In the final 2020 episode of our Digital Breakthroughs podcast, we wanted to shake things up with a guest host!
This week, our own Director of Marketing, Matt Erickson, took the podcast reigns and put CEO Bernard May in the virtual hot seat. To close out the year, our CEO wanted to unveil a new strategic marketing framework that we use for all our clients so you, too, can add it to your marketing toolbox for 2021.
We call this framework GRACE. It acts as a checklist (of sorts) that provides a structured approach for any brand’s marketing. It’s tried and true and helped us see our clients through some of the darkest moments of 2020.
So, what does it mean? GRACE is an acronym for Growth strategy, Reach, Action, Conversion, and Engagement.
In this episode, Matt and Bernard leave no stone unturned as they walk listeners through GRACE step by step and provide a myriad of actionable examples that you to test for your business. (Check out the full episode below)
Don’t have time to listen to the full podcast right now? Prefer to read instead of listening? Here are some highlights of National Positions’ GRACE marketing framework.
G = Growth Strategy
Your growth strategy is your high-level marketing roadmap from a CONVERSION perspective across various campaign types. Everything begins with a pinpoint growth strategy.
One example would be to understand the current benchmarks related to SEO (organic) traffic and site engagement to determine where core opportunities exist.
What opportunities?
Those that can help you improve your website conversions as defined by the goals for each page and the website overall.
Your growth strategy takes everything into account, from competition to opportunity, to make the rest of the GRACE framework as actionable as possible
R = Reach
During the reach stage, the customer is in their exploration stage as they look for a product or service provider. You need to reach the right customer at the right time.
At this stage of the framework, we are assessing your core audience persona and the most impactful (and cost-effective) way to reach this audience.
It’s time to analyze your reach across audience types that have the greatest conversion opportunities based on data insights.
This may also include gaining audience reach from new channels so if one customer source runs into a bottleneck (i.e. retail vs. social. vs. ecommerce), you still have other open profitability avenues.
A = Action
Action is critical in the customer journey. Without action, you simply can’t get to conversion.
Now, you need to determine the most valuable actions, engagements, and conversion triggers within (or across) your campaigns.
Action is heavily focused on the behaviors and activities of the customers, a.k.a how they act and interact with your brand.
What is the customer experience you are giving them and how do customers act once they are exposed to it?
When it comes to SEO, what pages are converting, and which ones are not? Bounce rates, abandonment rates, devices—every data point provides insights as to what is and is not resonating with customers as they visit your site.
C = Conversion
As the primary goal of the overall CRO process, the conversion stage of the process encompasses all the automation, targeting, retargeting, trust-building, contextual relevance, and other site factors that contribute to the final conversion.
Other considerations such as conversion value, revenue, profitability, order values, etc. are assessed to determine both effectiveness and goalsetting during the planning and strategy stage of the GRACE framework.
Conversion can be a strategy in and of itself, but at the end of the day, if efforts are not converting into profits, this is where you need to focus.
E = Engagement
Engaging and nurturing your growing (current) customer base is a critical step that many brands miss. For a growth strategy to deliver the highest value, encouraging great lifetime customer value through engagement is a must.
This strategy centers on re-converting your customers into loyal advocates for your brand, extending and maximizing their lifetime value.
Repeat purchasing, gathering social proof, and ensuring long-term satisfaction are all determined by the engagement stage of the GRACE process.
Ready to Add Some GRACE?
If you are going to try out our GRACE framework for your brand’s campaigns in 2021, we would love to hear about your experience. However, if you want us to put GRACE to work for you in the New Year, we are ready to help you there, too.
You can reach out to our team anytime and we can assess where you are, what opportunities are waiting to be discovered, and help you start 2021 with a little GRACE and a lot of profit.