Show Notes
See-Think-Do is a marketing framework for understanding your prospect’s state of being. Because it is customer-centric and aligns well with the Iterative Marketing methodology, we refer to it often. People move in and out of different states as priorities change and they interact with different products and providers. This episode takes a deep dive into ‘Do’ and outlines the goals, content, targeting and measurement for the state. ‘Do’ state is the audience who has made a commitment to themselves or someone else to buy.
Overview of the Journey States:
- See – Qualified, but not thinking about purchasing your product/service or changing vendors
- Resource: Deep Dive in Episode 23
- Think – Qualified AND thinking about purchasing or changing vendors, BUT has no timeline or commitment to do so
- Resource: Deep Dive in Episode 27
- Do – Qualified AND has a commitment to themselves or someone else to purchase within a specific period of time
- Grow – Happy and loyal customer
- Give – Happy and loyal customer who believes so much they would refer a friend or family member
Goals for the ‘Do’ State Audience:
- Elicit action or commitment to purchase
- Be a resource as they complete the buyers journey
- If a salesperson is involved support them without getting in the way
- Reinforce the brand and its key messages
Content for the “Do” State Audience:
- Introduce the features and benefits that allow them to rationalize this emotional decision
- Create a sense of urgency or a need to act now
- Opportunity to up-sell or cross-sell
- Resource: Podcast Episode 18, “Aligning Content with Your Customer Journey“
Targeting for the “Do” State Audience:
- We can target the “Do” state with first-party data: who is interacting with “ready-to-buy” content on our site
- We can also target the “do” state using CRM data if the sales team is diligent in updating status
- PPC is a great way to reach “do” state people not already in our pipeline with high intent keywords
Measurement for the “Do” State Audience:
- With the do audience, our goal is to ultimately close sales. So this is the easiest of the three states to measure effectiveness.
- Key performance indicators include:
- Close rate
- Average sale size
- Time to close
- And the most important, Attributable Revenue
- Any other metric that shows the value that marketing added
Charity of the Week:
Randy Schopen Give Someone A Chance Foundation
We hope you want to join us on our journey. Find us on IterativeMarketing.net, the hub for the methodology and community. Email us at [email protected], follow us on twitter at @iter8ive or join The Iterative Marketing Community LinkedIn group.
The Iterative Marketing Podcast is a production of Brilliant Metrics, a consultancy helping brands and agencies rid the world of marketing waste.
Producer: Heather Ohlman
Transcription: Emily Bechtel
Music: SeaStock Audio
Onward and upward!
►▼Transcription
Steve Robinson: Hello, Iterative marketers! Welcome to the Iterative Marketing podcast, where each week, we give marketers and entrepreneurs actionable ideas, techniques and examples to improve your marketing results. If you want notes and links to the resources discussed on the show, sign up to get them emailed to you each week at iterativemarketing.net. There, you’ll also find the Iterative Marketing blog and our community LinkedIn group, where you can share ideas and ask questions of your fellow Iterative Marketers. Now, let’s dive into the show.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Iterative Marketing podcast. I am your host, Steve Robinson, and with me as always is the exuberant and somewhat gregarious Elizabeth Earin.
Elizabeth Earin: Hi, Steve. How are you today?
Steve Robinson: I am doing great. How are you?
Elizabeth Earin: I am good. A little bit of a head cold, so apologize to our listeners if you hear me sniffle.
Steve Robinson: Yeah, it is that time of year. I know in our family we have got the viruses swooping through as the kids go back to school.
Elizabeth Earin: Summer is over. How did that happen so fast?
Steve Robinson: I don’t know. It seems like a switch just flipped and the weather is definitely in the fall mode and — I don’t know. I’m mourning the loss of summer and also trying to avoid thinking about all of the summer projects that didn’t actually get done this summer.
Elizabeth Earin: That’s a little frustrating. I love fall so I am excited for the yellow and orange leaves that are everywhere and everyone has pumpkins right now, and I am not a fan of the pumpkin spice latte. I know that’s like a big fall thing. That’s not one of my favorites, but actual pumpkins, I am excited to see them in the stores, so…
Steve Robinson: Yeah, it’ll be nice to starting the family gatherings by Thanksgiving and everything coming up so it’s good, it’s good.
