RACE Digital Marketing Trends from 2025 to 2026

 

Dr Dave Chaffey’s annual review of the marketing trends that will matter for B2C and B2B marketers in 2026

In my review this year, I'll be again be aiming to keep it practical for marketers since I will recommend trends to review across the customer lifecycle based on our RACE planning framework. I'll cover all the key media channels and tactics such as those in the lifecycle visual above.

As well as practical marketing tactics covered under RACE, I will start with strategic marketing trends covered under Plan.

Plan marketing trends

Plan-related trends cover how marketing is managed, and within digital marketing, deploying the latest marketing technology is a large part of this. It's no surprise that Martech trends for 2026 will be dominated by AI for marketing.

I've long used Gartner Hype Cycles to inform my commentary on digital marketing trends, with the latest release a good starting point for assessing macro trends in digital marketing.  This 2025 Gartner Digital Marketing Hype Cycle has been syndicated by Tealium.

It's notable for the dominance of AI-related technologies. Key AI-related trends suggested by this visual to me are:

• Using AI agents for marketing - this has probably been THE trend for 2025 and will continue as the trend through 2026
• Answer Engine Optimization - this relates to SEO and gaining visibility in Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Also a major trend, but established for several years now.
• Generative AI for marketing - this trend was kickstarted in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT and has continued with ongoing hype since then. It's interesting that Gartner now places GenAI in the Trough of Disillusionment, and I believe realizing the limitations of GenAI for automated copywriting will be a major trend within marketing within 2026. We have seen a huge increase in the volume of 'AI-slop' generated in the service of automating marketing, but many marketers are realizing that such content is all too often generic and so not sufficiently engaging to gain engagement from readers, so won't get cut-through in the search engine or social media algorithms. So I think there will be more focus placed on generating authentic copy and video by micro and employee influencers in 2026.
• Digital Twins of a Customer - these are mainly relevant for larger businesses and have been discussed for many years, but the advanced in LLMs has made their use more practical, but widespread adoption is still 5-10 years out according to Gartner
• Managing customer privacy and consent - a particular concern in large organizations and related to the decreasing use of cookies for tracking customer journeys.

This example of an agent shows how B2B sector businesses who are investing in AI can create a 'next-level' agent which are a big advance from frustrating text chatbots we've been familiar with for the past few years. When using this agent I found it was well-trained on sector stats and business case studies, so was an excellent, positive introduction to the company. It also is designed to hand-off from top-of-funnel interactions (Act) onto human interactions (Convert) both through the meeting prompt and the dialogue.

In the last part of the article I will drill down into more detail on what makes those relevant to marketers when I review each part of RACE. Before we do, here is a good place to recommend taking a look at our updated Digital Marketing Tools wheel. We update this each year to help marketers review their MarTech stack. Naturally we now include GenAI related tools in this. Here's an extract:

Key issues for managing use of AI in marketing in 2026

Before we get to our tactical recommendations for each part of RACE, as the final part of Plan, I have recently identified these five top-level use-cases of managing AI for marketing strategy to support marketing activities:

• 1. Marketing content generation. This is the main use of GenAI tools now - prompting to create marketing copy and visuals that can be used for marketing collateral in the main digital marketing channels such as search, social, email and web marketing.
• 2. Marketing agents for customer service. These are the well established chatbots which answer customer service questions to reduce the customer service. Large Language models have really enhanced the quality of these. Businesses can use OpenAI GPTs which are based on ChatGPT to give customers access to knowledge bases, although there are more specialist tools for these. For example, I have built a Digital marketing strategy expert agent to give our members' personalized advice on how to use Smart Insights' RACE Framework to improve their digital marketing based on my expertise and Smart Insights templates.
• 3. Marketing strategy and planning. Our research has shown that a surprising number of marketers are already using ChatGPT to prepare their plans from analysis to strategy and action. I will look at some more examples in this article.
• 4. Marketing analysis and reporting. Since their launch, ChatGPT, Gemini and Co-Pilot have introduced new capabilities to interact with spreadsheets and other documents to summarize data which can help with reducing time to create monthly reports.
• 5. AI Marketing workflow automation. This is where there is arguably the most interest in using GenAI for marketing currently. AI workflow automation tools such as n8n - see AI workflow for marketing categories - can repeat standard marketing activities to save time and costs, although, for me there are big questions about the brand trust and engagement of what is created. If you don't know about this tool, it is similar to established no-code / low-code tools like Zapier which are now used for integrating different apps and LLMs using APIs.

