Why You as a Business Should be Friends with RACE Strategy?Explanation and Examples!

“Creation of content is the cost of entry to being relevant in society”

Having a business is all about keeping your customers hooked to you. Getting customers is hard, but having loyal customers is even harder, but not impossible.

The struggle of growing and retaining already existing customer is a pain that businesses understand a bit too well. Other than having a product that satisfies their needs and get them emotionally invested, it is equally important to reach and talk to your audience through the channels they consume the most and, again, keep them hooked.

Introducing you to The RACE Framework

Sometimes referred to as PRACE (P for plan), however mostly known as RACE framework, is a digital/content marketing strategy that is customer focused, form the moment they are introduced to your brand/business, to the point where they become loyal customers to your product.

Each letter of RACE showcases a stage of the strategy. R stands for Reach, A is Act and short for interact, C is Convert, and finally E is for Engage. Before you implement RACE, you typically have a plan for your business with set objectives and goals that you seek to achieve. Your business plan is liable to change which is natural for a business that has been around for some time, but generally a plan must be put.

With the plan part out of the way, let’s dig deeper into how you can implement RACE into your content strategy for better customer retention and loyalty.

We’ll work with an example for better explanation.

You are a cosmetics brand that wants to make profit from your new lip gloss line.

REACH: Your Target Audience

This stage of RACE concentrates heavily on reaching your audience through the multitude channels and mediums they consume daily.

It focuses on educating and giving your customers information about your product so they can start getting better acquainted with it. In short, you want to literally reach your customers where they are found.  

So, in our example, with a supposed audience of women (aged 18-35) who use social media and are prone to sticking to a brand if they really love it, your content must be informative AND appeal to them.

For this segment, to reach them you are going to want to start first by posting on your social media accounts (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.) about that lip-gloss, start introducing your audience to it, maybe have different models in your post wearing that lip-gloss to display on different skin tones and lip shapes, have influencers to talk about your product.

(inter)ACT: With your Customers/Audience

After you have well informed and educated your customers on your product, your content in the next phase should get your customers to interACT with you digitally.

Create content that motivates your customers to interact you with + call to action phrases. Going back our lip gloss line, interactive posts could be in the form of questions: what is our favorite color form our lip glosses? lip gloss or lipstick? You can also get influencers to TRY on your product and say their honest review on your product for credibility.  

Interaction posts could also be in the form of interactive social media story(s): this or that, yes or no, etc. If your business has a website, then Facebook ads that drive website traffic is a great idea, as well as google search ads and GDNs (along with social media posting for sure).

Convert: and Make Profit

Your customers are well acquainted and interact with your content, now comes the phase where you convert their actions into profit.

Also, in terms of content, create content that encourages your customers to start purchasing your product and try it for themselves. Include call to action phrases in our content: Check our website for more lip gloss colors, DM us before we sell out, get your order in only 2 days, don’t miss out on our discounted limited edition lip glosses, etc. 

If website shopping is an option, include your brand’s website link to your posts, account bio, just somewhere where your customers can find easily.

Engage: Your Customers

After you have successfully converted views into purchases, now is the part to keep your customers motivated and fully invested in your brand and what you do. Through multiple trials and experiments with content, you will start gathering insight about your customers preferences, and you will be better knowing of them

Diversify your content type (pictures, videos, GIFs, etc.), interact with your customers often, share feedback, reply to your customers, email them updates about your products, show them BTS of the product before its packaged, you can engage them in several ways.