Using the AIDA model to analyze the advertising effects of Zhihu, Xiaohongshu and Facebook

Zhihu, which started out as a content-based platform, has always struggled with commercialization. At the beginning of this year, Zhihu made new moves and brought in Pinduoduo, which is deeply loved by young people in small towns.

From February 17th to February 21st, many Zhihu celebrities received official invitations to participate in the internal testing of the new "Good Product Recommendations" feature. The "Pinduoduo" platform has been added as a source of products for Zhihu's "Good Product Recommendations". The invited answerers can insert product cards from Pinduoduo’s product library in their answers, articles, and showcases. If the user purchases the product, the answerer can get the corresponding commission income.

Prior to this, Zhihu's "Good Product Recommendations" products mainly came from JD.com. Now, four e-commerce channels have been formed, including JD.com, Taobao, Pinduoduo and Zhihu products, enriching Zhihu's product library.

Zhihu promotes products for Pinduoduo, what is the commercial effect?

We use a classic model of Western salesmanship, the AIDA model, to evaluate the quality of its sales effect.

The AIDA model is a sales model first proposed by Elmo Lewis in 1898 and is an important formula in Western salesmanship.

AIDA is the first letters of four English words:

• A：Attention, that is, to attract attention;
• I：Interest, which means to arouse interest;
• D：Desire, which means stimulating desire;
• A：Action, which means to prompt action.

It covers three levels of evaluation: communication effect, psychological effect and sales effect.

For example, you saw an advertisement for a Dyson curling iron on your WeChat Moments. First of all, if you saw it, it just means that you noticed it, and it’s likely that you’ll just brush it off. When you think it is cool and easy to use, you become interested in it. So, you think about it in your mind, there is no other product that can have the same effect and the price is reasonable, you have the desire to own it. Finally, you click on the e-commerce link and complete the purchase.

In other words, when evaluating the effectiveness of selling products, we should not only pay attention to the communication effect, but also pay attention to the deeper psychological effects on users, and finally evaluate the sales.

01 Zhihu

On Zhihu, answerers usually dig deep into a question, and the "good product recommendations" at the end of the article are equivalent to "hard recommendations", and there is a lack of necessary connection between the article content and the product.

For example, a big V on Zhihu once complained that he could not find the product he wanted to recommend in the "Good Product Recommendations" section.

He wrote an answer about the game "Ring Fit Adventure", but when searching for "Ring Fit Adventure" on Zhihu's Taobao interface, there was no such game. He changed many keywords but still couldn't find the product he wanted to recommend.

On JD.com, you can find the "Ring Fit Adventure" game, but there are only three products to choose from and the prices are relatively expensive.

Zhihu adding Pinduoduo as a source of goods is actually just to supplement the product library within Zhihu. Judging from the commission, the bloggers’ commission is not high.

Moreover, Zhihu, which advocates elite youth, and Pinduoduo, which is popular among young people in small towns, form a contrast in temperament. It remains unknown whether the big Vs on Zhihu are willing to promote products for Pinduoduo and whether users are willing to accept it.

Therefore, this model of first posting the article and then posting the product makes it difficult for the answerer to find the product he really wants to recommend, and it is also difficult to stimulate the user's interest.

For Zhihu, which has more than 250 million users and 80 million daily active users, its biggest commercial killer is "traffic." Big Vs attract fans with content and bring high exposure to products, but they only focus on the A (Attention) level.

02 Xiaohongshu

The media commented that Zhihu's commercial model of promoting products is like another "Little Red Book". However, the author believes that there is a big difference between the grass-planting advertisements on Zhihu and Xiaohongshu.

Zhihu is a "hard recommendation" with a weak connection between content and products, while Xiaohongshu is a "soft implantation" where content serves the products.

For example, when a blogger recommends a "black technology blow-drying artifact", he will give a comprehensive explanation from the perspective of his own shampooing pain points, hair quality, hair volume, etc., to make users feel more involved and more easily tempted.

Moreover, Xiaohongshu's audience is mainly women who love shopping and sharing their lives, so the audience is precise; while Zhihu's labels are becoming more and more vague as the number of users becomes more generalized.

Therefore, compared to Zhihu, in addition to satisfying the A (Attention) level, Xiaohongshu is more likely to reach the I (Interest) and D (Desire) levels and arouse users' interest and desire through content.

03 Facebook

If Zhihu only focuses on traffic, and Xiaohongshu goes a step further and arouses users' interest and desire, then Facebook has definitely called on users to take action.

Like Zhihu, Facebook also inserts "hard recommendation" ads into the information flow, but the form is more novel:

• First, a business purchases Facebook's self-service advertising service, then creates its own homepage and chooses who to display the ads to.
• The advertisement can be in the form of a product trial, such as receiving a Starbucks coupon, or an event, such as inviting you to comment on a recently popular TV series, etc.
• If a user is interested in an advertisement and clicks on it to view it, he or she will become a fan of the company. In the future, when there are dynamic updates to the company's homepage, the user will receive notifications. The company can also obtain some fan data from Facebook, such as age, gender, residential area, etc., so as to better conduct market research and user analysis.

This form of advertising not only allows users to see advertisements that they are truly interested in, but also promotes interactive communication between companies and customers. From Attention to Interest, to Desire, and finally to Action, the four links of AIDA are closely linked.

Soon, this new type of advertising replaced the original sponsored headline ads and became very popular, bringing Facebook hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in the first year after its launch. From then on, Facebook became a new giant in the online advertising industry.

04 Conclusion

To sum up, the AIDA model has four levels: A: Attention, I: Interest, D: Desire, and A: Action.

• Zhihu, which works hard on traffic advertising, is at the first level , gathering large traffic and attracting user attention;
• The beautiful and exquisite Xiaohongshu is in the second to third tier , using content to serve products and stimulate user interest and desire;
• The social giant Facebook has climbed to the highest level , increasing the interaction between users and businesses with richer advertising formats and calling for action.

Therefore, traffic does not equal advertising quality. Zhihu, which has 250 million users, has worked hard on traffic advertising, but it still has difficulty in getting returns.

While commercializing the product, we must also pay attention to user experience. From purely grabbing users' attention to arousing their interest, stimulating their desires, and finally prompting them to take action, perhaps our advertising will be more meaningful.

Author: Sanyan Liangyu

Source: Vinky