It's cool that the LLMs know RACE and we're now seeing more people searching for the RACE marketing framework in Google - I think because LLMs often recommend it in their citations. This is how Gemini acted in response to my prompt. I couldn't have put it better myself 😉

I'm delighted to put on my creator hat and craft an outline for a long-form post on "Digital marketing trends for 2026," specifically for the Smart Insights audience. The RACE Framework is all about providing a practical, data-driven approach to marketing, and a trend report must follow the same ethos. The outline below is designed to be a comprehensive guide, structured by the core stages of the framework to help marketers not just understand, but also *apply* these trends to their own businesses.

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Plan: The Strategic Foundation for 2026

This is the most critical stage. Before you jump on any trend, you need to understand your business context. The “Plan” stage is about setting objectives, defining your audience, and auditing your current capabilities.

• 1.1 The AI-Powered Marketing Strategy:
  • Trend: Predictive analytics and generative AI for strategic planning.
  • Actionable Insight: Go beyond using AI for content creation. Focus on using it to analyze market data, forecast consumer behavior, and identify high-potential customer segments before they even know they’re interested. This will allow for more precise budgeting and resource allocation.
  • Key Question: How can AI help us model our customers’ future needs and optimize our marketing mix for maximum ROI?
• 1.2 The Privacy-First Imperative:
  • Trend: The demise of the third-party cookie and the rise of first-party data.
  • Actionable Insight: Your plan for 2026 must be built on a foundation of ethical data collection. Focus on creating value-added experiences (e.g., exclusive content, tools, or services) that encourage consumers to willingly share their data. This is no longer a “nice-to-have” but a strategic necessity.
  • Key Question: What value can we offer to our audience in exchange for their first-party data, and how will we build trust around its use?
• 1.3 The Hybrid Marketing Model:
  • Trend: Integrating physical and digital experiences.
  • Actionable Insight: Plan for a seamless omnichannel experience. This isn’t just about a QR code on a poster. Think about using augmented reality (AR) to enhance a physical product or creating in-store events that are live-streamed to your online community.
  • Key Question: How can we use digital trends to amplify our physical presence and vice versa, creating a unified brand experience?

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Reach: Building a Wider, Smarter Audience

The goal here is to increase brand visibility and drive traffic to your owned media platforms (website, social profiles, etc.). For 2026, this is achieved through smarter targeting and more engaging formats.

• • • 2.1 The Conversational Search Revolution:
      • Trend: Search in the era of AI assistants. Search is being redefined. Generative AI assistants from Google (AIOs), OpenAI, and others are replacing the classic “10 blue links” with conversational answers. However, AIOs have had less impact in e-commerce than other sectors. But that could be due to change as by 2026, many product searches begin in chat interfaces, not browsers.
      • Actionable Insight: Optimize content for natural language queries. Shift your SEO strategy from single keywords to long-tail, question-based phrases. Create content that answers specific user questions directly and concisely, as this is what voice assistants will prioritize.
      • Key Tactic: Develop a robust FAQ section or blog content that addresses common conversational queries.

        However, don't 'throw the baby out with the bath water' since established SEO techniques are still effective despite large reported declines in Google Organic Search since AIOs and AI mode were introduced. In most sectors and especially retail, referrals from organic links still dominate those from Gen AI tools. This post from SEO expert Aleya Solis - shows the need the not to get drunk on the AI GEO Kool Aid.

• • • 2.2 Interactive and Shoppable Video:
      • Trend: Short-form video content evolves beyond passive viewing. Video remains dominant, but its role has expanded through the funnel from awareness (Reach) to direct commerce (Act and Convert). Shoppable video, already mainstream in Asia, is now integrated across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and emerging platforms.
      • Actionable Insight: Don’t just make videos; make them interactive. Integrate shoppable links directly into your reels on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Use live-streamed events for real-time product launches, Q&As, and exclusive promotions to create a sense of urgency.
      • Key Tactic: Experiment with short-form video formats that include polls, quizzes, or click-to-buy functionality.
    • 2.3 Creator-Driven Partnerships:
      • Trend: A shift from one-off influencer campaigns to long-term creator relationships. Something Smart Insights has advocated for a long-time as 'strategic influencer marketing'
      • Actionable Insight: Focus on building authentic, long-term partnerships with creators who genuinely align with your brand values. This builds trust with their audience and allows for more integrated, co-created content that feels less like an advertisement.
      • Key Tactic: Identify micro-influencers and creators with highly engaged niche audiences and work with them on a quarterly or annual basis.
    • 2.4 The Algorithmic Challenge: A Human-in-the-Loop Approach:
  • • Trend: The proliferation of advanced AI-powered bidding and optimization algorithms from platforms like Google (e.g., Performance Max) and Meta (e.g., Advantage+). These systems, while powerful, operate as “black boxes” that can unintentionally degrade ROI if not managed strategically.
    • Actionable Insight: In 2026, the key to success isn’t simply “setting and forgetting” these algorithms. Marketers and agencies must adopt a human-in-the-loop approach. This involves a new skill set focused on prompt engineering for paid media, providing the AI with high-quality audience signals and creative assets, and then critically analyzing its outputs. It’s about auditing the algorithm’s decisions and course-correcting when its models fail to deliver against core business objectives, rather than just raw volume. The best teams will know when to step in and when to let the algorithm run.
    • Key Question: How can we ensure our business goals and strategic insights are the guiding input for these powerful AI systems, rather than allowing the platform’s algorithm to become the de facto strategy?

