The best free marketing tools that every hands-on marketer should use

Our recommended free online tools for understanding your customers, competitors and campaign, and how you should use them - across 8 marketing analysis activities

I've found that when running training courses, the tools I recommend to help marketers are always popular content, especially free tools...

There's a diverse mix of free tools available, particularly to support marketers gain insight to plan their campaigns, one of the enjoyable aspects of working in digital marketing today.

I originally created this list in 2012, but have kept it updated since it's popular and new tools are released, and some features become paid... Revisiting it shows that many of the tools are well established, despite the many lists of essential Generative AI tools.

In this article, I'll cover 8 marketing analysis activities that hands-on digital marketers need to follow to optimize their reach activities, kicking off their RACE marketing strategy. There are 25+ links to alternative tools in all covering all the major digital marketing channels from search to social media marketing to email and websites.

Our RACE Growth System is a popular marketing structure framework for startups, SMEs, and international corporations, since it can scale up or down according to your short-term and long-term digital marketing objectives.

Simply put, RACE guides marketers through a planned, insight-driven strategy to acquire and retain more customers. All our marketing tools and templates are integrated across our RACE Growth System, so you can confidently adapt and apply marketing strategies and techniques across your marketing funnel to drive growth.

You can find out more about our RACE Growth System when you download your free RACE marketing plan template, complete with recommendations for digital marketing tools and techniques to generate growth across each stage of your marketing funnel today.

OK, now onto the free tools...

1. Understanding customer search behaviour

The Google Keyword Planner has been an essential tool for hands-on marketers since it launched since it enables you to get into the minds of your audience, seeing what they are searching by how popular different search terms are. There are equivalent tools from search tools providers like SEMRush, but these are limited in that they don't use the insights direct from Google.

So, it's really useful for forecasting where you should be focusing your SEO and Google Ads. We recommend using this insight to do an SEO/Google Ads gap analysis with our premium members template to see where you are getting results and where you need to focus your improvements.

No longer a standalone tool, it's part of Google Ads, for which you need to register. It's free, but you get more specific figures on number of searches per month if you have active campaigns, and also insights on your Google Ads visibility (ad impression share).

As the example shows, you can use it to discover new keywords based on an existing page (your own, or for competitors).

The Keyword Planner doesn't give you info on which search terms drive visits to your site, so a related essential tool is Google Search Console, which also feeds into our gap analysis. When linked with your Google Analytics, it gives you invaluable insight into your conversion rates for different keywords too.

While I'm talking SEO, I have to give honourable mentions to these two SEO tools I still use regularly. First, Screaming Frog , a site crawler that indexes small sites for free and highlights errors and insights on articles and Yoast - useful if your site is running on WordPress.

2. Reviewing brand mentions and the latest developments in your industry

Google Alerts

Many marketers still use Google Alerts for reviewing mentions of their brand, campaign hashtags or competitor names by entering keywords, so it’s still widely used. However, it's mainly based on the analysis of sites and misses out on social media mentions.

Talkwalker

To help here, I recommend the free Talkwalker Alerts service from the social listening service Talkwalker (now part of Hootsuite). Talkwalker’s free social search also monitors mentions of your brand, hashtags and competitors on social media.

Feedly

Although RSS isn’t “in vogue” as it was 10+ years ago, I still find there’s no substitute for using this as a listening post for developments in your industry. I am recommending Feedly because it's the most popular - so you can see by the 'voice of the crowd' which posts are most popular.

Although feed readers aren't in fashion they are the most efficient way to scan the latest news in different categories.

• 3. Managing social media updates

Hootsuite and Buffer

I’ve used Hootsuite for posting updates to social networks and reviewing what others are saying for many years now. Hootsuite and also Buffer are comfortably the most popular free tools for posting and reviewing social media updates.

Hootsuite is great as a way of keeping tabs on competitors and influencers too, with integrations to enable social listening and monitoring content trends.

• 4. Finding influencers

There is no single free tool that works well for this. Often using Google or LinkedIn manually is the best way.

A long while ago you could use reputation tools like Klout, Kred or Peerindex, but these have faded.

For B2C influencer sourcing, most free tools are freemium, aimed at encouraging you to hire influencers through a paid plan. Still, free tools such as Collabstr can give you a good idea of micro-influencers in different sectors and locations. Impulze.ai also has a free Influencer Marketing Tool.

