What’s so interesting about Bilibili’s MATES crowd asset model?

"Bilibili's crowd asset model is a new marketing tool." As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, the MATES crowd asset model launched by Bilibili has attracted attention. How does it help brand marketing? What is unique about it compared to other platforms?

This year, everyone is saying that marketing is difficult. The essence is that the traffic dividend is declining. Simply acquiring traffic and short-term conversions can no longer support the long-term development of brands. In this situation, brands have begun to re-examine their development strategies and focus on brand building with greater long-term value, especially the accumulation and operation of user-centric assets.

This is the fundamental basis for the brand's long-term operation and also the core strategy for crossing cycles and resisting market fluctuations.

Recently, I noticed that Bilibili released the MATES crowd asset model. So far, several major social media platforms, including Douyin and Xiaohongshu, have built their own crowd asset models. This phenomenon made me think: Why are more and more brands beginning to pay attention to crowd assets?

01 From brand assets to crowd assets

In the traditional marketing era, we often talk about the concept of brand assets. Companies accumulate brand awareness and reputation through advertising, packaging design and channel distribution. However, this logic has a limitation - it ignores the dynamic relationship between users and brands.

With the advent of the mobile Internet era, the relationship between brands and users is no longer a simple one-time transaction, but has evolved into a lifelong relationship that requires long-term management and maintenance. In this context, the measurement standard of brand value has also changed from enterprise-centered brand assets to user-centered crowd assets.

Alibaba first proposed the AIPL model based on Kotler's 5A model, and officially launched the concept of "consumer assets" in 2019. It pointed out: "Analogous to the original concept of brand assets, (consumer assets) allow companies to shift their focus from self-branding to the process of interacting with consumers."

Subsequently, other platforms followed suit. At the end of 2022, Douyin released the "O-5A Crowd Asset Management Methodology of Massive Engine", which systematically explained how to use the Douyin 5A model to operate crowd assets.

At the end of 2023, Xiaohongshu followed suit and released "Xiaohongshu Grass Planting Methodology", which also took the 5A model as an important strategic basis and emphasized that brands need to establish a solid relationship with users through deeper interactions and connections.

It can be said that building and operating crowd assets has become a consensus among major platforms and brands. In essence, crowd assets are a long-term brand management strategy that brings users long-term brand loyalty and purchasing power.

B Station released the crowd model this year, which must have seen this value. Compared with other platforms, B Station's unique content ecology gives it different advantages. B Station is known for its in-depth content, and its users are highly interactive and sticky, which provides a natural soil for brands to accumulate and utilize crowd assets.

Objectively speaking, compared with other platforms, Bilibili's move seems a little late. However, today when businesses are returning to brand building, focusing on building brand power, and emphasizing refined user operations, Bilibili's timely launch of crowd asset models and tools is just the right step.

02 B Station Crowd Asset Model: Turning Marketing from Metaphysics to Science

The MATES crowd asset model launched by Bilibili provides brands with a scientific marketing strategy tool. The model divides the crowd into five levels: Meet, Appeal, Trust, Endorse, and Sales, each of which represents the depth of the relationship between users and brands.

The crowd asset model of Station B is proposed based on the characteristics of its platform:

Content length and depth: Compared with the short video content of Douyin and the picture and text promotion of Xiaohongshu, Bilibili mainly uses medium and long videos, which carry more information and can deeply influence the minds of users.

User interaction and stickiness: Bilibili users tend to watch content and participate in interactions for a long time. The activeness of the comment section and barrage provides an ideal soil for brands to convey their values ​​and build trust.

Long-term value: When a brand establishes deep user recognition on Bilibili, its influence can be sustained for a long time and converted into brand loyalty.

Compared with Tik Tok and Xiaohongshu, the characteristics of Bilibili make its model different in the following aspects:

In terms of the behavioral path, Bilibili emphasizes the deep conversion of users in the trust and endorsement stages. Users' trust and endorsement of a brand is not only a prerequisite for purchase, but also the foundation of long-term brand loyalty. This path design makes Bilibili more strategic in the accumulation of crowd assets.

In terms of model value, the advantage of the Bilibili model lies in strong interaction and deep influence on the user's mind, rather than simply pursuing short-term conversions. Through the depth of content, community culture and the influence of UP masters, brands can gradually establish deep links with users, allowing marketing to achieve a transformation from "breadth" to "depth".

In terms of usage scenarios, Bilibili is suitable for a variety of scenarios, but its greater advantage lies in long-term brand building. For categories that require in-depth education of users and the delivery of brand values, Bilibili can significantly amplify the brand's mental penetration effect, allowing the brand to go from being "seen" to being "remembered."

Let me emphasize again here that in the most critical A3 stage, there are significant differences among several platforms: Douyin emphasizes rapid conversion, Xiaohongshu emphasizes seeding, and Bilibili pays more attention to trust and recognition.

In the T stage, brands use UP hosts’ high-quality content to convey brand professionalism and credibility to users, build user trust, and lay the foundation for subsequent recognition and conversion. In the E stage, through the in-depth output of brand values, emotional resonance is formed with users, allowing users to upgrade from trust to recognition, become brand fans, and promote long-term purchases.

When users trust and love a brand, they will naturally buy it and continue to buy it for a long time.