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Act: Encouraging Interaction and Engagement

Once you have their attention, the “Act” stage is about getting visitors to interact with your content and express interest.

• • • 3.1 The Rise of Gamification and Immersive Experiences (AR/VR):
      • Trend: Using game-like elements and virtual worlds to drive engagement. Increasingly referred to as XR, or Extended Reality, is an umbrella term for technologies that merge the physical and digital worlds to create immersive experiences, including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR).
      • Actionable Insight: Turn the customer journey into a fun experience. Implement interactive quizzes, digital scratch cards, or augmented reality filters that allow users to virtually “try on” products. Explore the potential of the metaverse for creating branded virtual spaces or events.
      • Key Tactic: Develop a “gamified” onboarding process for new users or a loyalty program that rewards engagement with points or badges.

        In my books I recommend students take a look at Zappar for the latest approaches. They have evolved from an agency to also offer tools for developing XR experiences - see their XR hub for examples.

• • • 3.2 Hyper-Personalised & Dynamic Content:
      • Trend: Using AI to generate and deliver content tailored to the individual user.
      • Actionable Insight: Move beyond personalization based on a user’s name. Use AI to dynamically change website content, ad copy, and email subject lines based on a visitor’s real-time behavior, location, and past interactions.
      • Key Tactic: Implement AI-driven content management systems that can A/B test and optimize content variations on the fly for different audience segments.
    • 3.3 The Power of Employee Advocacy:
      • Trend: In a fragmented media environment, owned communities are becoming a vital growth lever. Platforms like Discord, Slack, and brand-owned apps enable direct dialogue and peer-to-peer support.
      • Actionable Insight: Invest in community as a channel. Encourage members to co-create, share knowledge, and amplify your brand.
      • Key Tactic: Run exclusive AMAs, product betas, or member-only events to make your community feel like insiders and brand partners.
    • 3.4 The Power of Employee Advocacy:
      • Trend: Leveraging employees as brand advocates on social media. (Part of Engage also)
      • Actionable Insight: Empower your team to tell your brand’s story. Provide them with social media training and a content library to share. Authentic, personal posts from employees often outperform corporate messaging and build trust.
      • Key Tactic: Create a formal employee advocacy program with clear guidelines and incentives for participation.

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Convert: Turning Interactions Into Sales

This is the point of conversion, whether it’s a sale, a lead, or a new subscriber. In 2026, conversion is all about friction reduction and social proof.

• • • 4.1 Frictionless Checkout (or at least reduced friction 😉)
      • Trend: Customers expect instant, secure checkout. Biometrics, embedded finance, and one-tap payments are now baseline.
      • Actionable Insight: Reduce steps in your funnel relentlessly. Every second shaved off increases conversion rates.
      • Key Tactic: Enable biometric one-tap checkout integrated with wallets like Apple Pay and PayPal OneTouch.
    • 4.2 Social Commerce adoption increases:
      • Trend: The integration of e-commerce directly within social media platforms.
      • Actionable Insight: Optimize your social media presence for direct-to-app conversions. Use features like Instagram and Facebook Shops, TikTok’s in-app purchasing, and live-stream shopping events. By 2026, TikTok Shop, Instagram Checkout, and similar features are fully mainstream. Customers expect seamless in-app purchasing.
      • Key Tactic: Streamline the path to purchase to as few clicks as possible, allowing customers to buy without ever leaving their social feed.
    • 4.3 AI-Powered Conversational Commerce and CRO:
      • Trend: The use of sophisticated chatbots and virtual assistants for sales and customer service. Conversion rate optimisation has shifted from manual A/B testing to predictive CRO. AI can now anticipate drop-off and serve the highest-converting version automatically.
      • Actionable Insight: Deploy AI-driven chatbots that can handle common customer queries, recommend products, and even process orders. This provides 24/7 support and reduces the load on your human sales team, making conversions more efficient.
      • Key Tactic: Train your chatbots on your product catalog and customer data to provide truly personalized and helpful recommendations.
    • 4.4 Authenticity and Trust Signals:
      • Trend: As AI-generated content floods the web, trust is the new currency. Customers look for authenticity before buying.
      • Actionable Insight: Conversion in 2026 will be driven by trust. Use transparent privacy policies, display user-generated content (UGC), and prominently feature customer reviews and case studies on your product pages.
      • Key Tactic: Actively encourage and showcase customer reviews and testimonials. Consider a “review and reward” program to boost UGC.