Elizabeth Earin: Definitely.
Steve Robinson: So what are we talking about today?
Elizabeth Earin: Today, we are talking about “Do” state. We have gone through the different journey states. We did a great high level overview and then we have sort of been doing these deep dives into them and so today we are going deep dive into “Do” state.
Steve Robinson: And so as we have done in the past episodes, we will go through a quick overview of the journey states. That said, if you haven’t listened to Episode 7, I think where we go through “See, Think and Do”. It’s a while back. We will link to in the show notes, but if you haven’t gone through the episode where we went through “See, Think and Do”, definitely take a moment to rewind and go and take a look at that and then it wouldn’t hurt if you had listened to the other two deep dives, the one on “See” and the one on “Think.” But if you haven’t, I think you’ll stay afloat just fine as we work through this episode.
Elizabeth Earin: So, once we go through sort of those – that higher level, we will take a look at what the specific goals are for our “Do” audience, the content that we use to target the “Do” audience and then how we actually target the “Do” audience and then we’ll wrap it up with one of our favorite topics and that’s measurement.
Steve Robinson: So let’s start with that high-level overview. When we talk about “See, Think, Do” we are talking about a framework that we use to map the customers’ journey and we took that framework from a really, really smart guy, Avinash Kaushik, who is at Google and we have adapted it slightly and tweaked just the tail end of that journey. So I am going to go through each of the states and I think it’s important to note that people bounce from state to state. This isn’t necessarily like a linear progression, although in a perfect world, we’d love it to be. The reality is that our customers actually bounce from state to state.
So we start with the “See” state. And the “See” state, this is a qualified prospect, somebody who could buy your product. They have the means. They have the need but they are not looking at your product at this particular moment. So they are perfectly satisfied with the one they have got or they just haven’t run across an actual need to purchase your product just yet. We go into a deep dive into the “See” state in Episode 23 if you want to take a moment to go in and listen to that.
“Think” state is where the prospect – now, not only are they qualified to purchase your product but something has put your product or service on their radar. So now they are considering. They are thinking about it but they have no commitment to themselves or to anybody else to actually follow through with a purchase on this product. They are just kind of thinking about it. There is an inkling there that they might need one in the future.
“Do” state is where we flipped and we are actually committed to buy. Now, that doesn’t mean that we have some impending consequence if we don’t buy. It just means that we have made a commitment to ourselves or to somebody else that we are going to follow through the purchase. It also doesn’t mean that that prospect is going to buy from you. There’s still an opportunity for them to buy from someone else. So for example, I could be in a position where I am in “Do” state about buying a new car if my lease is up on my current car. There’s an impending date-time timeframe that I am going to have to make a purchase. Otherwise, I am not going to have something to drive. This comes up in a variety of different ways. Usually it’s an emotional commitment we have made, that switch is flipped inside of us that we have decided that we are going to follow through on a purchase of a given product or service. We just aren’t sure exactly where we are going to buy it or which product it might be.
We have two more states that we’ll talk about in deep dives in the future and that is “Grow” and “Give” and this is after that prospect becomes a customer. At this point, we flip over into “Grow” where they have bought from you. They are loyal to you but they are not singing your praises to others necessarily. So at this point, you are trying to really nurture and grow that relationship and they are growing into you likewise, hence the term “Grow.” And then “Give” is where not only has that prospect — could become a customer of yours and a loyal customer of yours, but now they are singing your praises. They are out evangelizing your brand to others and they are writing reviews and they are sharing the word of the great work or product that you have.
Elizabeth Earin: So this was the sort of high-level overview. If you’d like a little bit of a deeper dive into each of these, you – Steve wrote a fantastic blog called “See-Think-Do: A framework for understanding your prospect state of being.” We will link to that in the show notes, and if you’d like to even pause the podcast for a minute if you are watching on video, go and read the blog. It’s going to give you a little bit of a tighter overview of that. Otherwise, we do have another previous episode that we covered it and then we also have the deep dives for “See” and “Think” and we will link to all of those in our show notes. But for today, we are really focusing on “Do.”
