See, think, do, care

Avinash Kaushik · 2013

Group audiences by how close they are to intent, and judge each stage by a measure that belongs to it.

Its place in the frameworkMarket Core›Customer Journey

What it does

Four audience states rather than four funnel steps, each with its own content and — the part that matters — its own measure of success. Its sharpest contribution is prohibitive: judging awareness activity by immediate conversion will kill it every time, and the framework exists largely to stop that.

Reach for it when: When early-stage marketing is being cut because it does not convert, and when one metric is being applied across the whole journey.
Where it stops: Built for digital measurement, and it assumes you can tell which state someone is in. Offline and long-cycle purchases fit it badly.

Avinash Kaushik, “See-Think-Do-Care: A Business Framework for Marketing”, Occam’s Razor, 2013.

Why it sits at Customer Journey

The path from unaware to bought: what the stages actually are, where people stop, what moves them on, and how much of that can honestly be attributed.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

The buying stagesResearch on non-linear buying behaviour and the messy middle of consideration, against the classical linear funnel.
Drop-offConversion analysis and the constraint logic of improving the largest loss rather than the most visible one.
What moves people forwardBuyer-interview practice, and the trigger and switching research on what actually starts and completes a purchase.
AttributionAttribution modelling and the incrementality critique: correlation with conversion is not evidence of contribution.

All of Customer Journey

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Customer Journey lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Omni CoreThis object ends at the purchase; the experience afterwards is designed in the Omni Core.
Marketing ChannelsAttribution findings are what channel budget decisions should rest on.
Business CoreThe pains and gains behind a stage transition are analysed in the value proposition.
Data CoreJourney measurement requires instrumentation designed for it rather than assembled afterwards.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Customer Journey too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

AIDAAttention, interest, desire, action — the oldest description of the path from stranger to buyer.
The consumer decision journeyBuying is a loop, not a funnel: people add options as they go, and the loyalty loop after purchase is where the next sale is decided.

Elsewhere in Market Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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