Secrets Of The Aida Model Of Marketing

There's no doubt at all - and this is evidenced by the sheer number of top marketers who use it - the AIDA model of marketing is perhaps the simplest yet the most powerful you can put to work for you in your business.

It's been around for perhaps as long as men and women have been marketing their businesses with the written word, and maybe even longer than that - because it's just as relevant to a salesman's presentation as it is to a sales letter, an ad or a web-page.

AIDA comes from the first letter of the four words describing the sales process: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.

For you to make the sale you've got to get all four present and correct AND in the correct order.

Let's look at the constituent parts one at a time.

Attention.

This is every single direct response marketing piece you put out there MUST have a headline - and no, your logo, business name and something like "We've been in business since 1972" does NOT count as a headline.

Why?

Because no one cares about that stuff.

At the point your reader sees your headline he's not thinking or caring about very much at all, so you have to put something there that's going to sock him between the eyes, drag a HUGE problem in his life that's bubbling away just beneath the surface and make him stop and want to read what you've got to say about it.

So if you're selling, say, fire alarms, a headline about "fire alarms" is not going to be anywhere near as effective as a headline about the horror of your family being burned to death in their beds.

OK, so that's extreme but I'm sure the message is clear, isn't it?

Next, we have...

Interest.

One of the biggest mistakes I see copywriters and business owners make is their first few paragraphs of copy are irrelevant to the headline they've just grabbed the reader's attention with.

This is a mistake, because you have just a few seconds to take the reader's momentary pause to read your headline and get him to read the first few lines of copy because he's INTERESTED in what you have to say.

Thus, as a rule of thumb, your first few lines should build on the promise you've made in the headline. It's a huge mistake to "work up" to some big revelation and save your big guns until last. Once you've got their attention you need to keep slugging away like a boxer with your biggest punches first.

Now...

Desire.

The transition from interest to desire is a straightforward one and is as simple as going from showing them how you understand their problem to showing them exactly how your product or service can remedy it.

And a powerful element of this is proof - the "reason why" they should trust you to solve their problem when perhaps they, and maybe even your competitors have been unable to.

Traditionally testimonials are the great mainstay of this simply because what others say about you is much more believable than what you say about yourself. But it's not the only one - if you get your name in the local press and get your face on TV and your voice on the radio (all of which are much easier than you might imagine) then all of a sudden your percieved value skyrockets and you become a more desirable commodity.

Another way to increase desire is to add an element of exclusivity to your offer - you can limit it by numbers ("available only to the first 37 people who apply"), or by time, ("You must claim your Widget by midnight on Thursday"), or even by some other qualification, ("You must be able to answer 'yes' to these four questions...").

How you do it is less important than you actually DO do it - because we humans desire what we can't have, and scarcity is a very powerful motivator.

And Finally...

Action.

This is where it can fall flat and turn horribly wrong, regardless of how expertly you've handled the previous three areas.

Fact is people are lazy. If you want them to take action, put their hands in their pockets and hand over their money for your products and services, you've not only got to tell them exactly what to do, but you've got to tell them why they need to do it right now, how they have to do it, and what'll happen if they don't!

Don't assume people can or will work this all out for themselves - because even if they're able to, they simply won't bother. All your hard work in fanning the flames of their desire will come to naught if you don't have an explicit and unambiguous call to action ("Here's what to do right now while you're thinking about it and before anything else comes up to distract you...").

And remember: the more ways you give them to respond, the more responses you're going to get (e.g. phone, email, website, fax and so on).

To Sum Up

The AIDA model is one of the oldest persuasion models around - and the reason it's been around for so long is that it actually brings home the bacon - it works, in other words. Take your lead from the most successful markters and copywriters who are still using it today and making HUGE profits doing so.

Study it, break it down and rebuild it, and start "playing" with it... and I guarantee you'll reap the benefits for many years to come.