Steve Robinson: And so again, your “Do” state, this is somebody who’s made somewhat of a commitment either to themselves and that’s usually in a B2C type scenario or possibly to somebody else which usually comes up in a B2B scenario where they have said part of my plan for the year is to purchase X or identify a vendor for Y, right? They have made that commitment to purchase. That doesn’t mean they are ready to purchase from you. It just means that they have made a commitment to purchase and so we have a number of goals as we as marketers try to influence that person’s purchase.
Elizabeth Earin: So the first thing that we want to do is we want to elicit an action or a commitment to purchase from them. We want to know that they are ready to make that purchase. Again, it may not be with us but they are at that state where they have decided that they are going to buy and we want to know that they are ready to buy.
Steve Robinson: We also want to make sure that we are a resource for them as they move through the buyers’ journey. So really at this point, it’s the end state of that buyers’ journey so we want to help them understand the — why they need to buy our product or help them with any last-minute comparisons between us and another vendor or another product. It’s really helping tie up that purchase decision in a nice little bow.
Elizabeth Earin: And we want to do all of this while being a resource, but not getting in the way of a salesperson if a salesperson is involved. And this is very important here because this is really where we see a lot of sort of the marketing and the sales process coming together. If a salesperson is involved in the process, we want to support them without actually getting in their way.
Steve Robinson: And then finally while somebody is in this “Do” state, if we can, we want to take an opportunity to support the brand and its key messages. I’ll talk about this later, but we all buy from those people that we know, like and trust, and so anything we can do to reinforce the brand, to make the prospect feel like they know us, feel like they like us, and feel like they trust us as they are wrapping up that sale, we want to continue that presence from a brand standpoint.
Elizabeth Earin: So why is all of this important?
Steve Robinson: Well, it’s important for a couple of different reasons and it depends a little bit on whether you are B2B or B2C or more importantly whether you have a salesperson involved or not. If you don’t have a salesperson involved, then part of the function of marketing at “Do” state is to get that customer to act because even though they have made a commitment to themselves or to somebody else to purchase, sometimes there’s no immediacy to that timeframe. Sometimes there is a no path for them to follow to complete that purchase. You want to lay that path out in front of them and make it as easy as possible for them to go down.
Elizabeth Earin: Another reason this is important is a “Do” state prospect is ready to make a final selection. They are ready to make a purchase and we want to make sure that that experience, as they are moving into those final steps of that purchasing path, aligns with the experiences they have had throughout the rest of their journey state. It needs to feel the same to them. If it doesn’t, if it feels off in any way, shape or form, they are going to step back and they are going to think twice about making that purchasing decision. So we really want to make sure that we have a consistent experience for them.
Steve Robinson: This is especially true in B2B or in instances when you have a salesperson, because oftentimes, marketing will just stop as soon as that deal is handed off to the salesperson and anything you have got going in your marketing automation system hits a dead stop because we don’t want to interfere with the salesperson. The reality is that that can create an incongruence in that person’s and that prospect’s experience with the brand. And if you can naturally continue the relationship from a brand level while you have a salesperson involved, it can create a much more congruent experience.
Elizabeth Earin: It’s funny. Actually, I was just talking to one of our clients about this this morning and they said, well, sales is handling it so we don’t have to do anything. And I am like, no, no, no. It’s very important that you are still involved because you have been talking to them for the past nine months and if you suddenly drop off, that’s not a good experience for them. And so this is just another reason why it’s very important to make sure that marketing and sales both have a seat at the table when you are talking about the journey states and the different collateral and messages that you are using to put out to your prospects.
Steve Robinson: And it comes back to a concept that I have talked about a lot in the past and that is that as human beings we make decisions with our emotions. And I know that that’s somewhat hard to stomach because we all think of ourselves as very rational human beings and we are not entirely like off on some emotional tangent all the time, but the reality is that the decision-making engine inside of us, while it can be informed biologic, ultimately is an emotional engine. And so as a marketer it’s very important to continue that brand messaging, that brand alignment that helps that person feel like they know, like and trust that brand as they complete that purchase, and so tying back to the brand values and continuing that messaging through the “Do” state is really an important move.
Elizabeth Earin: So let me ask you this, Steve: We get asked this question a lot as we are working with new clients who haven’t — aren’t necessarily familiar with the journey states. They love “Do” state. They love “Do” state because this is where we see the conversions and a lot of them want to focus or put a big bulk of their efforts in the “Do” state and maybe not as much effort or even ignore “See” and “Think.” Why do we not want to do that?
