Digital Maturity Grader

To create a strategic approach to digital marketing, you need to make sure SMART objectives are aligned with your business and marketing goals, with prioritized activities to achieve these defined in a plan. The main activities forming the plan defined in the RACE framework are:

• 1.1 Performance review - assess business and marketplace performance and review analytics
• 1.2 Setting objectives, goals, and vision - customize analytics, create dashboards and define future potential
• 1.3 Strategy and governance - create an integrated digital marketing strategy and implementation plan
• 1.4 Segment and targeting - develop personas and a layered, multichannel targeting strategy
• 1.5 Proposition - develop and communicate product and brand experience

Q1. Rate PLAN maturity for your business from one to five using the descriptors on this RACE visual benchmark and the activities defined in the RACE framework from 1.1 to 1.5.

 

For effective customer acquisition that integrates digital channels with offline communications, the key capabilities needed are:

• 2.1 Media effectiveness review - review media performance in Google Analytics (or similar)
• 2.2 Search marketing - review and improve organic (SEO) and paid (Google Ads) results
• 2.3 Owned and earned media - review and improve social media, PR and influencer outreach
• 2.4 Paid media - review and improve paid and display media
• 2.5 Acquisition and campaign plan - create a digital media budget and campaign plan

Within the ACT part of RACE, we need to develop skills that improve the quality of interACTions of prospects and customers across customer journeys, with different forms of content on websites, mobile apps and social media.  This is to encourage interest in a product and brand with the aim of generating leads for high-value products. The key capabilities needed are:

• 3.1. Customer journey analysis - including forward and reverse path analysis in analytics
• 3.2 Visitor and customer profiling - including lead scoring and grading
• 3.3. Optimize content - including content ideation and evaluating effectiveness
• 3.4. Optimize Landing Pages - including developing lead magnets and A/B testing
• 3.5 Content and campaign planning - including structuring content and campaign plan 

To help boost conversion to sale - both online and if relevant, offline via stores or sales conversations - the key capabilities needed are:

• 4.1 Lead nurturing/remarketing - create email and push welcome and nurture sequences. Ad retargeting.
• 4.2 Web personalization - design personalized messages and offers based on audience profiles and interactions
• 4.3 Mobile marketing integration - analysis of smartphone vs. desktop customer journeys and impact on search and offline journeys
• 4.4 Multichannel selling - design cadences integrating online interactions leading to sales conversations
• 4.5 Conversion rate optimization - plan and run structured A/B tests and applying AI to increase sales

Q4. Rate CONVERT maturity for your business from one to five using the descriptors on this RACE visual benchmark and the activities defined in the RACE framework from 4.1 to 4.5.

To improve the effectiveness of customer communications defined by ENGAGE, the key capabilities needed are:

• 5.1 Customer onboarding - create a welcome sequence for new customers including engagement, advocacy and loyalty (cross-sell and up-sell)
• 5.2 Customer web experience - customize analytics and UX tools to review customer usage of website (and apps) and make improvements
• 5.3 Customer service and success - develop a process to research and improve customer experience and web self-service
• 5.4 Customer email marketing -  plan and optimize email marketing to improve customer engagement and sales
• 5.5 Social media - plan and optimize organic and paid social media to improve customer engagement and sales

Q5. Rate ENGAGE maturity for your business from one to five using the descriptors on this RACE visual benchmark and the activities defined in the RACE framework from 5.1 to 5.5.

The importance of developing brands is often understated as a digital marketing capability, but we think it's vital across the RACE customer lifecycle.  To be successful in modern marketing, you need to be able to develop and master these skills which are covered in-depth in our digital marketing strategy and digital branding Toolkit templates. The key capabilities needed are:

• Auditing brand effectiveness
• Researching persona brand values
• Competitor benchmarking
• Techniques for communicating product and brand value propositions

Q6. Rate BRAND maturity for your business from one to five using the descriptors on this RACE visual benchmark and the activities above.

Finally, consider your strategic skills for managing digital marketing. These are most important for larger businesses, but decisions about these success factors also need to be reviewed in smaller businesses or a 'team of one'. The key capabilities needed are: 

• Creating a budget for investment in marketing
• Regular performance analysis and reviews, e.g., through 90-day plans
• Selecting Marketing Technology and AI
• Allocating budget to resources and managing time

Q7. Rate PLAN maturity for your business from one to five using the descriptors on this RACE visual benchmark and the activities defined above.