It's never easy to write an impactful marketing or sales message.
You have at your disposal a multitude of tools to start a marketing message. Among these are questions focused on the problems, promises of results, recognized facts and statistics, social proof, etc.
Every writer or copywriter - sometimes -faces some sort of writing block. Every writer fights with it.
You’re looking at a blank page. Your mind is fried. And you can feel a headache evolving on.
But that will change with the AIDA method.
The AIDA method is probably the best-known model for writing an advertisement or marketing copy.
This model was popularized by Gary Halbert several decades ago and is still much used today in the digital age.
That being said (and because I don't want you to leave), I'm already going to lift the curtain on this acronym so popular and so powerful in marketing.
AIDA is an acronym for :
Gary Halbert used this model to make the skeleton of any sales letter.
Indeed, AIDA describes in a way the different states (or phases) through which a consumer (you and me) goes before buying a product/service.
The first phase is about awareness. At this stage, you discover a brand that you did not know and the product/service offered.
The second phase is the one you go through when you develop an interest in this product/service.
How is it relevant to you? How does this product or service help you solve a problem that is disturbing you or achieve a goal that is important to you?
In the third phase, you are clearly developing an affinity or desire for the offer. You start to consider the act of purchase (we will see how to build a desire for any offer in this article).
Finally, the last phase is the easiest to understand. You take action and buy that much-desired product/service.
The last stage of AIDA cycle.
You are probably telling yourself that this model only applies to sales (commercial) messages or copies.
Believe me, AIDA is not just another formula for writing a business message.
This model is the basis of written communication which tries to induce action.
In this article, I will first explain to you exactly the role of each element of the acronym AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action).
I will also show you how to use it to communicate in writing, whether to write an advertisement, a landing page, an introduction, a sales page, or a simple email.
For each use of the AIDA method, I will show you one or more concrete models.
As we have seen, AIDA is an acronym that stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
Is it only a model to follow and keep in mind or a formula replicable on different marketing media?
The basis of AIDA is to show the sequence of states or phases you go through before, for example, buying .
Once the process is integrated into your mindset as a marketer, you can effectively use it as a formula or a template to write an advertisement, an email, an introduction, a landing page, or even a sales page!
I, therefore, suggest that you examine in detail how the AIDA method works.
We will see later in this article how to use it in practice.
Capturing the person's attention is the starting point!
You know that our attention span is extremely low today (less than 9 seconds).
According to some recent studies, people now frequently lose concentration after 8 seconds
With all the distractions that co-exist in a digital environment like the Internet or social media, capturing attention is a true challenge.
This is a challenge that you will have to face, otherwise, your whole marketing message will be neglected.
There are different ways to get attention on the Internet. I can recall the below examples :
You notice that I have quoted both textual and visual elements.
Attention is captured by these 2 types of content.
Take this ad for example.
Look at the image first and then read the text.
I have seen the video ad and the emotional force is significant.
It makes a more true health issue, connecting a viewer’s emotions to the product promoted. look at the engagement. !
This ad addresses a serious health issue: poor posture
a majority suffers from it.
Yes. Poor posture can create both physical and psychic stress.
Poor posture impairs your body's natural alignment, which sets physical pressure on the body and produces soreness and discomfort.
"Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad"
-Howard Luck Gossage
Watch this advertisement now.
It’s rather difficult not to notice this imposing ad picture. No comment.
If you succeed in getting your target audience's attention with attention-grabbing content, you will have a chance that they will be interested in what your business is doing.
Once you've got the consumer's attention, you have to maintain it.
This is trickier than the initial step if your product or service is not essentially engaging.
The best advertisement specialists get a bold subject across by addressing the information in a form that is engaging, memorable, or curious.
Keeping the consumer's interest is a critical challenge .
The worst option is to drill the reader with pages of large text.
Keep it clear, simple to read and break up the info with active subheads and engaging illustrations.
Slack does this very well on the home page of their site.
The brand captures your attention with this bold statement: “Slack brings the team together, wherever you are "
Another example, let’s see this ad by Adidas.
Observe the caption ‘Every team needs the spark’.
Lionel Messi’s image originally draws the consumer interest, the intended readers being sports (football) enthusiasts.
The divergent colors of the shoe and matching title communicate that it’s a shoe advertisement.
At this point, significant interest has been created and the user has most likely seen the characteristics of the shoe.
Back to Slack example.
If you decide to find out more by clicking ''read more'', Slack reveals the value of their ''communication" tool:
''Stay productive and aligned with your team''
''Connect with everyone, even when they’re not in the same room''
You notice that this is not when you "sell" your offer.
On the contrary, you educate your prospects on the interest of your products / services and in what they are worth to be considered by your potential customers.
Your headlines are usually the initial element of your marketing and promotion copy that your audience will notice. If your headlines aren’t efficient, your marketing attempts could fall and won't stand.
At this point, your target prospects know why they should continue to listen to you, but they don't have a good reason to buy or talk to you yet.