Steve Robinson: Oh! this is – you hit a hot button here, Elizabeth. You put a quarter in the machine now, so this is not good. But yeah, this is really a common message that we hear from our clients and prospects. This is something that we hear every day. It’s also something that I am reading a lot more of online and it really has me a bit disturbed. This comes back to that idea of again doing business with those that we know, like and trust, and so I like to tell a little story here. So imagine that you are selling your house, right? Or you are thinking of selling your house. You haven’t really actually decided to sell your house but you are thinking of selling your house and so there’s this realtor, friend of a friend that you know, that you hit up for some advice. Hey, do I upgrade my kitchen before I sell? What’s the best time of year to sell? And so you are pinging him with these questions here and there. He is giving you some great advice along the way and then let’s just say there’s a magic algorithm out there that’s able to predict when somebody is in market for a realtor and ready to list their house and that magic algorithm suddenly figures out that you are ready to list at the same time as you are actually ready to list your house and you have made all these preparations. The floodgates open. You start getting offer after offer from realtor after realtor to list your house. Who are you going to pick up the phone and call? It’s not going to be all these people that swooped in at the last minute, ready to help you as you go to list your house. It’s going to be the person that you have been relying on for that advice all along the way, the person that’s been with you on that entire customer journey. And the same thing is true when it comes to marketing. And so you’ll read out there all of these folks focused on things like performance marketing as kind of the buzzword right now, where everybody should have all of their eggs in this “Do” basket and it’s driven by this glut of data that’s now available that allows you to swoop in at the last minute and detect when somebody is in market for a given product or service. The reality is you will lose every single time to a competitor that’s been there along the way for every step of the journey, because your prospect has had an opportunity to develop an affinity for that competitors’ brand. They know that brand. They like that brand and they trust that brand and they are going to do business with that brand unless there’s a darn good reason not to right up until the end.
Elizabeth Earin: Well, and it also makes the assumption that you are in the right place at the right time. And while that may happen on occasion to build an entire business model off of being in the right place at the right time, it isn’t something that is actually going to probably come to light and be able to support you. So a combination of right place right time and helping to make that more likely by being there in “See” state and “Think” state as they are moving through the customer journey is the way that we make sure that we can get those sales.
Steve Robinson: And we see this a lot with clients and prospects that are very dependent on AdWords because AdWords is a great example of swooping in at the right place at the right time if you are bidding on high intent keywords where you are counting on catching those people that are ready to buy and are just trying to figure out where to buy from. That model works until it doesn’t and all you need is some brand to really establish that awareness and trust to be the place that people go. Think Amazon for example. How many times do you start shopping on Google now compared to before you knew about Amazon, right? It can really disrupt that model because you are counting on swooping in at the last minute when the person is ready to buy and not following them along for the journey. I think this is a great opportunity for us to take a quick break. When we come back, we’ll talk about the actual mechanics of the “Do” state. We will talk about what you need for “Do” state content and how to target it and then finally how to measure it. So let’s take a moment to help some people.
Elizabeth Earin: Before we continue, I’d like to take a quick moment to ask you Iterative Marketers a small but meaningful favor and ask that you give a few dollars to a charity that’s important to one of our own. This week’s charitable cause was sent in by Damon Schopen of Port Light Technology. Damon asks that you make a contribution to the Randy Schopen Give Someone A Chance Foundation which is dedicated to supporting charities, groups and organizations in Jefferson, Wisconsin and its surrounding communities. Learn more at randyschopenfoundation.org or visit the link in the show notes. If you would like to submit your costs for consideration for our next podcast, please visit iterativemarketing.net/podcast and click the “Share a Cause” button. We love sharing causes that are important to you.
Steve Robinson: And we are back. So, before the break, we talked about what “Do” state was, why it’s so important for marketing to have a presence in “Do” state even in organizations where that’s kind of a sales-driven focus and we went off on a little rant about marketers that seemed to think that “Do” is the only important place to be. Let’s refocus the conversation now and jump into what we need for good content to support the “Do” state.
Elizabeth Earin: Oftentimes, a “Do” state prospect has already made the emotional decision that they are ready to buy, and so this is the time, this is the right time to introduce features and benefits that will help them to rationalize this emotional decision that they have made.
