subject: The AIDA Model of Advertising for Beginners [print this page] The AIDA Model of Advertising for Beginners
The AIDA model of advertising is undoubtedly the simplest yet most powerful formula you'll ever find for writing ads. An acronym made from the words Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action, you pronounce it 'Ada'.And if you follow the AIDA model of advertising in every ad, email, letter or online sales page you write, you are going to see a dramatic increase in your sales. Just bear in mind here when I say 'ad', I mean any marketing or sales copy you write.Attention: the first thing your copy needs to do is grab the reader's attention. You achieve this with your headline. There's no point in starting your ad with your logo and your name. No-one cares. Readers are busy people. They're not interested in you or your ad. You've got to do something pretty startling to divert their attention from the flow of the newspaper or magazine and into your ad.So, a typical headline might be, "Is Your Child's Life Worth The Price Of A Round Of Drinks?"That's going to get people's attention a hell of a lot faster than a dorky logo and the heading "McCulloch's Fire Alarms", isn't it? I don't sell fire alarms, but if I did, and I knew nothing about writing ads, then that's almost certainly what my ads would look like, right?So your headline should immediately catch your readers' attention and offer a clear benefit for reading the rest of the copy. In fact, the very purpose - and your headline's job is to stop the reader dead in his or her tracks and grab their attention sufficiently to get them to read the first line of the copy.The headline should be about your readers - not about you. If your headline has the name of your business in it, you are losing out.Interest: once you've grabbed their attention and got their eyeballs on your ad, then you've got to get them actually interested in what you're offering.And because the next thing the reader sees after reading your headline is the first line of your copy, this first line has to be strong enough, and compelling enough to get them to want to read the next line.Imagine McCulloch's fire alarms again. Imagine instead of telling them I'd been selling fire alarms for 137 years and I was the biggest stockist of fire alarms in West Cork, I said this: Did you know 81% of all fires in the home result in death or serious injury? And over half of these are children? And yet, were you aware how quickly and easily YOU can eliminate this danger with one easy-to-install fire alarm... which costs less than a round of drinks to buy, and under 9 minutes to fit, even if you're a 'DIY dummy?' THAT is going to be interesting to most people with kids. You can see that, can't you?Desire: there's huge difference between being interested in something and desiring it. You need to convert your reader's interest into a strong desire for what you're offering. That's why most copy should be long, much longer than you think.Copywriting legend Joe Sugarman often talks about what he calls the "greased slide" to the sale. Your copy tells your story. It begins with the headline and the first line of the copy... and then constantly moves the reader forward towards the sale.Action: guess what? Not only are your readers not interested in you, your products and services or, indeed your entire business beyond what you can do for them they're lazy as hell, too.So, you need to tell them in language even a young child would understand what you want them to do, why they need to do it, and what's going to happen when they've done it. If you want to maximise your sales, you need to tell them why they should do it right NOW, too, rather than leave it to them to make their own minds up (because then they probably won't do it at all).As an example from the real world is my wife's blog. She noticed her signups were OK, but about 20% of people were not confirming their email address for the double opt-in. So I changed the page for her so it told the readers exactly what to do next, and even included an image of the link they'd have to click in the confirmation email. I wrote it so even my old dog could do it.And the result?Non-confirmations have dropped to virtually zero.So: tell them what to do, because if you don't... they like as not won't bother.If you diligently apply the principles I've outlined above to all your ads, then I promise you'll see a huge increase in your results. No, not every ad is going to be a runaway success but follow the principles and you WILL get there, I promise.
