Create Attention, interest, desire, action - in your advertising

Is your current marketing grabbing the attention of your customers??

The AIDA model for marketing communication is simple and easy to remember! It is widely recognised as is an effective tool to guide you when creating any type of promotional material.

AIDA stands for: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – the four areas that any promotional material should address. 

When writing your copy, use a separate paragraph for each section, and keep it concise! The aim isn’t to tell the reader everything about your company and products – this is likely to bore them, and besides, you want to leave some intrigue so that they contact you to find out more!

Attention
People are bombarded with marketing messages every day, and anything that you produce will be competing with thousands of other messages for attention. Remember to tell your client about the three second rule and explain the need to grab their attention quickly!
The Attention section should be restricted to a single sentence, usually displayed as an eye-catching headline. The two most powerful attention-grabbing words are new and free – you should aim to get one (or even both!) of these into your headline.

Interest
Now that you’ve got their attention, you need to keep them interested, so that they will carry on reading! This section should be just two sentences, each one describing a different benefit of your product/service.
Don’t forget that benefits should always relate to your client’s needs or wants – don’t just list the features of your product! For example, the guaranteed turnaround time that we offer is just a feature, but the likely benefit is that we can meet peoples’ deadlines and offer peace of mind. If you’re not sure whether something is a feature or a benefit, a good test is to ask – could the reader ask “so what?” in response?

Desire
This is where you make them really want your product! That’s why we save the top benefit for this stage – we have got them interested enough to keep reading, now we hit them with a reason why they just have to have your product! Again, make sure it is expressed as a benefit rather than a feature, and keep it to just one sentence.

Action
Now that we’ve stimulated desire, we must tell them what to do next! Do they need to phone someone, visit a website, call into a branch, fax a form back? Whatever response mechanisms you choose, the action section should tell the reader what to do as clearly as possible, in just one sentence. You don’t need to include all response mechanisms in your call to action - additional contact details can be given elsewhere if required.