We have carefully designed Smart Insights to include different types of resources to help our members become better marketers and get better results. Our competitors may have some of these, but we cover all the bases depending on whether you want to quickly get results using a template or learn a technique using a certified course.

The first part of this Help article explains the different types and formats of Smart Insights resources and how they are structured so that you can quickly find the ones that are most suited to help you improve.

The second part of the article explains how to use different types of resources to help you improve your knowledge and results, following the RACE Growth System OSA process:

What are they for?
​Guides give short descriptions and concepts of techniques, while Templates are editable Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Google Docs you can customize for analysis, planning and action.

How are they structured?

Guides and templates are categorized within twenty different Toolkits, so you can find all of our templates, about Marketing Campaign Planning, for example, by filtering using the Toolkits dropdown on the Guides and Templates page as shown in this example.

These are the twenty Toolkits:

Note: Business Toolkits are only available to Pro members.

Where do I find them?

Guides and templates are accessed by the left navigation of the premium members' area:

You can also search by keyword within the member's area.
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What are they for?

Learning Paths are flexible, structured e-learning courses to help you learn key concepts and best practices in digital marketing.
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A unique feature of Leaning Paths is that they are integrated with our templates, with relevant templates to perform analysis, planning or reporting recommended throughout. This means you can 'learn through doing', by reviewing marketing practices for your business and define improvements.

How can I gain certification?

Each Smart Insights Learning Path has been independently assessed and accredited by the CPD Standards Office, so you can be confident that the quality of the learning and assessment experience has been audited and recognized for its quality.

Learners who complete a Learning Path can receive Certification to use as part of Continued Professional Development.

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Once you have completed a Learning Path, contact us via the chat box on the bottom right of the screen to request your CPD certificate.

How are they structured?

Learners can complete individual modules, curated topics or structured courses based on their skill development needs. Unlike many online learning courses, it is not mandatory to complete each Learning Path in its entirety! So, if you need to just learn about one technique, you can just access that part of the course.

This example shows different modules within the Reach Topic and how progress for this module is marked.

What formats are they?

Learning Paths use an engaging, interactive learning format featuring text, images, video and questions to explain concepts, give examples and test understanding.

Where do I find them?

Learning Paths are accessed by the left navigation of the premium members' area.

What are they for?

Quick Wins are our 'micro-learning' option, giving actionable, step-based marketing techniques to help you get fast results.

They are also useful for making business improvements since many define 'Standard Operating Processes' or SOPs, i.e., each Quick Win gives you a series of practical steps to follow to make quick improvements.

An SOP defines how a business task should best be completed by defining a series of steps or sub-tasks. They are particularly well-suited to digital marketing for channels like organic and paid search, social media and email marketing, since there is a lot of complexity within these areas which needs to be mastered.
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SOPs are a foundation of Smart Insights, since when we launched we wanted to help marketers and business owners who were new to digital marketing save time and get better results through following best practices, based on our experiences and tests of using digital marketing across many sectors.

How are they structured?

Each Quick Wins has a series of steps that you can use to review your processes against best practice guidance. Each step is recorded which means you can save your progress and return to where you left it at any time.

Each Quick Win also comes with a separate downloadable workbook which means you can make notes on actions to take or how to improve SOPs for your business.

What format are they?

Quick Wins include highlighted best practices, screenshot examples and videos.

Where do I find them?

Quick Wins are accessed by the left navigation of the premium members' area:

As well as the three resource types we have explained in this article, we also have further tools to help you assess your skills and/or digital maturity. These are available from the left sidebar navigation too. They include:

Note: Graders for assessing digital maturity and skills are also available to free members, but these are designed to be more top-level and quicker to complete.

Our improvement process can be applied across the whole of your marketing, focusing on digital marketing OR a specific marketing channel activity you are working to improve such as campaign planning, SEO or social media marketing.

Each toolkit contains similar resources such as Audits or Playbooks to help improve that area of marketing. Within each part of OSA (Opportunity, Strategy, Action), there are 3 common resource types to support managing marketing activities.

Within the RACE Growth System, the improvement process is called RACE OSA, with typical activities shown below.

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Typical tasks and deliverables that apply across overall marketing or digital marketing activities, or an individual channel covered by a Smart Insights toolkit, are shown in the table below.