The AIDA Message
Learn to create compelling promotions that consistently get results.
Once you have gathered all the background information, then it comes down to putting pen to paper (or fingers to the keyboard) and producing a message that will get your prospects to take action. The AIDA principle is a way of creating successful, alluring and triumphant messages that get actioned. Use this form of copywriting to develop compelling and powerful promotions that have the highest potential to get results.
This AIDA format can be used in all forms of advertising such as website pages, brochures, copywriting, advertisements, power point presentations, business cards and any other promotion campaign.
The AIDA format stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Call to Action.
Attention
The title needs to attract attention and curiosity. It should be short and meaningful. Startling statistics, news and educational material are all ways to make your title pop off the page and grab their Attention.
Interest
What are the features, advantages and benefits? Use key words and facts that will create enough interest in your offering from your prospects to encourage them to read on. You only have eight seconds to capture your prospects interests. Ensure the material or story emphasises self-interest from their perspective, or the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) factor, as all individuals are motivated by self-interest. This helps to create a selfish reason for them to continue; whetting their appetite so they want more.
Desire
In the body of the message create a compelling desire by; convince your prospect that they need and want what you have. Help them to visualise the benefits of your service. Drive desire through methods such as, limiting the supply available, time sensitive measures, showing proof and testimonials. In short, paint the picture, solve the problems, and create the desire.
Action
Once desire is created, the prospect needs to know ‘what to do next,’ such as how to sign up, or contact you. Marketing guru Jay Abraham believes “People are silently begging to be led.” Therefore, make it easy for them. There needs to be one clear and direct action you want the prospect to focus on. Therefore, you are creating a specific call to act. Ensure this includes credibility and price justification.
Increase your marketing effectiveness through the AIDA method as this technique has proved its effectiveness time and time again for many years in getting into the buying psychology of people.
By ensuring you have done the groundwork of knowing your market, how they think, why they act, what is unique about you and what drives them to action, you are then on your journey on becoming an effective marketer.
Attention Grabber with Stunning Headlines
Headlines are one of your biggest weapons to draw attention to your message. Make sure your headline is all about what the target market wants to hear and not about what you want to achieve.
Too often a company’s logo is the front feature of the message and logos are not headline grabbers. The only person interested in your logo is you.
Whereas a headline is something every single one of your target markets will be interested in. Whatever you’re writing, you’ve got to have a headline.
A headline’s objective is to do one thing only – create attention and stop your prospect in their tracks, locked in on your message. You only have on average 1.5 seconds to catch their attention, so you need to make it good.
According to master copywriter David Ogilvy:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
Don’t try and reinvent the wheel, the best way to come up with fantastic headlines is to adopt what already works and adapt it to your own business.
Here are a couple of headings that work to get the prospect to want to read on:
- Important news for ………
- Don’t refer any of your patients anywhere until you have read this … (for referrers)
Do you see how powerful this is? All you have to do is apply it to your own business and you could easily double or even triple your effectiveness!
How about these headlines:
- Do you feel that there are better options out there?
- Have you ever thought about ……….
These particular headlines work on curiosity. It gets the reader to say to themself, “maybe I’d better read on and find out.” The main thing you really want your headline to do is get your reader to be interested enough to see what else you have to say and read on.
Make an impact! Remember the old saying ‘first impressions last’? Well that saying still applies today.
We are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages each day, therefore, it is critical to stand out and grab your prospects attention. Your headline should scream out, read on, once you have achieved this you’ll be more than halfway to having an effective campaign that penetrates deep into your target market.
It follows that unless your headline sells your product or service, you have wasted 90% of your money.
Create ‘Interest’ to keep them reading.
Your next job is to keep your prospect reading. Don’t bore your prospect, understand that they are not interested in reading your content, your prospect is interested in the results that you are promising. Therefore, don’t give your prospect any reason to stop! You need to keep tickling your prospects senses and stirring their emotions until the only way they will be satisfied is through purchasing your service or product.
Ways to ensure you keep your prospect’s attention are to…
- Write in a conversational way, and keeping sentencing simple
- Be sincere
- Be energized while you write, know your best time for writing
- Start with a bang! Lead with the biggest incentive/headline to grab their attention and interest.
- Slang that fits your market often helps to relate
- Try subheadings
- Use smooth transitions and short sentences that take you from one paragraph to the next.
Create a story that sells
All great sales letters are stories. Stories cut through your prospect’s BS-detector and get them wanting to know more. Stories help to bring in all the emotional triggers. An incredibly effective way of creating a story for your product is through using previous client’s testimonies. “People love to see other people getting results they want.”
Create Trust
One of the biggest challenges you need to overcome in order to create more long-term users of your service is getting people to trust what you say.
‘Lack of trust’ is a big problem in advertising, especially in the health services, professional services and products sectors, with a significant number of claims, which are not evidence-based, marketed by people with questionable character.’ It’s not surprising that many people are hesitant to change a purchasing habit that they are comfortable with, even if they know there are better options available. In the media, we often see people who get ripped off by businesses. It might only be one in a thousand businesses in that particular industry, but of course it’s that one that will always get the headlines. When the general public is exposed to this, they make a broad judgement and become wary of every business associated with that industry.
So, it’s not enough to just tell people that you have this fantastic, well-respected reputation and service that will be of significant benefit to them; you need to go much further these days. Aim to exceed their expectations in every aspect of your contact.
Here are two powerful tips that will have more people trusting what you say.
- People believe more of what other people say about you…than what you say about you. Use client testimonies especially if they are known to be of trustworthy character.
- Use data that backs up your marketing focus from research articles or papers. Show graphs or tables to reinforce a point.
Ask for Action
You must tell your prospects what to do. Don’t confuse them. You need to take your prospect by the hand and tell them exactly what you want them with do. This is critical and ensures that once you have grabbed their interest and built up a desire for your service, or product, they will then follow through with the referral/visit/purchase. Therefore, you should ask yourself: “Have I presented a call for action in a gripping and convincing way and explained simply what I want my prospect to do?”
Additional Training
This has been a short summary of a very in-depth subject which is a game changer. For many people it is often difficult to get their heads around this shift in focus. To understand this in more depth go to https://physiobusinessgrowth.com/resources/. Here you will find our free marketing video training and you can download the complementary book – “Marketing in the Heartbeat of Your Business” by John Davie.