How to apply the STDC framework for marketing and communications success?

Marketing communications have evolved from being one-sided broadcast advertising. Now, the goal is to have genuine conversations between your brand and customers. A huge contributor to that evolution has been the evolution of the buyer’s journey or customer journey. As a marketer, you need to truly understand how you can deliver the most value to your audience. You have to consider which stage of the customer journey your customer is in. And satisfy their needs and account for their preferences. The STDC framework will help you do this!

How does the STDC framework help?

Well, you have to begin at clarifying what content you will deliver. And then decide how you will communicate this. There’s no simpler or more effective framework in place to handle marketing communications and content than the STDC framework.

What does STDC framework stand for?

The SEE-THINK-DO-CARE aka STDC framework was created by Avinash Kaushik. He is an acclaimed digital marketing evangelist at Google. It was first implemented as a business framework but it was clear that its most effective application was in content marketing and communications.

The STDC framework is a great way to segment your customer’s journey. As a result, they discover, consider and commit to your brand and offering. But why? Why do you need to use STDC?

Why use the STDC framework?

Here are a few reasons:

• Increase the effectiveness of your communication and content
  
• Focus your resources and effort to get better ROI
  
• It’s simple and has your audience and customers at the center of all considerations

Unlike traditional sales/marketing funnels, where marketers are trying to suggest and “push” consumers down the funnel to the “next stage”, STDC takes on the same problem with a different motivation. 

The goal is to EMPOWER your audience with effective and beneficial content marketing. How? By choosing the right channels and adding the most value in each step too. The central factor here is audience intent.

Audience

So, what is audience intent and why is it so important for STDC?

Well think of it this way, someone who needs a pen right away will make obviously make decisions differently to someone else who needs a pen today. Further, it will be different from a third person who needs it this week and definitely apart from someone who likes the way the pen looks but doesn’t really need one right now.

That urgency to get a product or service is one way to showcase the differing behavior of customers. You definitely expect this since they are in different stages of the customer or buyer’s journey,

There could be other factors affecting intent:

• Quality
  
• Competition
  
• Price
  
• Perceived value
  
• Convenience

Firstly, with STDC, you are trying to outline your Largest Addressable Qualified Audience (LAQA). Do not mistake this for an old-school one-size-fits-all campaign. It isn’t. Even for the 1st stage, you are going to “qualify” your audience by interest or location. You can use price, needs, or any other relevant factors too. Why? So that you aren’t wasting effort or resources marketing to an audience that doesn’t care who you are or what you offer.

Audience Intent

So let’s dig into STDC framework segments by audience intent:

SEE

Your LAQA in total. Since you’ve already qualified them, getting their attention means you can build awareness about your brand. And let them know that you’re there when they need what you sell!

For example. if you run a grocery store (with in-store shopping only) in XYZ town in California. Then your LAQA will be anyone within 10 miles of your location.

THINK

Secondly, you refine that audience further to those showing some intent towards what you offer. You want this segment to remember you. So start by giving them reasons why they should choose you. You are letting them know what you do differently by telling them why you’re the best choice for them.

So let’s go back to the same example for the grocery store in XYZ, California. Clearly, your audience would be anyone within 10 miles of your location. But you can go further and include, “that shops for groceries in-store and is aware of your brand, location, or offerings.”

DO

Next, you have the audience segment whose intent is closing in on a decision, they’re looking to purchase soon.

So, who’s your intended audience for the grocery store? Obviously, this audience includes anyone within 10 miles of your location who shops groceries in-store and knows your brand. But we can add “and needs to make a purchase within a week.”

CARE

The last stage will be your customers, those who have already paid for your offering and interacted with your brand. The primary goal with the Care stage is to make them come back more frequently or increase their spending. 

For instance, you can do this with offers or loyalty programs,  but using personalized communication, giving great customer service, and truly satisfying your customer’s needs will always hold the most value.

And now that you’ve separated your audience based on intent stages of the customer journey. You can start to create catered communications and content that serves them best, as a result. Let’s look at this in more detail now.

