Outside In Banking

If you’ve been in marketing for awhile, it’s a good bet you’re familiar with the hierarchy of effects.  Or maybe you know its upside-down cousin, the purchase funnel.

The hierarchy is typically represented by the acronym AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action).  The AIDA model was meant to map the effects of traditional advertising.

In the era of social media, however, I think we need a new hierarchy.  I propose Attraction, Engagement, Experience, Diffusion.  Granted, the resulting acronym isn’t the hottest, but I think it better reflects the way social media works.

Attraction
This, of course, refers to pull (as opposed to push) marketing.  Instead of pushing messages out, be interesting or valuable enough to pull people toward you.

Engagement
This could refer to a range of engagements from reading a blog post to sampling to purchase and use.

Experience
Once the engagement has been initiated, the experience will decide if you go in the positive column, the negative column, or somewhere in between.

Diffusion
People with positive experiences will ideally spread the word, extending the reach of your attraction.

Technically, this isn’t a real hierarchy.  For one thing, there’s no drop-off between engagement and experience.  You can’t really have one without the other.

Maybe engagement and experience could be combined.  Or maybe it’s a cycle (or something else) instead of a hierarchy.

Maybe someone else has a better idea.

Think of it as a thought starter.

Start thinking.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 10:37 pm and is filed under Bank Marketing, Social Media, bank advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.