Combining See-Think-Do-Care Framework with a traditional marketing approach

A hybrid approach to Customer Segmentation and Digital Promotion Strategy

Caution: This article is targeted to those having a basic understanding of digital marketing concepts, since it probably gets a bit ‘technical’.

Context

Marketing Frameworks are lenses. They provide us an effective way to organize our thoughts regarding a specific subject. They also provide us a more methodological approach to use for our day-to-day work on solving a problem or making a decision. Frameworks are inherently subjective constructs, but without them we would not be able to put an order in the chaos of the real world.

It has been some time since Avinash Kaushik has introduced his See-Think-Do-Care framework to the world of Digital Marketers. If you do not have an idea about what this is, you should definitely go ahead and read this article, and follow Avinash everywhere you can. In a nutshell, he tried to upgrade pre-existing frameworks (eg AIDA) by taking into account the new capabilities that have been offered to Marketers by technology. I will not get into further detail here, so if you are interested in this matter, you should firstly get familiar about that framework.

We began experimenting with the aforementioned framework at e-table some years ago. Our marketing team began planning ways to adopt several aspects of this new model in our practice. During that time of reflection, we came up with a way to combine See-Think-Do-Care Model with our previous — more traditional — practices. You may find below some interesting details of this ‘spiritual journey’.

Towards a new Customer Segmentation

Many may recall the monolithic approach of considering the execution of the Promotion Mix (remember the 4 P’s?) as a standalone step after having segmented your targeted market, and targeted a priori certain customer segments.

Figure 1 — Traditional Marketing Process

Today, thanks to new technologies, customer touchpoints (remember that each ad impression is a touchpoint) may be ‘programmed’ by businesses to show the most relevant content on the right channel at the right time to the right people. You do not have to just rely on certain a priori known characteristics of your audiences, but you are also able to take into account (among other parameters):

• Their buying intent
• Their specific relationship to you (based how recently they have performed certain predefined actions, how often, and their monetary value to your business)

This ability sparked the birth of many new frameworks/ models for Digital Marketers, among which:

Figure 2 — AIDA Model

The AIDA model (older framework), which emphasizes the customization of your marketing promotion strategy based the buying stage of a person.

Figure 3 — AARRR Framework

The AARRR model, which calls for the customization of your strategy for every phase of your customer funnel.

Before this time of reflection, we had been employing a twist of the AARRR model, but after deciding to adjust to the new framework, we came up with the idea of performing a combination of the two models. We decided to implement a segmentation based on two axes!

Figure 4 — Concept of our segmentation on two axes

This idea meant the combination of our previously used AARRR segments (x-axis) with the segments of the SEE-THINK-DO-CARE framework (y-axis).

To be more specific, x-axis has the values of:

• Stranger
• Visitor (has performed one visit of our web)
• 1st timer (has performed one booking on our platform)
• Customer
• Slipping user
• Lost user

The above segments had critical subcategories for our business (eg. Recent visitor vs Old visitor, Normal Customer vs Power Customer etc.).

The y-axis just handled the segments as proposed by Avinash (See vs Think vs Do vs Care).

Thereafter, we started differentiating our Strategy (Content — Channel — Measurement) for each combination of values of the two axes!

(Yes, some combinations of x and y values are impossible, but we were certain that on average our Marketing Strategy had to differentiate by using both axes).

Towards a new Marketing Channel Strategy

We came up with a new classification of our channels. We refined our definition of what ‘channel’ is, so that we could include different sources/ mediums with different purposes as separate channels in our diagrams and charts. Some of our channels were Paid Search, Paid Display for Remarketing, booking affiliates, Social Media, direct marketing (CRM driven) etc.

We gave each Channel a code and we built the following diagram, which designates the intended use (or not) of a Channel per segment. It is a table, since there are two axes of customer segmentation as mentioned above.

Figure 5 — Channels and Customer Segments (for illustration purposes only)

We chose the most efficient and effective channels for each situation.

Towards a new Content Strategy and KPI’s

We tried to customize our Content Strategy (both on our ad messaging and Product landing pages) for each segment. One example can be shown below, where our Key Ad messages are illustrated per segment.

Figure 6 — Generic Ad Message Concepts per Customer Segment

These generic messages formed the basis on which our marketing personnel formulated specific message variations for each campaign.

Our KPI hierarchy was affected, too. We had to have different KPI’s for each segment, since the related marketing objectives differed.

Towards a new Operational Framework for Marketing

As a final step, we decided to setup a new operational framework for our team. Doing the above analysis for one time would not have lasting results if we did not setup the necessary policies and processes. Remember the traditional approach of Figure 1? Here is what we counter-propose regarding the Promotion Strategy:

Figure 7 — How to derive your Digital Marketing Stratagy

The designation and execution of Marketing Strategy should take into account what we already know about our targeted market, and then adapt it to the view of the See-Think-Do-Care framework.

The Results

We worked furiously for some months in order to arrive at the desired state on many levels. Google Ads experts, Social Media experts, copywriters, designers, BI specialists were all involved in this transformation process.

The results were astonishing! After 6 months’ time:

• Our CPA (Cost per acquisition) went down by 25% (having the same available budget)
• Our bookings went up by 20% (after subtracting the seasonality effect)
• Our web traffic went up by 10%

We were proud!

I wish to thank Yannis Vasileiou, Bill Aggelopoulos, Kostas Saridakis, Angeliki Sfarna who contributed in the above effort.

What about you? Have you implemented a similar framework? Please share with us your adventures in the comments!