The do, see, say model and how to make marketing simple

You’re a marketer. You’re overwhelmed. You are constantly searching for the most simple, sensible and straightforward ways of organising your thoughts, plans, time and goals.

I see you!!

I have a couple of signature tools and rather than add those to the pile, I’m going to show you how to align them with the most simple of all marketing premises - the "Do, See, Say" model.

It fits so perfectly with so many important aspects of marketing - visibility, engagement, conversion, advocacy and everything else in between.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The Do, See, Say brand pillars courtesy of InnerVision-ID

1. Do

This sums up what you do as a business.  And that should include the problem you solve. For a marketing strategy to work, it has to be more than a thing, it has to be a thing that has a clear purpose and improves a given scenario as a result. Note that this isn’t about what you want your customer to do, that’s influenced by the say and see elements.

What’s important about the ‘do’ stage?

I call it trigger thinking - it’s about identifying the action the customer takes and why.

You’ve got to understand what these triggers look like and often, they’re not rational, they’re emotional. That might be a really frivolous desire right through to an urgent and practical need.  But they’re always meaningful, very defined and fuelled by an alignment of timing, occasion and expectation.All too often we market to a struggle - a generic set of frustrations or challenges, rather than the trigger which is the ultimate motivator.  

For example, the struggle before starting tennis lessons might be a desire to get fit. The motivation might be a work team building tennis tournament. Think about the most engaging ads you see out and about - which of these do they more typically market to? As a rule its the more nuanced trigger - a specific occasion that’s relatable.

2. See

The see stage is literally everything the customer sees - visual and contextual cues like branding, marketing, out of home advertising, word of mouth, social proof, product placement and popular culture. What happens here is that too many brands just create a load of noise. Or worse, endlessly recycle the same old marketing crap - over and over and over again.

I call this The Messy Middle. It’s where great brands go bad. And all of their hard work in terms of marketing efforts get lost and confused.Ultimately this is where things get really confused because you’ve thrown everything at it and the tone, visuals and experience are inconsistent and overwhelming.

3. Say The say encapsulates both what the brand says to its audience and what the audience says about the brand.

So this covers your key messaging, customer service, copywriting and verbal communication. From a customer perspective it’s reviews, social content, community engagement and word of mouth. For both to work, and ideally work in harmony, it needs to have situational relevance.  This is what I tell brands to filter their comms through - why does it matter? Why does it matter now? What are people talking about now that aligns with this?

There is no such thing as connecting with people on a general level. It’s always specific, because you have to add a level of specific value in a specific moment. This is a great starting point to simplify your marketing planning. The do, see, say model is a simple way to diagnose the current state of a strategy, whether messy and disconnected or aligned and just in need of a little finesse. From there you can map out the more strategic fixes as well as the tactical fine tuning. And, in the marketing nirvana, create a clear repeatable roadmap that makes your life a whole lot easier. If you want even more resources that help make consumer marketing strategy even easier to manage and plan out, let me know.