Steve Robinson: So for example, say you are out shopping for a new pair of designer jeans and our prospect is out trying to shop for a new pair of designer jeans and they have put these jeans in their shopping cart and then they go away. They have obviously sent some signals that they are likely in a “Do” state. They have picked out the actual exact product that they want to buy. They just haven’t pulled the trigger and made the purchase. And so now if you as the marketer take the opportunity to retarget them, you can give them the messages that help them rationalize that decision if they are on the fence. So things like “These could be your forever jeans” or “Everyone needs at least one pair of phenomenal jeans” can help that person rationalize that decision and then come back and complete the purchase.
Elizabeth Earin: I am notorious for doing this. We have talked about this before and sometimes this “Do” state prospect needs a push or an incentive to move forward to make that final purchasing decision and so it’s at this point in the journey that you want to use different tactics that will help create a sense of urgency or need to act now. And coming back to the jeans example that you gave, maybe it’s an email that shows up a week later that is either advertising a temporary price discount or it’s a special offer, a coupon if you act within a certain timeframe.
Steve Robinson: Yeah. The key is creating that sense of urgency because…just because I have made a commitment to purchase something doesn’t mean I am necessarily going to buy this week, this month, or this year or that I might not forget that I am in “Do” state on that particular product or service. So putting an end date or a sense of urgency or an incentive to act now instead of later is really key as long as you do it naturally and not in a really sort of manipulative way because I think consumers have gotten smarter about that.
Elizabeth Earin: Our jean example is a great example for a B2C, but when we are talking B2B, it’s a little bit of a different type of market. It’s a different sort of purchasing. The decisions that you are making are a little bit different, and so in terms of a B2B, this is a great time to introduce a one-sheet that can help the prospect share the benefits, features and benefits with other people within their organization that may be involved in that purchasing decision and may need that extra little boost to get past that next hurdle.
Steve Robinson: Yeah. One of my favorite examples of this is actually from Content Marketing Institute. So if you have ever taken a look at their phenomenal event, Content Marketing World, you’ll notice that if you go to the site for Content Marketing World, under the FAQ, there is an item there that says “Justify Your Trip” and it is exactly for this purpose and it’s blatant. I mean its right in your face saying, “Hey, you need to convince others within your organization to pay for this, so here’s what you need to tell them.” And it really helps those that have made that decision to purchase, again which is a largely emotional decision, but you can’t rationalize an emotional decision to your boss or to other colleagues within the organization as to why you need to buy a particular product or service from a given vendor. So you have got a commitment to purchase. Now you need to explain why we are going to buy from so and so. Having the features and benefits laid out at this point is the right time, not earlier in the journey.
Elizabeth Earin: “Do” state also gives us – “Do” state content gives us a unique opportunity that we don’t have in the other journey states and that’s the opportunity to upsell or cross-sell. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Steve Robinson: Yeah. So sometimes you have somebody who’s made that commitment to buy. They are probably going to buy from you. Now you can take this opportunity to actually increase the size of that sale because anything you add on the top of that sale usually is some of the most profitable stuff you can put on there. So for example, we have a client in the software space who part of their marketing in the “Do” state is to promote additional modules of their software that can be bolted onto the base purchase, thereby driving up the individual order size or initial size of that sale. You can’t really do that any earlier in the sales process because they don’t have that commitment to buy until they have “Do” state.
Elizabeth Earin: So what do we need to have to make sure that we are creating effective “Do” state content?
Steve Robinson: I would think if you were to create a checklist or a punch list for “Do” state content, it really needs to accomplish three things. First, it needs to really lay a finely polished and clear path to purchase, right? No encumbrances at all. We want to make sure that there’s no friction in getting that person from wherever they are at down to making a commitment to purchase, if it’s not an immediate sale or if its e-commerce or an immediate sale getting them to actually buy, right?
Elizabeth Earin: And I think it’s important to note that we can’t force them down this, but all we can do is make this as streamlined of a process, as easy of a process for them so that they don’t have any roadblocks or hurdles that they now have to get over. Again, we can’t force them but we can make this as easy as possible on them to finish that purchase.