The data from Station B shows that the conversion rate of the E group, which has a strong mind and conversion intention, is 4-9 times that of the T group, and the conversion rate of the T group with deep interaction is 3-7 times that of the A group with shallow interaction. This shows the importance of the T and E stages.

The B-station MATES model helps brands achieve a marketing transformation from "metaphysics" to "science" by scientifically quantifying the brand's crowd assets. Brands can drive insights based on data before investing, achieve dynamic optimization during investing, and evaluate the results with standardized indicators after investing, making marketing more certain and long-term.

Let’s look at a case.

Insta360 is a leader in the panoramic camera market. It hopes to consolidate its brand image as a "technology pioneer", accumulate loyal users, and achieve business conversion by co-creating in-depth content on Bilibili.

During the 618 shopping festival, Inspur conducted a survey on conversion groups and found that the conversion rate of TE groups was four times that of MA groups. Based on this, Inspur clarified the group management chain: opportunity groups → MA shallow mind groups → TE deep mind groups. During the Double 11 shopping festival, Inspur further deepened the application of this model.

Crowd strategy: Extract brand crowd characteristics through the DMP platform, and combine with B station’s special crowds (such as all things decoders, geek pioneers, interesting travelers, and hardcore car people) for precise delivery and expansion. Use the TGI index to measure crowd matching.

Content strategy: Combining technology verticals and general interest circles, Bilibili arranges content in multiple consumption scenarios, emphasizing that content creation must grasp the needs of people at different stages: for opportunity people, emphasize humanism; for opportunity→MA people, emphasize the role of products in narrative; for MA→TE people, emphasize the emotional value from product information value to experience and brand.

Through high-quality content (such as the cooperation with Speed ​​Partner), high playback, high interaction and high conversion were achieved through "linking consumption scenarios", "introduction, development, turning point and ending" storytelling and amplifying the perception of "image strength".

Contact point strategy: Use the combination of Huahuo business orders and Qiqixing flow to improve the efficiency of crowd flow and seeding. And use the "Bida" platform to conduct data analysis and effect evaluation.

In the end, the number of people who recommended products and the total assets of the population during the Double 11 period of Yingshi both hit historical highs, the average order value of e-commerce customers set a new record, and the overall NPS was twice the industry average.

03 How to use the crowd asset model of B station for marketing

So, how should we make good use of the crowd asset model of Station B? Here are a few tips:

● Accurate positioning to find high potential user groups

The first step in marketing is to find the right people. Bilibili's MATES model provides brands with in-depth user data support. Unlike traditional crowd positioning that relies on conventional indicators such as age, gender, and region, Bilibili users have significant interest circles and behavioral characteristics. Brands can accurately identify target audiences through data insights and target high-potential user groups.

For example, Intel has captured the content creators, music and fashion, college entrance examination and other circles on Bilibili, and carried out content and scenario marketing based on the specific needs of these users. Through vertical IP cooperation and creative scene display, it has successfully occupied the mental cognition of "AI PC = Intel Core Ultra".

● Deepen the T and E stages to build brand trust and emotional resonance

The T stage (trust) and the E stage (identification) are the core of the MATES model and are also the key links for brands to deeply reach the minds of users. Brands need to build trust through high-quality content and enhance users' identification through emotional resonance.

In terms of content, brands should combine the interests of the target audience and produce video content that fits the tone of the Bilibili community. They should use top UP hosts to expand their voices, and mid-level UP hosts to deepen their promotion. At the same time, they should cooperate with the brand's official content matrix to strengthen users' brand awareness.

For example, LeFen once held a rough press conference on Bilibili. Although the venue and editing were rough, the content was hardcore and aroused the trust of technology enthusiasts. Since then, it has cooperated with UP hosts to continuously output high-quality content, achieving the transformation from trust to recognition of users.

● Combine scientific link design to promote effective conversion

Once users have established trust and recognition in a brand, scientific link design is the key to promoting conversion. Brands need to build conversion links that are linked inside and outside the site to convert mental assets into sales results.

Brands can use B station's Huafei+ tools (such as blue link traffic, live streaming) to guide users who are interested in buying products to purchase on the site through precise delivery. At the same time, combined with the Xhuo plan (cooperation with Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo and other platforms), open up the off-site purchase path. Through this full-link strategy, brands can efficiently complete the closed loop from mind capture to actual conversion.

The key to this link is to monitor data dynamics in real time throughout the entire marketing cycle and adjust the delivery strategy in a timely manner based on actual performance to achieve the best results.

Conclusion:

As the traffic dividend gradually fades, short-term effects are increasingly unable to support growth, and marketing has entered the second half. In the second half, competition between brands is a long-term competition of brand power, and in this process, users have become the core asset of the brand.

To build brand power, companies need to deeply understand and meet the needs of users, and win the trust and loyalty of users by providing value. Bilibili's MATES model is a tool that can help brands scientifically quantify and manage their crowd assets, thereby promoting the long-term development of the brand. But in the longer term, brand management should regard crowd assets as a strategy.

The future competition is no longer just about competing for users, but about how to grow together with users. Only by cultivating the assets of the crowd can brands achieve sustainable growth from short-term dividends to long-term value.