Do you, or does your organization, use SOPs for digital marketing activities?
You may not have heard of SOPs, since the technique seems to be more widely used in the US and in markets where the sales process is more technical (think E-commerce or B2B rather than consumer brands and smaller businesses). But I believe they are a powerful technique that any business in any market can benefit from. They are particularly useful for agencies and consultants to use when working on client activities. In a larger team, in particular, they can help achieve consistency of approach and results by everyone following best practices and can support training of less experienced team members.
What is a Marketing Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)?
So, what is an SOP? In short, an SOP defines a repeatable procedure for how a business process task should best be completed by defining a series of steps or sub-tasks.
In marketing,…
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 use 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 into digital marketing trends for 2025 shows that many businesses (around 40%) 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…
Using GenAI RAG techniques to support marketing strategy development
Since I’ve been involved in digital marketing from when we used to call it Internet Marketing, I’ve always been keen to help businesses use a more strategic approach. I believe it’s essential since digital marketing is complex, and it’s vital that it’s aligned with marketing strategy and not just treated as tactical, as it often is. So, in my consulting, training, books and on Smart Insights, how to use a strategic approach to digital marketing has always been a big part of my recommendations.
The recent growth in adoption of GenAI has been fascinating for me, since although it can be used in a tactical way to support copywriting for digital channels, it has also been enthusiastically adopted for marketing and digital marketing strategy and planning as our research on digital marketing trends shows.
46% reported that they had already used AI for…
Dr. Dave Chaffey, author of Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice explains a process to achieve success by focusing on the 18 most important digital marketing techniques
Simply put, our definition of digital marketing, or online marketing, is:
"Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital media, data and technology."
Within this broad digital marketing definition, there are many vital channels and platforms that we will introduce and share strategies and tactics for in this article, as well as the key digital marketing KPIs and metrics for success.
In this overview of digital marketing I will explain:
What is digital marketing?
18 key types of digital marketing techniques across 6 media channel
How to achieve the business benefits of digital marketing using the 5Ss
Key marketing communications concepts for digital marketing
A strategic approach to digital marketing
To help explain the concepts I will illustrate this article with key visuals from my…
6 Trends and the latest practical innovations which will change marketing in the year(s) ahead
We all now know that Generative AI (Gen AI) has already made a huge impact on marketing and the wider world. Yet it will grow dramatically more in the future since, as we will see, many businesses have been surprisingly slow in adapting and adopting it. Plus there are some amazing innovations as we move towards AGI - Artificial General Intelligence where AI will possess the ability to understand, learn, and complete tasks at a level comparable to or exceeding that of a human being.
In this post, I'll cover trends covering both AI strategy and how the GenAI tools are developing.
Those of use who have enthusiastically adopted AI in our marketing have become used to the incredible ability of GenAI to create compelling copy, visuals and code when provided with sufficiently detailed prompts. However, we’re also…
Dr Dave Chaffey’s practical review of the marketing trends that will matter for B2C and B2B marketers in 2025
I’ve been writing reviews of the latest digital marketing innovations for well over 10 years now; spurred on since they seem to be helpful based on the comments on LinkedIn and when I present them. I hope that's because I try to keep them practical. They’re also a way to keep readers of my books in the loop during the gap between new editions. This last year we’ve published the Eighth edition of Digital Business and E-commerce Management and next year the ninth edition of Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice.
I guess, I must enjoy the challenge too, since for many years, there weren’t significant new trends, more of an evolution, but that changed last year with the growing usage of Generative AI which was the most exciting innovation of recent years.…
Digital marketing is more important now than ever. My recommendations on the challenges and opportunities for growth
Digital marketing is deceptively easy if you take the deliberately simple definition from my book Digital Marketing:Strategy, Implementation and Practice where I define Digital Marketing as:
"Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital media, data and technology".
But in reality, digital marketing is a tough challenge since many businesses know how vital digital and mobile channels are today for acquiring and retaining customers. Yet the research shared below shows that many businesses don't have an integrated plan to support digital transformation and business growth based on engaging their audiences effectively online.
In this article, I will explain why a digital marketing strategy is essential for all businesses. If you're looking for an introduction to the scope of digital marketing and what should be included in a plan, see my post explaining What is Digital Marketing.
Regardless of the type…
From B2B to E-commerce to Brands, we've got examples of digital marketing plans for early startups through to multinational enterprises
Whether you're starting from scratch, or improving your existing plans, examples of digital marketing plans help marketers see the how, not just the why, of structuring their approach to digital marketing. Because of this, we have always included examples with our templates, regardless of the type of plan.
Sharing examples can also be useful for onboarding your team in the marketing planning process, or getting marketing strategy buy-in from senior management.
In this blog, I'll share three examples of different types of digital marketing plans to help you decide how to scope and structure your own plan using our RACE planning OSA process which is one of the two foundational parts of our RACE Growth System which includes Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) templates to plan, manage and optimize all aspects of digital…
Using re-brandable digital marketing tools and templates can help small marketing agencies and consultants compete with the bigger players - here's how
The concept behind white labeling/private labeling in marketing is simple. It's a business arrangement in which one company produces goods or services, and another company rebrands them as their own and offers them to their customer base.
The big benefit of white labeling in marketing is that it allows agencies and consultancies an easy way to quickly expand their service offerings to their clients, without having to develop marketing specialisms in-house.
With the ever-increasing demands for specialization and the emergence of new marketing technologies, it can be a daunting task to keep up. So, partnering with a trustworthy and reputable specialized service provider is a popular solution enabling marketing agencies and consultancies to offer their expertise under your agency's name and brand.
To consider: Within this B2B transaction, there is an underlying…