        Add “AI disclosure tags” and verified customer reviews prominently on product pages to build confidence at the decision point.

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Engage: Fostering Long-Term Loyalty

The final and most important stage is about building customer loyalty and advocacy. The focus for 2026 is on nurturing long-term relationships.

• • • 5.1 Community-Led Growth:
      • Trend: Building dedicated brand communities as a core marketing channel.
      • Actionable Insight: Move beyond a simple email list. Create private communities on platforms like Discord, Slack, or even your own branded app. This allows for direct communication, feedback, and peer-to-peer support, transforming customers into brand advocates.
      • Key Tactic: Host exclusive Q&As, webinars, or events for your community members to make them feel valued and connected.
    • 5.2 Membership and Subscription Models
      • Trend: Despite subscription fatigue, customers still pay for exclusive access. Brands are diversifying with tiered memberships and value-added services or providing 'lifetime' one-off subscriptions. I recently purchased one on Babbel (Duolingo competitor) rather than a subscription since it seems better value.
      • Actionable Insight: Design memberships around community, access, and experience, not discounts alone.
      • Key Tactic: Offer a premium tier with early access to launches, exclusive content, and personalised concierge service.
    • 5.3 AI-Powered Customer Lifecycle Nurturing:
      • Trend: Using AI to predict churn and personalize post-purchase communications.
      • Actionable Insight: Use AI and machine learning to analyze customer behavior and identify signals that a customer might be at risk of leaving. Use this information to trigger automated, personalized re-engagement campaigns with tailored offers or content.
      • Key Tactic: Implement a post-purchase email series that is dynamically adjusted based on a customer’s product use, purchase history, and engagement with previous emails.
    • 5.4 The Sustainability Story:
      • Trend: Customers expect brands to be transparent about their environmental and social impact.
      • Actionable Insight: Your “Engage” strategy should include communicating your brand’s sustainability efforts and values. Share behind-the-scenes stories, report on your progress, and involve customers in your mission. This builds a deeper connection and enhances brand loyalty.
      • Key Tactic: Create a “digital sustainability report” or a content series that details your eco-friendly practices, and share it with your customer base.

By Dave Chaffey

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What is the best digital marketing / marketing framework?

 

How the RACE Framework can help you improve your digital marketing

Marketing frameworks are really useful tools to help us plan, manage and optimize marketing. They’re particularly useful for digital marketing, since it’s so complex today because of all the digital channels available. This is shown by our customer lifecycle visual (below), which suggests the many different touchpoints that potential communications may have with their audiences.

The example shown in this visual is for a B2B scenario where different nurture activities are used to help convert interest in a product or service through to purchase. Many similar stages are involved with B2C marketing.

In this article, I’ll explain how and why we created the Smart Insights RACE Framework for online and multichannel marketing and at the same time, explain some of the key features of marketing frameworks. When I created RACE, it was my view that it would be useful to develop a framework that worked better for digital channels than classic marketing frameworks, but since customers use both physical and digital channels, the framework would work for both.

We will also look at different types of frameworks, with examples and consider some of their strengths and weaknesses.

Types of marketing frameworks

Within both marketing and specifically digital marketing, there are different frameworks that can be applied to different situations.

