The RACE Framework

The RACE Framework Explained and How to Use It

The RACE framework was created to help businesses manage their digital marketing efforts and improve their results. RACE is an acronym that stands for Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage.

The framework covers digital marketing processes spanning the whole customer lifecycle and integrates with offline marketing efforts.

In this article, we’ll explain every phase of the RACE framework and show you how you can use it to your advantage. Ready when you are!

The RACE Framework Explained

To understand this framework better, let’s take a closer look at each step that this platform includes.

Reach

The first phase is all about generating awareness about your brand and what you are offering. You can do this through multiple strategies, channels, and media, including offline channels. At this stage, buyers are still exploring their options.

Strategies you can use include search engine optimization for generating organic traffic, social media marketing, influencer marketing, paid search, display ads, and press releases.
Crucial at this stage is sending a lot of traffic to your website and social media pages. This makes metrics like audience volume and audience quality important to track.

Act

During this stage, you want to encourage potential customers to interact with your brand. Often, this means generating leads. But depending on what you’re offering, it could also mean getting them to visit a particular page, download an ebook, search for a product on your ecommerce website, etc. This is an important phase as buyers are in the decision-making stage.

Content creation and promotion are crucial as you want to provide real value to prospective customers. In other words, you want to make your website worth finding online. Key metrics include time on site, lead conversion rate, shares, likes, and subscribes.

Convert

Next, you want to persuade the customers you’ve attracted so far to press the buy or subscribe button, whether they do it online or in your store. You want to use conversion rate optimization strategies, marketing automation, ad retargeting, mobile marketing, social customer relationship management, newsletters, and more. The point here is to build trust even as you sell.
Key metrics during the Convert stage include conversion rates, sales across channels, and revenue and profit.

Engage

The last stage involves understanding customer loyalty drivers and working to improve them so that customers give you good ratings, spread the word about your business, and return to buy your products or services.

You can use a variety of strategies including social media marketing, customer support via social media, surveys and questionnaires, and personalized offers.
Key measures of your success during this phase include repeat purchases which drive the lifetime value of your customers, brand satisfaction, and brand advocacy.

What About Planning?

Planning may not appear in the RACE framework per se, but this is essentially what this framework is about—planning and managing your digital marketing efforts. Think of planning as a prerequisite before you start applying the framework.

During the planning phase, you want to define your goals and strategy and do enough audience research to understand who you are targeting. You then want to plan every stage, setting up objectives and metrics that you will track.

Why Use the RACE Framework?

The RACE framework is practical, social, and integrated. It’s all about continuous, long-term results and it encourages you to focus on all the key steps in the marketing cycle, from building awareness to engaging your audience.

Best of all, it’s a simple framework you can apply to any type of business with an online presence while at the same time make it work with your existing offline marketing strategies.
For all these reasons, the RACE framework can provide structure to your marketing efforts and help you and your team stay focused and on target.