Steve Robinson: And while features and benefits are exactly the wrong thing to lead with during “See” and “Think,” now is the time to pull those out because now if you have done your job right in “See” and “Think,” your prospect already knows, likes and trusts your brand. They are ready to buy. They have made an emotional decision to buy but now they need to back that up with some logic, right? They need to feed that emotional decision-making machine with some logic and then they might need to justify their actions to others. And so now is the time to pull out the stops on the features and benefits and really explain to them why they need to be buying your product or your service. And then finally, you want to create a sense of urgency. So just because they have a commitment to buy doesn’t mean they are going to buy now. And if you can, in a non-sleazy manipulative way, pull out that sense of urgency and get them to commit today versus next week or next month, not only does it accelerate your revenue but it also makes sure that they don’t have time to be persuaded by another competitor to buy from them. And so if you can, lock them and convince them that now is the time.
Elizabeth Earin: So that’s sort of the three keys to creating effective “Do” state content. Once we have that content, how do we target them?
Steve Robinson: Here’s where your first-party data is key. And I know we talked about first-party data a fair amount on our deep dive into “Think,” but if you don’t have those signals that say that this person is ready to buy, it’s very hard to approach them at the right time with this “Do” state content because if you introduce too much of it too early in the process or while people are in other states, it’s going to turn them off. And so you need that first-party data, you need data from your website that says what content they are engaging in, making sure that you have content that is very commercial in nature that clearly indicates that, hey, I am ready to buy, I am looking at prices, I am looking at the features and benefits, I am digging in at competitive comparisons to understand if I need to buy this now from you, right? And so it’s that first-party data that really help you detect those signals of who’s in market and if they are ready to buy.
Elizabeth Earin: And we detect those signals by their response to offers that we have shown them in “Think” state, correct?
Steve Robinson: Right, right. Just like we talked about dangling some “Think” state stuff inside of your “See” audience, you are going to want to dangle some “Do” state stuff in front of your “Think” state audience because otherwise you have no way of knowing when they have jumped in to “Do.” Sometimes it might even make sense to dangle a little bit of “Do” state in front of your “See” state audience, keeping the bulk of your messaging appropriate for that journey state. But if your buyers’ journey often has people jumping right from “See” to “Do,” you can’t wait for them to go through “Think.” So it might make sense to dangle it there but if they are acting on an offer, an offer to purchase that’s a clear indication that they are likely in “Do” state and that’s when you want to again pull out the stops on your “Do” state content and really drive that urgency and give them those features and benefits.
Elizabeth Earin: I think this is a great place to add in that the sales team is another great resource here and it’s so important that your sales team is maintaining the journey state inside of your CRM and that the audiences are properly synced. The sales team is talking directly to these people. They are picking up the phone. They are interacting with them through email, in some cases social media as well and they know where they are within that buying journey, so their ability to update that information in CRM is invaluable and can help to correctly identify when someone is in “Do” state.
Steve Robinson: And this will play itself out in a variety of different ways. If you are pulling lists for direct mail, you are going to want to make sure that you are excluding those people that are in “Do” from your particularly “See” or “Think” state content because it will be incongruent with where they are in the journey state. Same thing is true of marketing automation. You are going to want to make sure that any segmentation things are updated in CRM as well as their journey states so that you can actually send some content to them while they are in “Do” state and have it aligned with their segment, their persona as well as where they are in the journey. And then we have been doing some great work on the paid media side in using CRM targeting and IP-based targeting to get the right message in front of the audience who is in “Do” state so that we can now get some of that features and benefits messaging out when it’s appropriate to where their journey is as indicated by the sales team.
Elizabeth Earin: Now getting back to the right place, right time sort of idea that we talked about earlier, pay-per-click like Google AdWords and Bing are channels that are suited for identifying those people who are ready to buy now. The key is that you want to make sure that you target high intent keywords along with your product or service. Do you want to talk a little bit about those high intent keywords?
Steve Robinson: Yeah. So if we come back to our designer jeans example, if you were an e-commerce site selling designer jeans, you would want to target keywords like buy true religion jeans online, right? Because now that keyword of buy and online clearly indicates that there’s an intent to actually make a purchase right now. They have already decided what they want to buy. Now they are trying to figure out where. The trap you don’t want to fall into is that if this is your only marketing, then you are entirely competing on price, right? Because I am simply going to buy it from the place I can get the best deal on it, not the place that I trust to deliver it on time or whatever other values might influence my decision to make me feel like I know, like and trust a brand and would rather spend my money there, even if I could buy it slightly cheaper somewhere else.