These are the different types of framework that I have seen most often:

1. Consumer behaviour framework - this describes how users respond to communications and buy, i.e., it’s the steps of a buying process. The first visual in this article is a consumer behaviour framework. The AIDA marketing framework is the best known example of a behavioural framework, sometimes known by academics as a ‘hierarchy of response’ model.
2. Marketing activity planning frameworks. We originally created RACE to help provide a comprehensive breakdown of key activities that to be controlled for effective marketing today. This is useful when you’re looking to perform a digital marketing audit to review your marketing to identify which activities you need to improve. As I’ll explain later, the more detailed breakdown of RACE contains 25 key activities and we define further Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to expand on that, so that marketers can prioritize which activities they need to work on as part of marketing planning.
3. Marketing process framework. This defines the stages or steps involved in creating and implementing a strategy and plan. Although RACE is now well-known as a planning framework, it it fact has a process component too - this defines the series of steps that are needed to create the digital marketing plan.  The second part of RACE defined in our in-depth article on the RACE Framework and process describes a process of:

• • Opportunity - Complete audits and set targets based on forecasts
  • Strategy - Prioritize marketing activities to achieve targets
  • Action  - Take action to implement that strategy - we do this as part of 90-day planning

4. Marketing maturity framework - these are useful for comparing how advanced different aspects of marketing such as digital marketing, SEO or social media are within an organization, so they can be used for auditing and benchmarking to identify improvements.See our digital marketing maturity framework for examples of these.

What is needed for an effective marketing or digital planning framework?

There are many classical marketing frameworks available which have been developed ‘over the years’, such as AIDA, described in our article Marketing models that have stood the test of time.  There are also many specific digital marketing frameworks developed since Internet marketing emerged in the mid-1990s (see our post listing digital marketing models).

Since there are so many alternatives, to choose the best framework for you, it’s worth thinking through what you are looking for in a framework. This is how I see the four main requirements:

• Clear purpose  - an effective marketing framework is one that is used to help people looking to understand, audit or manage marketing. Digital marketing is still relatively new, but as we have said, is complex, so we have found that many people are looking to create a digital marketing strategy or plan. That should be the main purpose - to create an effective plan.  This is the case with RACE, but other frameworks such as thee 6Cs are more focused on consumer behaviour
• Realistic model balancing simplicity, complexity and reality - frameworks provide a structure to help simplify a complex situation, so they are a simplified model of the reality.  This is a difficult challenge for the framework creator. If the framework is too simple, it will be easier to understand, but potentially too simple. To get around this challenge, with RACE we created three levels of complexity. There is a simple, 5-part breakdown, but this is divided down further to cover all the digital marketing activities that need to be managed. Each of the 5 parts of RACE is split into 5 more parts, to give a 5X5 = 25-part structure. Each of these 5 is broken down further to define more specific tasks or standard operating procedures (SOPs) that need to be managed. The marketing funnel framework is an interesting example of a model that struggles to balance simplicity with realism. In recent years it has been criticized for not being realistic in portraying complex customer journeys. We explore this in our article by Annmarie Hanlon: 'Customer journey models to master your omnichannel strategy' and discuss in more detail below.
• Application to different businesses and sectors - A framework is most useful if it is open to a range of different sectors. It’s commonplace to develop consumer or retail marketing frameworks, like Google’s ZMOT model, but they aren’t applicable more widely, for example into B2B. We developed RACE so that it can be applied to different business and revenue models - from online-only to multichannel businesses - so it applies to businesses both where transactions occur online, or sales involve human interactions.
• Actionable - This is why we developed RACE, we wanted to create a practical framework that can be used to improve results from marketing. To do this the framework must help complete an audit, review against competitors, create a strategy and then implement and review a plan.

Marketing Funnel Frameworks

Hierarchy of response frameworks, such as AIDA, are often formed into funnel models to assist planning. The RACE Framework is an example of a funnel model. Since these models are linear they have been criticized, since commentators believe they are an oversimplification and don't reflect the non-linear nature of decision-making.

Based on empirical research, in 2009, McKinsey & Company suggested an alternative non-linear customer journey model to the traditional purchase funnel. Their research was founded on interviews with 20,000 businesses in the USA, Germany, and Japan. We describ it further in this article on alternative customer journey models.

More recently, BCG in their 2025 article, It’s Time for Marketers to Move Beyond the Linear Funnel, also asserted that we need to move beyond the linear marketing funnel model to what they call 'influence maps'. This is based on the assertion that if you 'force-fit' touchpoints into the linear model it can miss a lot of nuance about how consumer behaviour and media and marketing planning to influence consumers works in practice. They hinted at this complexity as follows:

As an alternative, they suggest that influence maps can be used which show how different consumer behaviours, that they label 'Stream', 'Scroll', 'Search' and 'Shop',  occur in parallel.

This visualization gives more flexibility in describing different journeys. In the following example, two purchasers of a similar consumer product have completely different research strategies and actions on the journeys.

