To be successful in online marketing, you need mastery of the details to compete across the main digital platforms that consumers or businesses use to find and select products. The algorithms used to power Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter control your visibility and how much you pay, so to get visibility digital marketers need to get to grips with the latest techniques.

But what if you’re not a digital marketing specialist. Where do you need to focus your strategic initiatives?

Senior managers like business owners and the marketing, finance or operations directors ultimately want to know what they need to invest in at a top-level and the returns they will get. There will be a finite budget assigned to online marketing for the year and they want to ensure people are spending their time on the right activities and investing in the right types of media to get a positive return.

To create an effective strategy for digital marketing and a plan to implement it, we need to focus investments of time and money in the right places to give us the biggest uplift. That's strategy.

We start this guide by recommending the six pillars or capabilities for success in digital marketing that every business should consider improving.

Then, for each part of RACE, we recommend five key marketing activities which you should consider to create a comprehensive plan covering communications touchpoints across the marketing funnel.

Plus, within the Plan section, we recommend specific analysis and planning techniques you can use to help select the best strategy.