For B2B, LinkedIn sector skills used to be the best source for finding business influencers because of grouping by narrower topics - but LinkedIn killed this - monetization again. LinkedIn Navigator is probably the best replacement.

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is still available as a free service that can be used to find influencers via their X bio, but this limits it, as these examples show. Most marketers I know wouldn't know of the top 3 'influencers' listed here. Instead, they are being rewarded for the use of auto-follow bots.

• 5. Competitor site benchmarking

It used to be that Google AdPlanner was unbeatable for comparing audience size and dimension. That's been folded into Google Ads as the Campaign Planner and now limited to media sites, but it's still useful for finding size and quality of audience for partner and media sites. Also, don't forget about the related Google Placement Targeting Tool, which is useful for remarketing and research.

Today, my 'go to' tool for benchmarking is SimilarWeb, a freemium tool launched in 2013 which offers free stats on all sites, including referrers.

When it comes to benchmarking, our RACE Framework offers marketers, managers and business owners a simple structure to measure and optimize the key marketing activities across the customer lifecycle. Our Free Member templates for benchmarking your marketing support you through the step-by-step process of improving your marketing effectiveness.

• 6. Free CRM and Email marketing tools

Email is still an important communications tool, particularly for interacting with customers and leads. Some email and CRM providers still provide a free tier which can support free businesses.

This category was really invented by free tools from Mailchimp and Hubspot, but these are now so limited that they can't be recommended.

For new businesses, with a small customer base, I instead recommend Mailerlite or Brevo which both give the opportunity to send several emails to up to 1,000 subscribers for free.

• 7. Online writing support tools including Generative AI tools

Since marketers spend so much of their time in content management systems or online SaaS MarTech, it's important to check copy and grammar automatically. Grammarly has  become the de facto standard here - it's a plugin you install into Google Chrome. Personally, I use Language Tool since it's just as good and less intrusive - the nags to upgrade in Grammarly became too much for me!

We also routinely use the Chrome Extension CheckMyLinks for spotting broken links.

Of course, since 2022 and the launch of ChatGPT, every marketer uses Generative AI tools of which ChatGPT is the best known and most widely used tool. This could change since, with GPT 5 the number of prompts has been limited and I expect many will switch to Google Gemini which is now much more capable as a free tool. We subscribe to the Plus version of ChatGPT, so for now, I mainly use that, just using Gemini when following up on AI Overviews and when looking for more up-to-date summaries of trends.

Since the launch of ChatGPT many of our free and paid resources cover how marketers can make the most of GenAI tools, if you're looking to improve, I recommend our article recommending the best prompts for using ChatGPT for digital marketing and our free ChatGPT Cheatsheet.

• 8. Understanding overall online marketing effectiveness

Finally, I still believe that Google Analytics or an equivalent is essential for all who work in marketing to master. With the launch of Google Analytics 4, being seen as a step backwards by me and most marketers I speak to, due to usability, insights and privacy concerns, there are good free options to consider of which Matomo and PiwikPro are the best known and recommended.

By Dave Chaffey

https://tinyurl.com/4c4nbhev

SMB Landing Page Optimization Trends

 How often do SMB marketers optimize their site landing pages? Which page elements do they test? How are they using AI for landing page optimization? What are the biggest optimization challenges they face?

To find out, Unbounce and Ascend2 conducted a survey in July 2025 among 264 marketing professionals who work for businesses with 500 or fewer employees.

Most (61%) respondents say they optimize their landing pages bi-weekly or monthly.

SMB marketers say the landing page elements they test most are images/videos (59% test regularly) and layout (53%).

SMB marketers say they're using AI to get landing page design/layout recommendations (31% are doing this), to generate landing page copy (27%), to personalize landing page copy (26%), and to power chatbots (26%).

Respondents say the biggest challenges they face with landing page optimization are low traffic volume for testing (41% cite as a challenge), limited time or resources to build and test variants (37%), slow page load times or poor technical performance (33%), and difficulty with message or design consistency (33%).

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey in July 2025 among 264 marketing professionals who work for businesses with 500 or fewer employees.

https://tinyurl.com/583jvahb

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

https://tinyurl.com/3ax58xav

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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