They suggest that, in the future, the power of AI analysis to analyze data about touchpoints and GenAI to create compelling creative will make it possible to deliver more effective media planning analysis to support the most influential journeys.

Despite this innovation in thinking, I don't believe this means that the linear funnel 'is dead'. Far from it. Its simplicity still has a number of benefits. A funnel-based framework like RACE remains popular since it enables strategists to:

• Audit the maturity and effectiveness of marketing activities with the aim of making them more efficient, i.e., identify gaps in managing channels effectively
• Set objectives to improve engagement across the funnel
• Develop strategies that prioritize activities to improve engagement using channels
• Manage tactical activities to improve always-on activities, e.g., 90-day planning
• Report on performance against these objectives - but including multi-touch attribution (MTA) to assess the contribution from upper funnel activities on conversion

A discussion of this consumer journey model on LinkedIn prompted by Neil Perkin's summary shows that many believe funnels still have their place. For example, Marketing Professor Vincent Balusseau of Audencia Business School said:"

I never quite understood why people (even experts) conflate funnels and journeys. Funnels are not meant to help understand journeys; that's the purpose of Consumer journey maps. Funnels are valuable for various purposes (depending on the type of funnel used, e.g., a conversion funnel in eCommerce, a brand funnel in a brand tracking study, etc.). So, when I read that "Gen Z has broken the marketing funnel," I sigh. The fact that journeys are becoming more complex does not imply that the funnel as a model (and its different variations) has stopped being useful".

What is the best market framework?

To return to the question at the start of this article and by way of a summary, the best framework is one which meets the requirements of being realistic, actionable and applicable to different sectors.  In this article I have focused mainly on planning frameworks, but there are many consumer frameworks too.

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How to structure an effective campaign plan to win more customers?

 

What are the six essential parts of a campaign planning template?

Today's marketing campaigns are complex since they need to reach and engage audiences across a range of digital and traditional channels as shown by our RACE customer customer lifecycle visual (see picture above)

In this article, we'll step you through an effective structure for briefing marketing campaigns to an agency or in-house team that has been used by tens of thousands of businesses in different sectors including financial services, retail, travel and consumer brands.

At the end of the article, I will also show you how to layout the sequence of activities you need to complete to run your campaign on a campaign plan timeline, an essential technique for planning campaigns.

I originally developed our template for structuring one-day training courses on Creating Effective Marketing Campaigns that I ran for the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK.  We emailed the Word template to course participants after the training so that they could adapt it to their planning process. For the last 15 years, the template has been made available to Smart Insights members around the world to download. Unsurprisingly it's one of our most popular member downloads since every business needs marketing campaigns.

What is a marketing campaign plan?

A campaign plan is a short-term integrated communications plan aimed at generating leads, sales or to change perceptions within a target audiences.

The purpose of marketing campaign planning is to define relevant, integrated, marketing activities and channels to reach campaign objectives as well as influence audiences. An effective campaign plan has an engaging, shareable, campaign concept that utilizes both online and offline marketing communications tools and digital media channels.

What is meant by campaign planning?

Campaign planning is the process of setting your goals for a campaign, understanding your audience, defining an engagement strategy and creating a budget for investing time/money into different types of media including content.

How do you create a marketing campaign plan?

To create an effective marketing campaign plan, you need a structure that contains the main success factors  for any type of campaign.

Here's our checklist for what a solid marketing campaign planning process and template should contain:

• Clear, realistic SMART marketing goals that you can be confident of hitting
• A well-defined target audience based on research
• A campaign big idea and supporting content strategy to engage your audience
• A defined messaging hierarchy to communicate your brand proposition
• A media plan and media schedule to reach your target audience
• An action plan including an editorial plan and content assets needed 
• A method to check you are on track with your plans

What is an integrated marketing campaign?

Research shows that effective campaigns use integrated communications across channels so that the campaign delivers on these goals for communications:

• Coherence – different communications are logically connected.
• Consistency – multiple messages support and reinforce, and are not contradictory.
• Continuity – communications are connected and consistent through time.
• Complementary – synergistic, or the sum of the parts is greater than the whole!

When to use a marketing campaign plan?

Your marketing campaign plan should be used in order to maximize the reach of online campaigns and acquire new customers. Retention campaigns are used in larger organizations. Campaigns should be used and designed with specific goals in mind, such as:

• A branding campaign to build brand awareness, favourability, and familiarity
• Launching a new product
• Distributing a new content asset as part of a content marketing lead-generation initiative
• Increasing sales of a current established product
• Promotional campaigns to increase sales by offering a seasonal discount

What size of businesses need campaign planning?

