5A Model under New Marketing

In the current new marketing situation, we should understand the basic marketing model. Let us take a look at this article about the 5A model under the new marketing.

In the previous article, I talked about the macro model in the communication process:

The sender must know which audiences he wants to reach and what response he wants to get.

One must encode one's message in a way that the target audience can decode it, then deliver the message through a medium that can reach the target audience and develop feedback channels to monitor the response.

The macro communication model is a way of information flow that takes all relevant parties into consideration during the marketing communication process. In addition, there is also a micro communication model based on the user's perspective and the user's attitude towards the brand.

This model used to be 4A and has now evolved into 5A.

1. 4A Model

4A model: attract attention – induce interest – stimulate desire – facilitate purchase.

It is the earliest widely used means to describe customer marketing model.

This model reflects the customer's funnel-like thinking process towards brand attitudes.

People who like a brand need to know about it first, and people who buy the product need to like the brand first; the number of customers decreases as the process progresses.

In this process, users are mainly influenced by companies; for example, companies use TV commercials to "attract attention" and use discounts and promotions to "promote purchases". These contents are all dominated by companies.

With the advent of the H2H era, marketing has shifted from an era of "unilateral dominance by enterprises" to an era of "co-creation with users", and the factors influencing users' attitudes towards brands have also undergone some obvious changes.

Change 1: Attitudes toward brands have changed from being primarily influenced by brand advertising to being influenced by the surrounding community.

The community here not only refers to the people around you, but also includes online communities like Xiaohongshu. Before making a purchasing decision, users will assist their decision-making by asking for reviews from people around them and searching for reviews of related products in online communities.

Change 2: Brand loyalty has changed from being reflected only in retention and purchase to also being reflected in advocacy.

If users love a brand, they will continue to promote the brand.

So based on the above changes, the 4A model has evolved into today's 5A: understand, attract, inquire, act, and advocate.

2. 5A Model

In the understanding stage, users passively accept product information. At this stage, we need to pay attention to the penetration rate of the target population: the proportion of people who know the brand in the total target user group.

If most target users are not aware of the product, awareness needs to be established through communication; here it is necessary to ensure that the communication content covers the scenarios where the target users are located.

Platforms like Xiaohongshu have quantifiable content penetration rates at user touchpoints such as search recommendations and homepage information flow recommendations. Brands can use content seeding to increase the content penetration rate of their products in the category to increase exposure and build awareness.

During the attraction stage, you need to pay attention to indicators such as click-through rate and entry rate. The quality of the content itself is the key, and you need to use user insights and channel characteristics to produce content that is valuable to users.

The inquiry stage is the stage that can most influence user attitudes. At this time, users will learn about products through online communities such as Xiaohongshu.

If the product content that users actively search for at this time is positive, it will greatly increase users' desire to buy.

During the purchase stage, users are just one step away from placing an order, and some marketing activities are needed to help users place an order, such as limited-time promotions.

In addition to repurchases during the advocacy stage, users' spontaneous planting/sharing behaviors will feed back to the previous understanding/attraction/inquiry stages, and users' UGC content will be more real and objective.

It can increase product awareness and build positive word of mouth.

3. Model Characteristics

In this model, the various stages do not strictly progress in a linear manner, but rather develop in a spiral manner.

Users may skip one stage and go directly to the next stage, or they may return to the previous stage from the next stage; this is influenced by product categories and user habits.

For example, for daily consumer goods, the decision-making cost is very low, and users may directly enter the purchasing stage after being recommended by their friends.

When it comes to large-ticket durable goods, such as cars and houses, most users will go through a relatively long decision-making process and compare prices from multiple stores.

At the same time, the 5A paths of different groups of people will also be different. Female users will consider more product features/social value/emotional value than male users before making a purchase decision, and will also provide more post-purchase feedback (planting grass/complaining) than male users.

Judging from the user's attitude towards the brand, the ultimate goal of marketing is to transform users from understanders into advocates, and the 5A model provides a path to achieve this goal.

First of all, brands need to understand the category characteristics of their products and what the typical user purchase decision path looks like: a linear 5A path, a jumping 5A path, or a repeated spiral 5A path.

Secondly, understand the purchasing decision stage of the target users of your product and use marketing strategies to enable users to enter the next stage as quickly as possible.

Author: Wu Keke

Source: WeChat public account " Wu Keke"