Elizabeth Earin: And then you touched on this a little bit, that we want to make sure where we are dangling some “Do” state content in front of our “Think” audience but just to reiterate that, if we don’t give them a path to buy them, they are not going to take it so we want to again make sure that that is a very clear and easy to move through easy-to-navigate path. We can’t force them down it but we can make it easy for them to make that purchase.
Steve Robinson: I think that kind of rounds out how to target this content. How do we measure it?
Elizabeth Earin: Measurement. This is such an important topic. And again, getting a little nerdy here. I love “Do” state because we actually get to measure the conversions, the actual sales that are happening and that’s ultimately what our goal is with “Do” state is that we want to close sales. And so when we are looking at the different journey states, “See” and “Think” and “Do,” this is really the easiest of the states to measure because we are able to measure those key performance indicators. Things like close rate, average sales size, time to close and then of course the one that every C-suite loves to see, attributable revenue.
Steve Robinson: I think it’s important to mention that it’s not just that attributable revenue metric though, that you want to be looking at because if you are doing your job as a marketer during “Do” state, you are going to be impacting other things. You are going to be impacting the deal size of the order size. You are going to be impacting the close rate or the time it takes to close because those are other key metrics that will help round out where you are having an impact in addition to just that revenue metric. So I know we have run very long with this particular episode but let’s sum things up here.
Elizabeth Earin: So your “Do” state is your audience who has made a commitment to themselves or someone else that they are ready to buy but keep in mind it may not necessarily be from you.
Steve Robinson: And the content that we create for our “Do” state really needs to do three things. One, they need to make that path to purchases clean, clear and obvious as possible, no friction, and make sure that you are giving them that path as many opportunities as possible. You want to justify your purchase rationally because the decision they made was emotional. Now we need to back it up with some logic and then we also want to create a sense of urgency so that we can accelerate revenue, make sure they don’t have time to buy from someone else.
Elizabeth Earin: Once we have that targeted content, there are a number of ways that we can target our “Do” state audience. We can use first-party data. Who’s interacting with our ready to buy content on our website. We can also target “Do” state using our CRM data, especially helpful if the sales team is diligent and getting that updated, very very important. And then also pay per click is a great way to reach “Do” state people who may not already be in your pipeline but are ready to buy.
Steve Robinson: When it comes to measurement, “Do” state is the easiest to quantify. It’s easiest to measure because it’s coming down to sales. It’s coming down to revenue.
Elizabeth Earin: And keep in mind that “Do” is not the end all. It requires support from the “See” and “Think” state to truly be effective. As Steve has mentioned before, we do business with brands we know, like and trust and “See” state content and “Think” state content and supporting our customers as they move through those states are how we help to build that relationship and become someone that they do know, like and trust.
Steve Robinson: Excellent. Well, let’s put a bow on this very long episode as we did a very deep dive into “Do.” I want to thank everyone for making a little bit of time or maybe a lot of time as it pertains this episode for us this week. If you haven’t already, please pop out to iTunes and give us a review, good, bad, or ugly. Helps other people discover our podcast and you want to share things that help you, right? So please pop out there and give us a review if you haven’t already. If you do, we’ll be sure to give you a shout out on a future podcast by the way. Until next week, onward and upward!
Elizabeth Earin: If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube on your favorite podcast directory. If you want notes and links to resources discussed on the show, sign up to get them emailed to you each week at iterativemarketing.net. There, you’ll also find the Iterative Marketing blog and our community LinkedIn group, where you can share ideas and ask questions of your fellow Iterative Marketers. You can also follow us on Twitter. Our username is @iter8ive or email us at [email protected].
The Iterative Marketing Podcast is a production of Brilliant Metrics, a consultancy helping brands and agencies rid the world of marketing waste. Our producer is Heather Ohlman with transcription assistance from Emily Bechtel. Our music is by SeaStock Audio, Music Production and Sound Design. You can check them out at seastockaudio.com. We will see you next week. Until then, onward and upward!
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