Being an online business, of course you’d want to engage your users and customers and essentially have them eating out of your hand (without them even knowing it).
As you can expect, you’re not the first person to want this, and there’s a tonne of opinions on the web on how to do this, but now and then you’ll come across tried and true methodologies.
AIDA is one of them.
First off, what is AIDA. AIDA is an acronym that has been used in marketing and advertising since the 19th century that stands for:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
You can think of this kind of like a funnel, and depending on how your site is setup you can even use these as steps in a measurable funnel for a goal in google analytics or whatever your chosen analytics package is.
Attention
First of all, you need to get your advertisement (whether that be your traditional banner ad, or your website, or other medium) in front of your potential customer. There’s now a myriad of ways you can do this, with fairly precise targeting. Google Adwords and Facebook ads both provide tools for you to really hone in on who sees your ad.
Interest
The content you’ve now got in front of your potential customer needs to pique their interest. You need to capture and intrigue them to want to learn more about what you’re tempting them with. You can experiment with this, being cryptic can often work better than spelling everything out for people. If they ‘think’ they know what you’re offering when you spell things out for them, but they get it wrong… bad luck. You’ve lost them. However if they ‘think’ they know what you’re offering from your cryptic message, they are more likely to follow the link through to learn more on your website, where you can present them with more information to clarify everything.
Desire
This is a deep seeded feeling we get when we just have to have something. Often it’s because it’s what the cool kids are doing, or that it’s something that’s going to justify our social status. If you can get your marketing material to build a desire for your product, and make the customer feel that they just have to have it to be able to self gratify and validate themselves or their company, then you’re on the home stretch.
Action
If you’ve nailed the first three sections, this one should be the easiest part, however it still needs it’s own attention to detail. Any action your customer takes, they need to be able to justify to themselves or potentially to their boss. So you need to make sure the actions you are asking them to take, justify the effort required, and have exceeding rewards.
If you can nail the AIDA approach, there’s no reason conversion rates shouldn’t sky rocket.