Channel selection

The success of your content rests largely on the successful distribution of it, However, you start by picking the right channels for each stage. There are an endless number of digital and offline channels at our disposal today, but we need to focus on the ones that benefit our target audience the most. A full guide to channel selection can be found here.

So when it comes to the STDC framework, you want to divide all your channels (and even maybe the types of formats within those channels). Why? In order to add the most value. To illustrate, here is a real example of channel selection for a client who is setting up a B2B content strategy.

Stage	Channel
SEE	Instagram (Paid + Organic), LinkedIn (Organic), SEO, PPC Ads (Search + Display), Facebook
THINK	E-mail, LinkedIn (Organic), Instagram (Organic), PPC Ads (Search + Display + Retargeting), SEO, Blog, website, Affiliate Marketing
DO	E-mail, Instagram (Organic), LinkedIn (Organic), SEO, PPC Ads (Retargeting), direct communications, Affiliate marketing
CARE	E-mail, newsletter, direct communications, Social Media (Organic), Referral program

Choosing KPIs and metrics

In addition to defining the channels within which communications and content will be shared, it’s time to select the metrics that measure your activity and your audience’s responses to them. In order to showcase this, I have outlined Key Performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics that matter as follows:

Stage	Measurement
SEE	Organic Social Media – Impressions, Reach, Audience growth rate SEO – Keyword rankings, CTR, impressions, visibility, domain ratings PPC Ads – Quality score, CPM/CPI Social Ads – Engagement Google Analytics Traffic visits, % new visits,
THINK	Email – Open Rate, List growth rate Organic Social Media – Engagement PPC Ads – CTR, CPC, Quality score SEO, Blog, website – CTR, no of users (returning), time spent, bounce rate
DO	Email – Open rate, CTR SEO – Organic conversions, Pages per visit PPC Ads – Conversion rate, avg CPA, Quality score, ROAS Direct communications – Revenue, time to confirm proposal, confirm rate Affiliate marketing – Revenue from affiliates
CARE	Email & Newsletter – Open rate, list growth, delivery rate Direct communications – Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), return frequency  Social Media (Organic) – Engagement Referral program – No. of leads, cost per referral, Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Now that you know what channels you’ll be using and how to measure the success of your activity, it is time to plan the content by generating quality content that adds value to each stage of the STDC audience. You will have an output of a clear and focused content calendar tied to your business and marketing goals by applying STDC.

If you need guidance in setting clear goals, you can view this blog post on SMARTER goal setting to guide you through the process.

To gain the most benefit out of the STDC marketing framework, overlap it with customer personas so that all variations of the customer journey are addressed in your marketing plans. 

How would this look like?

Here’s a theoretical example of it:

Channel selection	#1 Persona 1	#2 Persona	#3 Persona
SEE	IG/FB/SEO	Email/IG/SEO	FB/SMS/LinkedIn
THINK	PPC/Blog/IG	Email/PPC/IG	PPC/Blog/LinkedIn
DO	Website/In-store/PPC	Email/Website/IG	Website/LinkedIn
CARE	Email/Blog/Referral	Referral/Email	Referral/Blog

You can then extend it to measurement via metrics (as done previously) and then focus on creating specific content for each persona depending on the stage of the customer journey that they fall under. If you need help with creating customer personas, this blog post can help.

The applications of STDC go beyond just communications, content marketing, and measurements. The versatile business framework can also apply to conversion strategy and serves as a clear overarching segmentation of audiences to market brands and businesses! This even aligns with your 7P marketing mix model as you plan specific tactics and actions!

Conclusion

The SEE-THINK-DO-CARE is such a simple and effective solution for audience segmentation by intent. Each audience stage has its own goals. So set SMARTER goals for them and focus on that! You can create catered content and manage clear expectations on the fulfillment of your objectives. This makes the framework both convenient and realistic for your marketing strategy, regardless of strategy planning. For instance, It can add to the use of the SOSTAC planning framework. By applying it to content and communications channels and the measurement metrics behind those channels, you can build a detailed marketing plan which keeps your audience front and center for all considerations! And that’s what a great marketing strategy is all about!