Monday, 18 August 2014

Let me introduce you to AIDA

It has been estimated that every single day we are bombarded with between 3000 and 30,000 brand names and ads. They are delivered to us on variety of platforms; billboards, radio, TV, social media and texts, to name just a few. What that means to every business owner is that your marketing message has to work extremely hard to grab our attention.

It is not just advertising messages that have to work hard it is every employment ad you write, every email you send, every presentation you deliver, every newsletter you write…they are all competing for your audience’s attention.

Over the years the world of advertising has become more and more sophisticated and yet despite this the basic principles of producing compelling copy that an audience will not only be attracted too but also feel inclined to take action on, remain the same. Your message needs to grab their 
Attention, Interest them in how your product or service can help solve a problem they are having so build their Desire to contact you by taking some sort of Action to contact you.
As you can already see AIDA is an acronym for
  • Attention/Attract
  • Interest
  • Desire
  • Action
These are the four stages you need to take your audience/target market through if you want them to contact you, buy your product, apply for a vacant position, or get them to read you email.

How you can put AIDA to work in your business.

Whenever you write anything that you want to result in others taking some form of action use AIDA to transform your responses. Here is a brief explanation of each of the elements of AIDA:
  • Attention/attract
With so many messages reaching your target audience you need to do something to grab their attention really quickly. The use of powerful words in the form of a headline is normally the best way to raise people’s attention. Consider when you are flicking through a magazine or newspaper what is it that normally pulls you in? In most cases, it is the story headline or a picture.

It has been estimated than 5 times more people read the headline than read the body copy.

With that in mind you need to invest some time writing compelling headlines that will perk your reader’s interest. For instance:  an email subject line of Attend this Seminar will probably get a lot less opens than: By Attending this seminar you will transform your business results. Guaranteed!
  • Interest
Once your headline has had the desired effect you now want to engage them so that they feel compelled to read on. Focus on your readers needs by making it easy for them to pick out any relevant messages quickly. A way of achieving this is the use of subheadings and bullet points to break the text up so that your points stand out.
  • Desire
The aim here is to help them understand how what you are offering will meet their wants and needs. This is where you engage them on an emotional level sell the sizzle and not the steak. Henry Ford once said “If I ask people what they want they will tell me they want a faster horse” his next question will then be “What does a faster horse give them” in other words what are the benefits to them. Your readers are tuned into WIIFM (what’s in it for me) so the focus here should be on the benefits to your reader and not the features of your product or service.
  • Action
In the planning stage a question you should be asking is what do I want people to do as a result of reading this piece? It could be visit your web site, buy a product, watch a video, sign up for a newsletter or phone now for your FREE financial healthcheck (The word FREE is one of the most powerful words in advertising). The key thing is to give them something to do because with so much information coming at them on a daily basis, they will quickly forget about your message.

Using AIDA could be one of the most important strategies your business can use to help it grow. It will ensure your message gets read more often keeps your readers and prospects hooked and drives them to take some kind of action.



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