So you’ve never heard of the AIDA formula? Don’t worry, this article will explain to you what the AIDA formula is, how to apply it and show you an example of the AIDA formula in practice.
Most commonly used in the advertising and marketing industry, the AIDA formula stands for:
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
The AIDA formula highlights the number of steps needed to shift a customer from understanding to the precise action that leads to a conversion. The AIDA formula can be applied to different types of marketing such as paid ads, email marketing, radio ads, television commercials.
Why is the AIDA formula so important?
Before you can use the AIDA formula. You must have an in-depth understanding of the target audience and prospect. Only once you completely understand the demographics, psychographics, problems and motivations will you be able to create targeted marketing messages that will resonate with them and eventually lead to them buying your product or service.
So let’s get into it.
Awareness
The first step of the formula is raising brand awareness and attracting your target audience’s attention. In order to do this, it is important to conduct thorough market research and develop in-depth buyer personas.
Understanding your target audience’s passions and troubles will enable you to create marketing messages that are specific to them and draw their attention. If you can create messages that catch your audience's attention and inspire them, you'll pique their interest, leading them to learn more about what your company does.
In the awareness stage, ask yourself will make your buyers aware of your product or service? What is your brand awareness campaign? Does your ad call out a specific target audience? For example, for a print advertisement, does the ad have head-turning photography or illustrations? Bold text? Enough white space?
Interest
Attracting a prospect's attention is one challenge, maintaining their interest is another challenge. If you want to keep your prospects interested, you need to give them a reason to care. You can do this by informing prospects that the issue they're experiencing is negatively impacting their lives.
This can be accomplished by storytelling which causes the person to feel like an urgent problem and prompts them to find a solution. The trick to the AIDA Interest stage is making the issue a personal problem and the marketing message feel like it is speaking specifically to the individual prospect.
In the interest stage, ask yourself does your advertisement provide enough information about the product or service? What is the price? Why would someone be interested in this? How can it solve their problem?
Desire
The Desire stage is where you demonstrate to your customers how your products or services will solve their problems.
Here you can describe the characteristics of your product or service as well as all of the associated benefits. Then you can show how the benefits will meet your prospects' needs and solve their problems. You can also utilise social proof such as testimonials and reviews to build desire. This includes before and after photos and videos, customers using your products or services and reviews.
Your target audience should be able to see how your product or service will improve their lives and make the prospects feel the need for the product or service. After you build your prospects’ desire, they are more likely to take the next step and purchase your product or service.
In the desire stage, ask yourself is this product or service desirable? Why would someone want this? Do people have an emotional connection to the product or service?
Action
After you've succeeded in generating interest, the next step is to convince prospects to take action right away. You can prompt your prospects to take action by incorporating a clear and easy call to action (CTA) such as ‘buy now’ and ‘sign up for free’. Marketers often create a sense of urgency by offering limited time offers such as ‘sales ends tonight’ to encourage prospects to act fast. Throwing in freebies and special bonuses is a tactic used to get prospects to take action.
You should make it simple for prospects to take action. Try having a clear CTA button on your product pages and ensure that it is above the fold so that prospects can easily buy without scrolling.
In the action stage, ask yourself how do we get prospects to act fast? Can prospects easily buy the product? Is there a clear CTA button? Is there a sale? Is there a limited time offer? Is there limited stock or availability?
Now Over To You
Using the AIDA formula is extremely effective and will help you improve your marketing strategy and drive significant results within your organisation. Now all you need to do is implement it. Also, be sure to check out our other article on how to build highly converting landing pages.
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