Marketing campaign planning isn’t just for big marketing departments. Organizations of any size, type and at any stage of existence can utilize a marketing campaign plan in order to achieve an effective campaign. Today, with the wide use of content marketing by businesses, a campaign plan to launch your content makes campaign planning more relevant to all businesses.

A marketing campaign plan does not need to be lengthy or complicated. Creating a simple campaign plan with clear actions can ensure that both small and larger organizations are focusing on their goals and the overall success of the business.

How should a campaign plan be structured?

The stages of marketing campaigns and key issues that need to be included and answered in your campaign plan are:

1. Campaign goals and tracking.
   What are we trying to achieve through our campaign and how will we know when we achieve it?
2. Campaign insight and targeting.
   Who are we trying to reach and influence?
3. Key campaign messages and offers.
   How are we trying to position our company, products and services?
   Which campaign or product offers will engage and convert our audience?
4. Campaign media plan and budget.
   Which media channels will you use to reach and influence your target audience?
   What will be the sequence and integration of media activities?
5. Campaign asset production.
   Managing the assets to form the campaign
6. Campaign execution.
   What needs to be tested before the campaign is live and adjusted during the campaign?

Smart Insights premium nembers can use our ready-made Microsoft Word marketing campaign plan template to build, track, and present their campaign plans and briefs using this structure. It features a one-page summary for the whole campaign in these 6 parts and then, for larger businesses or campaigns, 1-2 pages detailing each part of the campaign.

Campaign plan example

A campaign plan template typically includes defining the following:

• Relevant customer profiles or personas to target
• The value proposition of the product or service
• The primary or hero offer which is the call to action (CTA)
• The promotional channels for raising awareness and encouraging action
• How website landing pages and customer journeys will feature the offer
• The timeline and action plan
• The budget required
• The mechanics for how leads are generated will be nurtured and followed up through offers
• How results will be measured and reported

How to create your campaign strategy

We recommend applying our RACE Framework to inform your campaign strategy. RACE is a practical strategic framework to help manage and improve results from your digital marketing.

So, if you think your campaigns would benefit from a RACE strategy approach, download our free digital marketing plan template now to discover how you, too, can optimize and manage your marketing strategy across an integrated RACE funnel.

What is the RACE Framework?

The RACE Framework covers the full customer lifecycle or marketing funnel from acquisition to retention as shown in this infographic showing the goals for each part of RACE and how you can measure them.

You can apply RACE to campaigns like this:

An effective digital campaign plan based on the RACE Framework (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage) follows a structured approach to ensure that marketing efforts drive measurable results. Here’s how to create one:

Plan

Define Campaign Goals and KPIs

• Align with overall business objectives (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, sales, customer retention).

• Use SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).

• Define KPIs such as website traffic, conversion rate, ROI, engagement metrics, etc.

Research Audience Targeting and Persona Development

• Define audience segments based on demographics, psychographics, behavior, and needs.

Use customer personas to tailor content, messaging, and channel selection.

Reach (Awareness and Traffic Growth)

Objective: Drive relevant traffic to your site.

Key Tactics:

•SEO and content marketing (blog posts, pillar pages, videos).

•Paid media (Google Ads, social media advertising).

•Influencer and PR outreach.

•Email outreach and referral marketing.

KPIs:

• Organic and paid traffic.

• Social media reach and engagement.

• Click-through rates (CTR) on ads and emails.

Act (Engagement and Lead Generation)

Objective: Encourage interactions and lead capture.

Key Tactics:

• Create high-value lead magnets (Ebooks, webinars, free trials).

• Optimize landing pages and call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

• Use chatbots and interactive content (quizzes, surveys).

•A/B testing for conversion rate optimization (CRO).

KPIs:

• Bounce rate and time on site.

• Lead form completions.

• Content downloads.

Convert (Sales & Revenue Growth)

Objective: Convert leads into paying customers.

Key Tactics:

• Implement email nurture sequences to support campaign (abandoned cart emails, welcome series).

• Personalization with retargeting ads.

• Streamline checkout experience with trust signals (reviews, testimonials).

• Offer limited-time discounts and bundles.

KPIs:

• Sales conversion rate.

• Revenue per visitor.

• Average order value (AOV).

Engage (Customer Retention & Loyalty)

Objective: Build long-term relationships to increase customer lifetime value (CLV).

Key Tactics:

• Personalized email campaigns (loyalty rewards, VIP offers).

• Social media engagement and community building.

