In this Help article we introduce Smart Insights and the RACE Growth System for new members.
Our aim, since we formed 15+ years ago, is to help our members improve their results from integrated digital marketing so they can make the most of the great opportunities offered by modern marketing.
We’re proud to share the exciting potential of digital marketing with over 150,000 active members, premium members in more than 100 countries and our monthly blog readership of more than half a million users.
Part 1. How do Smart Insights help members?
We help individuals improve their personal digital marketing skills and businesses of all sizes increase their leads and sales by creating action plans to transform their use of integrated digital marketing.
We help our members improve their digital maturity by using a more strategic, data-driven approach by creating practical action plans. Our member resources are structured using the RACE Growth System, which is an integrated framework to help members plan, manage, and optimize all their marketing activities.
Learn more about how we help our members reach their personal career goals and improve their business marketing effectiveness by:
Supporting your skills and career development through our Learning Paths and actionable templates
Improving marketing results for your business through using our comprehensive resource library of learning courses, guides and practical templates
Review our index of templates for different audits and action plan templates
Agencies and consultants with Pro membership can white label our downloadable templates for their business to use on their client projects. View our Index of more than 100 templates covering the full customer lifecycle.
Marketers and business owners in organizations of all sizes can use these templates to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. You can review the index of templates to prioritize improvements most relevant to your business.
The Smart Insights difference
All too often digital marketing is poorly planned and tactical. Our research shows that around half of businesses don't have a digital marketing strategy. This is partly because much of the digital marketing training available is limited to tactics, not strategy.
All our learning starts with strategy, which aligns your goals with communications tactics using our RACE Growth System. This means our members develop effective marketing skills to be a sought-after 'T-shaped' marketer, by helping you become more:
Strategic. Learn how to create integrated digital and marketing strategies using the RACE Growth System.
Competitive. Learn competitor benchmarking. Develop powerful Digital Value Propositions.
Data-driven. Learn how to create forecasts, monitor performance with GA4 and dashboards.
Creative. Learn how to enhance your brand and content ideation with the latest marketing technology.
Actionable. Our resources help you focus on improving results using editable planning, forecasting and monitoring templates.
What is a 'T-shaped' marketer?
We believe that to succeed in their careers, marketers need to develop strategic skills as highlighted by the purple portrait part of the 'T' in our visual, plus develop knowledge of best practices for media channels, shown across the top landscape part of the 'T'.
The Smart Insights team
Our team is made up of experienced and active digital marketers with a wealth of knowledge between them. We are all passionate about helping individuals and businesses get the most from their marketing, sharing our experiences and seeking to learn as much as possible along the way.
Smart Insights is owned and operated by our two founders:
Dr. Dave Chaffey, a digital strategist, trainer and consultant who is a bestselling author of digital marketing and e-commerce books. He was recognized by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 gurus worldwide who has "shaped the future of marketing". As well as developing our member content, Dave continues to speak, train and consult on digital marketing strategy.
Stu Miller, CEO has over 20 years of experience in managing web-based technology for large companies and start-ups.
Part 2. Introducing the RACE Growth System
Back in 2010, after speaking to many businesses that didn’t have an integrated digital marketing plan, we created RACE to help businesses plan, manage and optimize their marketing communications. We also wanted to help individuals develop the marketing skills needed in their current roles and for their future careers.
Since digital marketing is vital to the modern marketing and sales process, our focus is on integrating data-driven online marketing activities aligned with your marketing and business strategy.
The RACE Growth System has two parts:
1. The RACE Planning Framework: defines the essential activities and measures you need to master to survive and thrive in today’s marketing world.
The visual shows the five steps of RACE that need to be covered in a modern marketing plan. RACE starts with Plan to emphasize the importance of a plan since many marketers don't consider their overall strategy, and only look at channels.
In the detailed guidance in our membership, each of the five parts of RACE is broken down into 5, giving (5 X 5 =) 25 key activities that need to be considered in every comprehensive digital marketing plan. Recommendations for best practices for detailed in our RACE Digital Marketing Learning Path which is the best way to learn RACE in more detail.
2. The RACE OSA improvement process: defines the three steps needed to build and implement your growth plan - either for your overall marketing plan or for an individual channel, such as organic search, social media or email marketing.
Our guidance on improving results in RACE is also structured into 20 toolkits from which you can select downloadable templates which are focused on making improvements to key channels.
These can be amended by a business to define 'Standard Operating Processes' or SOPs since our Templates and Quick Wins give you a series of practical steps to follow to make 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.
More details on how are different types of resources and where to access them in our platform can be found in our Help article: How to learn modern marketing techniques and boost results using Smart Insights resources.