Using capability maturity models to audit your digital maturity and set targets to improve digital marketing effectiveness
We've been adding to our visual tools to help all members assess how well their businesses are adapting to using digital media and technology and to set targets to improve their results from digital marketing.
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3 different types of benchmarking
We have collected these visuals together in a single download so that you can easily review them and print the most relevant for you. We've designed them So members can use them for different scales of business and roles. There are more than 10 templates which cover:
Digital marketing for small and medium businesses using our RACE framework
Digital transformation for larger businesses
Digital channel marketing activities including SEO, Social media, email and content marketing
You can see one example, which I designed for reviewing digital marketing effectiveness with senior leaders in small and medium…
Use our digital marketing maturity models to assess new opportunities for upskilling and digital transformation
Ever since I’ve been involved in working with businesses to improve their digital marketing, I’ve seen huge variations in digital capabilities. That's why at Smart Insights we have always championed using digital marketing maturity models as a simple technique to assess your digital marketing effectiveness. Today, Smart Insights Members have a wealth of free and premium digital marketing auditing resources and training solutions for digital upskilling, which I will cover in more depth in this article.
If you're new to the concept of reviewing or assessing digital marketing maturity, you might ask why it's considered necessary. The value in reviewing digital maturity is that it can quickly give you a ‘line in the sand’ benchmark for your organization's digital marketing activities to improve upon. In today's digital landscape, comparing your digital maturity to similar competitors is an…
Our latest summary of ad clickthrough rates statistics in the US, Europe, and Worldwide is designed to help you benchmark your paid digital and social media ads, set marketing budgets, and define your goals
If you're forecasting your digital media spend, you need to compare the ROI of your display ads, paid social, Google Ads, and social media. Depending on your objectives, it's worth reviewing and benchmarking the latest metrics like average click-through rates, average cost per click, and cost per lead.
I've put this compilation together to help marketing professionals create direct response conversion models for digital marketing campaigns. By creating budget models using known benchmarks for average CTRs and digital media click-through costs, you can better forecast your return on investment from digital media ads. Our budgeting and forecasting spreadsheets include:
Simple digital channel planning spreadsheet
Conversion and revenue model spreadsheet
Month-by-month customer acquisition spreadsheet
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Examples of essential questions to ask when structuring a digital marketing audit
Auditing your digital marketing activities is an essential technique to start a digital marketing strategy. But they’re also useful for finding opportunities to improve your digital marketing by identifying priorities you need to act on to get better results.
Knowing where to start and what to include can be difficult since although you may have your own area of expertise such as search, social media or business, you may not know about other topics. In this article, we’ll provide a comprehensive checklist you can use for your business based on the Smart Insights RACE Digital marketing framework. Each of the five parts of RACE is broken down into five to give a comprehensive evaluation of digital marketing for which I outline questions in this post.
I developed this framework…
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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Today, tech marketers and managers advocate for IT and high tech both internally in their businesses and externally to their target markets. We've got the marketing tools and training you need.
Looking to strengthen your technology company's marketing strategy? As marketers, we are all striving to apply data and customer insights to our marketing activities. But in the IT and high tech sector, with competition at an all-time high, this approach is absolutely critical. Our tried and tested tech marketing solutions support IT and high tech marketing professionals to plan, manage, and optimize their marketing strategy, and win more customers.
Why invest in strategic marketing for your tech company?
If you haven't already got an omnichannel marketing strategy in place, now is the time to develop your marketing to compete in the competitive, growing, IT and high tech marketplace.
As McKinsey found in their UK B2B COVID-19 survey, the technology, media…
Manufacturers are rapidly adapting their marketing strategies in the age of digital disruption. How do your digital marketing capabilities compare?
In this article, I will be reviewing the state of digital transformation in the manufacturing sector. I will give practical digital marketing recommendations for manufacturing companies at different stages of digital maturity. Plus, I'll be revisiting our popular 2021 digital marketing maturity benchmarking report to help you assess the effectiveness of your manufacturing marketing.
The manufacturing industry, including the marketing of manufacturing products, has typically been slow in its approach to digital transformation over the last 20 years. There are many reasons for this. McKinsey highlights 'external market factors, combined with fragmented and complex industry dynamics and an overall aversion to risk' in construction as barriers to change in this vital area.
However, the digital disruption caused…
Implement research-driven, customer-centric marketing to truly optimize your finance or bank marketing strategy and compete in a competitive digital landscape
A recent study of challenger bank marketing tactics caught my attention since it highlights the digital disruption in the financial services industry. What can businesses learn from this challenge in a situational analysis of their own environment, and how can marketers optimize their financial services marketing using this research?
If you're a marketer in the finance sector right now, you will have witnessed huge changes in the industry in the last 12 months alone, with more customers making financial decisions online leading to increased competition and challenges for financial services and banking industry marketers in both the macro and microenvironment.
Therefore, using research such as the challenger banks case study below can help you structure a winning marketing strategy. As we know, the first stage in a marketing plan is…
Benchmarking your performance allows you to understand how well you’re actually performing, compared to real life competitors
Measuring digital success is no easy feat; even if you’ve reached your digital marketing goals and KPIs, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good enough. After all, what if your competitors are all outperforming you? What if the industry is growing at a faster rate than your business is?
That’s why it’s extremely important that you benchmark your business against your competitors: it allows you to understand how well you’re actually performing, compared to real life competitors.
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In this blog post, discover useful tips and tools for benchmarking success in the digital landscape: from social…
Benchmarking allows you to see how well you are faring against your competitors, allowing you to pinpoint what you do well and where improvements need to be made.
Measuring your success is more than looking at how much traffic is coming to your site and what your conversion rate is. You can’t really get a true idea of how you are performing unless you compare yourself to your competitors.
‘How do we compare to our competitors?’ and ‘What does excellence look like?’ are questions you should be asking when developing your digital marketing strategy. While many companies are asking these questions, they may not know exactly what answers they are looking for.
In order to benchmark your performance against your competitors, you need to know exactly what you should be comparing and how to structure your review and recommendations. This is where our comprehensive benchmarking templates come in.
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