They are just interested, but it doesn't go any further than that.
This is why you must now build a desire for your offer.
This is where you are going to have to take out your seller dress and put together an irresistible proposition.
So you will start by talking about your offer, what it contains (features) and what it brings to your ideal customer (benefits).
In other words, you show your prospect how your offer provides a credible solution to their problem. You will use both rational and emotional arguments.
And that works through textual content, illustrations, explanatory videos, or case studies.
How you sell your offer will also depend on the medium/channel.
For example, if you write an email, you will rather use bulleted lists to communicate the benefits of your offer.
In case you write a sales page, you will preferably format the profits of your offer with a title, a subtitle, and an image.
( Useful : Henneke in her article shows a great Trick to Turn Features Into Benefits)
For example, Huawei Mate30's campaign, which highlights the fact that their mobile is more secured and speedy than those of the competitors.
A great idea of increasing the reader's desire for your offering is to connect features and benefits. The important features of your product have been outlined to provide a particular benefit to segments of your target market.
Another example is how Guerlain does it.
It feeds consumers’ desires about a product and gives guidance for that. It contains a lot of information on skincare and beauty hints.
A lady will be more satisfied since she would know exactly how enough to apply and how to practice it.
It can be done also by combining curiosity and benefits.
Ramit Sethi has done well in his course: Personal Finance ( click the link if you wanna learn more).
Marketers also use social proof to induce desire. We all know how the opinions and behavior of our peers influence our choices.
Testimonials, case studies, reviews, and large numbers are therefore important regardless of the marketing medium.
We recommend that you place your testimonials before and after the call to action.
Don't be afraid to fill out your customer testimonial pages.
Bluebeam, a software organization that creates tools for PDF docs and digital workflow, brings on together a dedicated page of their site (the “customers” page) with several testimonial and case studies.
If you have understood what your ideal customer wants and how to communicate the value of your offer, they will finally be ready to buy or contact you.
A/B Test Your Promotional EmailsThis method can be applied on subject lines , headlines , opening paragraphs, bodies, pictures, and calls-to-action . The more components you experiment, the more powerful your emails will be .
Once you have successfully created the desire, the final step in the AIDA model is to persuade the person that they should act now.
Now is the time to take your call to action.
Depending on the marketing medium you are using, the call to action will take the form of a clickable link, a button, a telephone number or a simple, so-called firm request.
Be specific and ask your prospects to :
Do not be obscure and ask firmly what you want.
It is also at this stage that you will reveal your price and possibly create a sense of urgency by mentioning that your offer has a deadline or is limited in number.
I encourage you to insert your call to action several times in your advertising, email, or web page!
Eventually, these actions should expectedly drive to the purchase of the product/service. Consequently, products or brands that gained it to this step are part of the ‘ purchase set ‘.
Consumer Decision Making Proces: Awareness set, Consideration set and Purchase set example for laptop and computer brands
If you've read this far, you now know what the AIDA model is and how to use it as a formula for writing a marketing message.
So I just have to show you some concrete examples to apply the AIDA model in your ads, emails, sales pages and landing pages!
When you understand properly the power of the AIDA formula, and you start working on details like your calls-to-action, subject lines, body copy, etc, you’ll soon get this formula work for you.
At the beginning of this article, I explained to you that the AIDA method was one of the first ways of writing sales letters or advertisements.
Even now today, AIDA can still be found in advertisements, especially those on Facebook or Instagram.
Take this Visa ad and quickly analyze it.
The advertising images attract attention.
We slightly see a credit card alongside a big image of Pizza Hut. It’s a little surprising.
The first line of the copy is formidable.
It attracts attention from the first question: "on Sunday get 50% Off "
For most of us, the answer is a big YES 😉 for the 50% Off.
The following shows the power of Visa:
Visa, everywhere you want to be.
But where is the desire hidden?
In this ad copy, Visa has united with Pizza Hut to provide some generous discounts.
This announcement, clearly, offers 50% off your following purchase when you use your Visa card at the checkout
Particularly if you haven’t eaten lately, the fresh image of the pizza is the initial thing to grasp your attention.
The different frame displays a phone among the Pizza Hut phone app — beautiful context of use.
You can simply imagine yourself using the app to place your fingers on the pizza on the left side.
Visa knows what you want and what is said in this ad naturally makes you want to try one pizza.
You also notice that 19million people already liked it. One way to tell yourself that you have every interest in doing the same.
Too bad that that the CTA is not bold and clear enough, there are rare clickable links on the page that could help as conversion flows.
If you are curious, this is the landing page of that offer 🙂
A landing page is a page that has the sole purpose of collecting your contact information. The landing page therefore contains a form for collecting this precious information.
In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page", "static page", or a "destination page", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result, marketing promotion, marketing email, or an online advertisement.wikipedia
Marketers generally offer bait in exchange for contact information. Here are some common examples:
