A.I.D.A.
Most marketing people know this acronym, a few even use it but most companies seem to have forgotten the purpose of advertising and marketing materials. Everything you do to draw attention to your products and services should follow AIDA.
Attention | Interest | Desire | Action
A – Get people’s attention within the first few seconds or they will skim on to something else and your chance is gone. Usually your headline will be the attention getter but it all depends on the situation. If you are just placing a business card in the local store then you should:
- Look at the business card that are already there and see which ones, if any, stand out and why. Decide how your own can stand out especially from those offers similar services to your own.
- Take one of each of the cards from your competitors, they are the ones you have to work against. Once you put your own card there it has to convince people to pick it up in preference to all those others
The same thing works for directory entries, if you take a place in the yellow pages or similar books, then make sure you have looked at the page you are going to appear on, who else is there and what have other companies done to stand out from the rest.
The purpose of your Attention getter is to draw the right people, potential buyers, into reading the first line or two of your advert. You will have seen many advertisements that use a powerful image to draw you in, the problem is that most people spend their allotted attention span on the picture and never make it to the text so be very careful with images of this kind.
Most attention getters are headlines and this is the most dangerous ground you will have to walk. You can always write a sensational headline that will draw people in but, you have to first consider your prospective customer.
- Who buys your stuff?
- Is there a typical buyer you can profile, there is a whole section on this!
- What is the most common reason they buy?
- What need are they fulfilling?
Your headline must draw in the right people so that they can then move on to the line or two of text that will Interest them.
If you decide to use pay-per-click sponsored advertising you will have to get very good at only attracting the right audience or you will be paying a fortune for people who click your advert but have little or no desire to buy.
I – generate Interest in what you have to offer. Once you have grabbed their attention you have to generate sufficient interest to keep them reading and you only have one or two lines in which to do this. To understand what that interest might be you have to step back from being the subject expert you are and put yourself into the shoes of your potential customer, but that is the subject of another quick win.
In brief, you have to consider why the customer will buy your product. In your first line of copy you will highlight how you can solve that need so well that they just have to read on.
People buy clothes pegs to keep washing on the line right. Why are they buying clothes pegs? Don’t they have some already?
- Their old ones have broken
- Their old ones are too flimsy
- They keep falling into the grass and being eaten by the lawn mower
So your interest line would promise a solution to one or more of these problems.
“A peg for life in colours your husband won't mistake for grass.”
OK, so pegs isn’t my area of expertise but you get the idea, hopefully.
D – create desire for your solution to their problem. Read that again, your solution to their problem, that is where all the magic lies. The desire you create will be for the solution to their problem which you then make synonymous with your product.
People’s needs are not to be found in your list of product features. They are not the service offering you are so proud of. What they are will vary according to the type of offering you have and only you can discover that. Start by asking existing customers what drove them to buy from you. If they start by saying that you had the best price then push beyond that, it is rarely all about price. You need to drill down to the fundamental needs that your product solved for your customers and then you need to put those into your copy and tell people how you solve them and how they will benefit from that.
A – Action, there is no point building up all this momentum if you don’t finish by asking for the sale. Always finish with a challenge; call this number, visit this web page, whatever you need them to do. Do not assume they will know what to do, make it really really obvious. Strangely enough this is the bit so many companies forget; they make the most of the first three steps and then have an almost subliminal message at the end in the hope that people will deduce their next move.
Ideally your call to action will include a deadline, a time limited offer so they have to act quickly before they drift off and forget your existence. If you have young children you will know how short their attention span can be. Web visitors make your kids look positively patient, really.