• the average cost of online orders.

#4. ENGAGE

During this stage of the RACE marketing model, the focus is on building long-term relationships with your new clients to build loyalty.

Objective: building long-term relationships with users through multiple interactions to add value to customers.

The value of engaged clients is often overlooked, and companies focus on one-time sales rather than customers who will keep coming back for more. The thing is if you have regular buyers, you are guaranteed long-term profits. The point of the Engagement phase is to be the main driving force for repeat purchases and brand protection.

Opportunities:

• checking customer loyalty using RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary);
• analysis of the reasons for customer satisfaction;
• analysis of the effectiveness of interaction with customers.

Strategy:

• developing a plan of interaction with clients;
• developing a plan for personalization and merchandising on the Internet;
• establishing contact with clients (e-mail marketing, SMM, community management).

Activities:

• introduction or clarification of the personalization process on the site;
• introduction or refinement of personalized emails;
• management of campaigns in social networks and email.

Instruments:

• CRM system;
• email newsletters;
• SMM
• customer support and sales support.

Metrics:

• repeat purchases;
• client testimonials;
• recommendations;
• bonuses and coupons.

The RACE marketing model was created in response to the dynamically developing direction of digital marketing. That tool allows modern marketers to plan digital marketing activities, which is not always achievable in classic planning models. RACE model, in turn, is omnichannel and universal.

RACE has 4+1 client-oriented phases: Planning, Reach, Act, Convert and Engage. The “Reach” stage aims to attract and raise customer awareness. The “Act” stage operates to make interactions with potential clients. The “Convert” stage is designed to increase sales, while the “Engage” is designed to build a clients base of regular and loyal customers. 

Want to provide quality results that target the right audience at the right time with the right promo message? Enhance your marketing campaigns with top-notch 3D rendering services for a more incredible visual customer experience. Quality photorealistic rendering of your products gives you a competitive edge at every stage of the marketing funnel, allows you to bring your vision to life, and let your business thrive.

Paul J. Parker

Sr. Digital Marketing Specialist at CGIFurniture

More than anything, Paul loves when the ad campaign shows higher ROI than anticipated. His other passions include playing basketball with friends, street-art, and cooking delicious vegan desserts and sweets.