From the field
See-Think-Do-Care
An audience framework that segments by purchase intent instead of demographics and requires a separate message, channel, and success metric for each intent stage, because judging awareness activity by conversion metrics kills it every time.
The obvious approach is to run every campaign toward conversions and compare them on cost per lead. By that yardstick, anything aimed at people not yet in-market looks like waste and gets cut, and the account slowly becomes dependent on demand it does nothing to create.
Use it when
- A client demands one blended ROAS across every campaign
- Splitting budget between search and social with a defensible logic
- Choosing the right KPI per campaign before launch
Do not use it when
- Budgets under roughly €2,000/month; capture existing demand first and skip the upper stages entirely
- The category has no research phase, such as emergency repairs
The steps
- Map audiences by intent. See: could ever buy. Think: comparing options. Do: ready now. Care: existing customers.
- Assign channel and message per stage. Social reach for See, search and comparison content for Think, exact-match search for Do, email and remarketing for Care.
- Assign one metric per stage. Reach or view rate for See, engaged visits for Think, cost per lead for Do, repeat rate for Care.
- Split budget deliberately. Write the percentages down; a split nobody chose defaults to 100% Do.
See-Think-Do-Care
- See
- Think
- Do
- Care
Worked example
An HVAC installer, €5,000/month total, illustrative numbers:
| Stage | Audience | Channel | Metric | Budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| See | Homeowners 30+, region | Meta video | Reach, view rate | 15% |
| Think | "heat pump vs boiler" searches | Search + YouTube | Engaged visits | 25% |
| Do | "heat pump installer + city" | Exact-match search | Cost per quote | 50% |
| Care | Past customers | Email + remarketing | Maintenance contracts | 10% |
Judged on blended cost per lead, the See campaign looks like the worst spend in the account. Judged on its own metric, it is the reason branded searches rose 30% in six months.
Why it works
Intent stages differ in what they can possibly produce. Separate metrics stop the comparison that always kills upper-funnel work, and the written budget split turns strategy into something a client can approve once instead of relitigating monthly. The one number that decides whether the Do stage can work at all is the spend floor: under it, the conversion campaign the whole split leans on is optimising against noise.
Who this is for
The same method, read three ways.
01
Running it
Match the message and the success metric to the intent stage, and stop judging awareness activity by conversion. That mismatch kills more good campaigns than bad creative does.
02
Teaching it
Intent as the axis instead of the funnel shape. It gives a room a defensible answer to why the same ad performs differently against two audiences.
03
Planning your first campaigns
Four audiences that need four different things said to them. Start where intent is highest, then work backwards as budget allows.