What does AIDA mean?
AIDA stands for:
- (A) Attention (What the heck is this?, let me just check it out)
- (I) Interest (Oh ok, I see what this is doing! I like to see more)
- (D) Decision (I think I want to get this, where is the buy button?)
- (A) Action (Call to action is presented)
This is the proven copywriting framework to turn a stranger into a paying customer. Many website content follow this strategy to grow their online businesses.
The AIDA framework model is a way to understand how people decide whether or not to buy something. The four stages are Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action (AIDA). It's essentially a marketing funnel to create content that will make people pay attention to your product or service, want it, and then take action to buy it.
Brands or niche businesses use the AIDA model to let people move through each stage of the marketing funnel from not knowing to take the desired action. This can lead to people subscribing to something, try something for free, buy something, download something...etc
At the end of the process, the funnel uses content and copywriting elements to narrow down to only people who are interested.
How To Apply AIDA framework To Your Website Content
Applying AIDA is an over arching process that takes control over all the visitors that come to your website. The goals is to organize your content on the website in different stages and interlink them together and make the visitor journey seamlessly.
Carefully examine every page and understand their purposes, and display relevant banner ads, internal links and recommended articles to move visitors down the funnel.
Attention Stage
Social Media Awareness Reach
Brands use many affiliates to promote their products and services. They use short videos, pictures, lifestyle vlogs, blogs, podcasts, movies to do it.
Pictures and videos on social media are very powerful at reaching potential customers simply by visually showing a product directly or indirectly.
Here are how people discover the product:
- Scrolling through social media and something catches their eyes
- Someone indirectly showed a product in a video, now the visitor want to know the name of that product
- Indirect use of a product sparks someone's imagination to use it for something else
- Anticipative marketing to plan seeds into people about a product, with the idea that one day, they will need it, and they will remember to return to the brands they grow up seeing
Categorize Search Engine Keywords First
Each targeted keywords will draw different visitors at different stage into the funnel.
Instead of blindly researching keywords or find keywords as they appear. What a site owner can do is focusing on a product and service, then back track the keywords people are using to find it.
Here are the keyword categories that go with the AIDA framework
Attention
- What is XYZ
- How to use XYZ without XYZ
- How to bend XYZ without using the XYZ tool
- Best ways to edit XYZ file without XYZ
Interest
- 10 Ways To Use Product XYZ
- XYZ was made using product ABC
- 5 ways product XYZ can be used for ABC
Decision
- Product A vs Product B
- Pros and cons of product XYZ
- Product A return policy
- Product A warranty
- Product A reviews
- Product A deals
- Product A coupon codes
Action
- Product XYZ cost
- Buy Product XYZ
- Where to buy product XYZ
For example:
The keyword "how to remove grammar errors in word" is an informational phrase generally searched by:
- New content writers who may not know about Grammarly
- Someone who wants to speed up proofreading but don't want to do it manually
The content for "how to remove grammar errors in word" is written in a way to educate people on how to remove grammar errors, and then move the visitor to the interest stage, by showing them the power of the Grammarly software.
At this stage, the visitor went from only knowing how to search "how to remove grammar errors in word", to discovering the product "Grammarly". In another word, people who can directly search for Grammarly is also a experience group of target audience.
This is the most simple example where we demonstrate moving a visitor from Unaware to Interested.
Interest Stage
Following the example above for the grammar checker. At the interest stage, the content about Grammarly has to show all the relevant features to help guide the first time visitor to be interested.
This can be done with short videos, blogs and tutorials.
Make it helpful and get to the point, so the visitor fully understands what the tool can do for them, and they will typically go like this in their mind:
"Oh! I see what this is! I didn't know this software even existed, wow! this is cool. Let me see more"
Now the visitor has went from knowing nothing, to getting ready to subscribe to the Grammarly software.
Keep in mind, the visitor can also hop off your content, and check out other people's content on Grammarly and maybe influenced by better content. This is where placing relevant internal links on your website is so critical to keep the visitors on your funnel, by making it easy to move to the next stage.
Decision Stage
Once the visitor is fully sold on the idea of using a grammar checker software, then the AIDA framework draws the visitor usually in the direction of either comparing similar products, comparing prices, or simply just end up using the product.
At the decision stage, website pages such as product comparison and pricing pages that usually aren't found by new people, are now viewed by people who have discovered the value of using Grammarly.
This is where copywriting elements come into play to:
- Provide emotional push to convert people on the fence buying
- Address 1-2 major things people care about
- Address common concerns people may have before they even ask
- Address benefits in an logical and irrefusable ways
- Provide testimonial and review content
- Provide review content
Action Stage
Action stage is simply getting people to take action by providing a clear call to action
- Download
- Watch
- Buy
- Subscribe
- Sign up
- Click to get something free
AIDA Drawbacks
A customer's journey isn't always linear
AIDA is a logical way to lead people inside a marketing funnel. But not all people make decisions in the same way. Some people may enter your funnel at different stages, and some people will contemplate at a particular stage for a long time before they move on.
Some never come back. Some will come back in a few months or even years to complete the buying process.
Some people might get interested in a product but then choose a different one. Some are interested by weird things the business may never fully understand.
They might only come back to the original product if the other one does not work well. Other people might want a product anyway without being sold. They will then take action to find it.
People have different interests, AIDA isn't always logical
People have weird interests in things and there are multiple touch points people go through before the final purchase. Sometimes people just like something without the need to understand how something works logically.
Some people who may use the product for something completely different than what it was recommended for.
Some people may not be influenced by your content now, but something can happen in their lives, then they change, and ultimately change how they consume your content the second time around.
Some people can't be easily persuaded by the your content alone, but they can be convinced right away by someone else's content.