See, Think, Do, Care · Avinash Kaushik's Audience-Intent Framework
Why the traditional purchase funnel under-represents the largest audience stage — the See stage — and how Avinash Kaushik's four-stage model gives marketers a sharper way to map content, channels, and measurement to each audience intent.
Original concept & attribution. The See-Think-Do-Care framework was developed by Avinash Kaushik (Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google for years, now Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Croud) and published on his blog Occam's Razor in 2013. It has since become standard in many performance marketing teams. This article reviews the framework with our operator perspective.
What the framework says
Kaushik's argument is that the traditional purchase funnel (Awareness → Consideration → Purchase → Loyalty) under-represents the largest audience and over-emphasizes the smallest. Most digital marketing investment ends up in the Do (purchase-ready) stage, where the addressable audience is smallest. The largest audience is the See stage — and most brands ignore it.
The four stages, defined by audience intent:
See. The largest addressable qualified audience. People who have characteristics that could one day make them a customer, but aren't actively considering anything yet.
Think. The largest addressable qualified audience with some commercial intent. People starting to research the problem you solve.
Do. The largest addressable qualified audience with strong commercial intent. People actively comparing and deciding.
Care. Your existing customers, especially the ones who have made two or more purchases.
Why it matters
Most marketing spend pours into the Do stage — paid search, retargeting, comparison content. The audience there is small but high-intent, so ROI looks great and teams double down.
The problem: you're fighting over the same small audience as every competitor. Margins compress. Customer acquisition cost rises. Growth tops out because you've maxed out an audience that was always finite.
Investing in See and Think builds the audience that will eventually become Do. Brands that skip these stages can grow until the Do-stage audience saturates, then stop.
What lives in each stage
Stage
Content
Channels
Measurement
See
Brand storytelling, education, entertainment
Display, YouTube, social, PR, podcast
Reach, brand lift, video completion
Think
How-to, comparison, research
SEO, content, paid social, retargeting
Site engagement, time on page, lead
Do
Product pages, demos, reviews, pricing
Paid search, shopping, branded retargeting
Conversion rate, CPA, ROAS
Care
Onboarding, success, community
Email, in-app, lifecycle
Retention, expansion, LTV, NPS
Where it fits with other frameworks
STDC works alongside AARRR and growth loops. AARRR measures the funnel internally. STDC maps the marketing investment externally. Loops are the compounding engine.
The intent-mapping discipline is what makes STDC useful. Once you can say "this campaign is See-stage, success looks like reach and brand lift, not conversions," your measurement stops punishing the investments that actually build long-term growth.
RGM operator perspective. The most common failure we see: a company under-invests in See and Think, then complains that paid search CPAs keep rising. The reason CPAs rise is that the See and Think audiences aren't being warmed up — every new buyer is having to discover the brand the hard way. Investing 30–40% of marketing in See and Think tends to lower blended CAC within 6–12 months.