• Surveys and feedback loops for continuous improvement.

• Subscription models or membership programs.

KPIs:

• Repeat purchase rate.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS).

• Customer retention rate.

Why use the RACE Framework for campaign planning?

The RACE Framework will help simplify your approach to reviewing the performance of your marketing campaigns and taking actions to improve their effectiveness:

• RACE is practical and action-oriented – it focuses on tactics you can implement in your marketing communications and on your website and mobile apps
• RACE is customer-centered – it follows the established customer lifecycle of relationship building or marketing funnel from creating awareness; generating leads from new prospects; converting prospects to sell online or offline and encouraging loyalty, repeat sales and advocacy such as social sharing.
• RACE integrates performance evaluation – It defines KPIs that marketing campaign planners should include at each stage for setting targets and reviewing results using analytics and summary dashboards.

Applying PR Smith's SOSTAC® to RACE campaign planning

To make sure your marketing campaign plan has all the essential features, I recommend also applying the SOSTAC® structure developed by PR Smith—Dave Chaffey’s co-author of the printed book Digital Marketing Excellence.

SOSTAC® is a great framework for structuring business, marketing or digital marketing plans since it’s relatively simple and logical, so it’s easy to remember and to explain to colleagues or agencies. SOSTAC® is a strategic planning process framework that gives you a clear structure to work through to create and manage your plan.

So, what does SOSTAC® stand for?

Situation analysis means ‘Where are we now?’ For marketing campaign planners, questions include:

• Who are our target customers?
• What are their typical characteristics?
• What campaigns have been used by our competitors?
• How are they meeting the needs of our target customers?
• Which creative and messaging tactics are they using?
• How can we achieve differentiation?
• Which data about customer and competitor behaviour is available to inform our campaign?

Objectives mean ‘Where do we want to be?’

• What are the SMART campaign goals including the number of leads and sales based on reach?
• What are we trying to achieve through our campaign and how will we know when we achieve it?
• Is our focus customer acquisition, retention and growth or creating brand awareness?
• What are the timescales?
• Who are we trying to reach and influence?
• Which are the customer personas?
• Which customer insights are these based upon?

We recommend you create a conversion-based campaign forecasting model for your campaign so you can be more confident that it will reach the audience needed to give the required levels of business outcomes, i.e. leads and sales.

Strategy means ‘How do we get there?’ Strategy summarizes how to fulfil the objectives. It is the shortest part of the plan, but arguably, the most important, as it gives direction to all the subsequent tactics. It answers questions including:

• What are our campaign messages and offers?
• Which campaign or product offers will engage and convert our audience to the goals identified?
• How will we connect with and convince our audience using content marketing?
• How will we position our company, products and services?

Tactics are the details of the strategy. They highlight on a marketing campaign plan exactly which tactics occur when. Your chosen tactics should support and adhere to your customer’s journey. Questions include:

• What is our media plan and budget?
• Which media channels will we use to reach and influence our target audience?
• What will be the sequence and integration of media activities?

Campaign planning tactics for marketers

To drive reach online to achieve your campaign goals I recommend you consider these 6 channels defined in this diagram.

Action is the detailed planning of tactics.

• Who does what, when and how?
• What processes and activities are required to make things happen?

Control identifies what you need to measure when and what happens. The Control section of the plan ensures you know if you are succeeding or failing – and you can make adjustments– before it is too late.  How you measure the success of your marketing campaign activities will be based upon the overall marketing objectives detailed in your marketing plan.

What is the best way to lay out a campaign timeline?

Laying out the sequence of activities you need to complete to run your campaign on a timeline is an essential technique for planning campaigns, but in our experience, often marketers don’t do this because they don’t know how or they don’t make the time. We recommend it since it helps you plan your activities into a logical order to maximize the reach and frequency across the audience you are targeting. Plus, it helps communicate within your team or with your agency as part of the planning process. You can create an initial timeline and then adjust it in a brainstorming session.

Here is an example of a recommended timeline visual taken from Chapter 8 in my book: Digital Marketing: Strategy: Implementation and Practice.

I originally developed this layout when delivering courses in Marketing campaign planning since it worked well as an activity where a group would sequence activities to give the best results in response to a campaign brief.

My tips for creating this type of campaign timeline are:

• Work back from the event launch i.e. from right to left so that there is sufficient time for each activities

• Group activities by paid, owned and earned media so you review all your media options (or use channels)

• Since email communications to existing contacts are sent at specific times, add them just above the campaign timeline

• Make sure you allow enough space for pre and post campaign activities

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