The acronym AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. These are the steps that successful copywriters take to convert a reader into a buyer. You’ll find AIDA in action all over the place – from banner ads to email campaigns, direct mail pieces to web content. When you’re using AIDA in your marketing efforts, you’re following what’s known as a 4-step marketing process – attracting, engaging, convincing, and delighting customers to grow your business.
Attracting (Attract)
In our global, social media-driven world, attracting customers and fans is a lot easier than it seems. With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can put yourself in front of potential customers who could become passionate about your product or service. And did you know that you can use social media to gain brand awareness and make new connections?
It’s important to keep in mind that not all leads are created equal. How you interact with your potential customers on social media will determine whether or not they’re going to become loyal brand advocates who help you sell more product, or whether or not you’re wasting your time.
Interesting (Interest)
Once you’ve attracted a potential audience, the next step is to engage with them. You can do this by sharing useful information about your product or service, hosting a Q&A session, or setting up a blog post to spark interest and incite action.
Sharing interesting, valuable content will engage your audience and make them feel like they’re part of something special. It’ll make them want to know more, and hopefully, make them consider buying your product or service.
Desire (Desired)
Once you’ve sparked your audience’s interest, the final step is to increase their desire to buy your product or service. If you’ve done your job correctly, they’ll be itching to take action and make a purchase as soon as possible. To create desire, you can either ramp up your offers – say, by lowering your price – or you can provide valuable, complimentary product samples or bundled offers. You can also explore more traditional marketing methods like advertising or PR to gain brand awareness and spread the word about your company and its excellent products or services.
Action (Action)
With your target audience interested in your product or service, the final step is to get them to take action. This can be as simple as telling them to click here to purchase your product, or it could be as complex as setting up a complex purchasing sequence that includes buying items from multiple vendors. As a marketer, you’ll be faced with many opportunities to engage your audience and increase brand loyalty – but you must do so responsibly.
With the right approach, you’ll be able to engage your audience and gain a following — even if you’re just getting started. Just be sure to follow these golden rules so you don’t lose your audience — or, worse yet, end up with a bad reputation.
With the above guidelines in mind, let’s examine how you can use copywriting to better engage with your audience and increase your conversion rates.
Step one: Attract
In our digital world, attracting potential customers is as easy as putting yourself in front of their eyes. Thanks to the wonders of email marketing, you can drive traffic to your website via blog articles, social media posts, and more. To attract traffic to your site, use free tools like Google Analytics to see which of your marketing channels are working and which ones need work.
For example, if you’re just getting started and your social media results are underwhelming, try experimenting with other platforms like email or content-marketing campaigns to see which generates the most interest and action.
Step two: Interest
Once you’ve attracted some initial interest in your product or service, you can ramp up the interest level by sharing more useful information about it. Just make sure that you’re only sharing information that’s beneficial and not too much about your product or service. This is a common mistake — especially among newbie marketers who want to get the most leads possible – and it can lead to a bit of a popularity contest.
To engage your audience and encourage them to take further action, post blogs about industry news, case studies, analysis, and how-to’s. Some of the topics that may prove popular include:
- Product reviews
- Comparisons to other products (especially those in the same industry)
- Tips and tricks
- Market trends and changes
- How to increase sales
- And the list goes on
- The above items are just some examples. You get the idea.
When you write for a living, you’ll be presented with many opportunities to review products and services. So, if you’re in the habit of reading consumer reviews, you’ll have ample material to choose from. But, you should only choose material that’s relevant to your target audience. In other words, if your target audience is in the habit of reading reviews, you’ll want to ensure that the reviews you choose are relevant to them.
Step three: Desire
Once you’ve spiked your audience’s interest with some interesting content, you can increase their desire to purchase your product or service by providing them with valuable, complimentary product samples or discounts. To gain trust and make a bigger impact, run a competition where you give away a free product (or one of your best offers) to a randomly selected entrant. You can use this to increase brand awareness and make new connections with your audience. You can also try offering special discounts to frequent buyers or shoppers to encourage them to come back for more. The key is to find a way to provide value without feeling like you’re trying to up-sale – and that requires a bit of creativity.
Step four: Action
The desire phase is all about creating conditions that make it easy for your audience to take action. To that end, you can set up a small piece of exciting content (like a product review or case study) to draw attention to, and then follow it with various calls to action (CTAs).
You might want to try setting up a freebie contest where you give away a brand-new product (or a discount code for one of your products) to a randomly selected entrant. Or, you could run a contest where you give one of your audience members a gift card for a specific store (like Amazon or eBay) and ask them to share their experience with others. You can use the “shares” section of your Facebook page to get the word out about your contest or give-away.
Just remember that the more you can do to increase the value of your free product (or gift card), the more successful you’ll be in your quest to gain action. As a marketer, it’s your job to find a way to provide value to your audience so they’ll feel as though they’re getting something worthwhile – even if it’s just for fun. This will make them more likely to take further action and engage with your content.
Once you’ve mastered steps one through four, you can improve the odds of converting casual viewers into paying customers by taking advantage of the incredible power of video. To create a video to increase brand awareness and interest, simply use a phone or computer to record yourself talking about your product or service. Give it a title that summarizes what it is and why people will want to watch it, and then post it on YouTube or another video-sharing site. As you would with any other content, be sure to pick a niche and audience that will benefit from your video.