The AIDA Model Explained with Examples

Key Takeaways

hello and welcome to today's lesson where we're looking at the Ada model we're going to show you exactly how the model Works walk through a couple of real life examples and discuss the pros and cons of the model so at the end of this video you'll have everything you need to use the Ada model for yourself and improve your own marketing Communications so the first thing you need to know about the model is it's one of the oldest marketing models in existence having been created in 1898 by Elias Saint Elmo Lewis an American advertising Advocate who wrote prolifically about how advertising could be used to educate the public now despite its age the Ada model is still widely used in everything from direct response newspaper campaigns to digital marketing campaigns so let's jump in and take a look the model consists of four linear steps a prospect goes through when deciding to buy your product the steps are attention so here your prospect also known as your potential customer becomes aware of the existence of your product or service for the very first time the next step is interest where your prospect becomes interested in learning more about your product or service the next step is desire where your prospect develops a hankering or a preference to purchase your product and finally the action step where your prospect forms an intent to purchase the product shops around and then begins a trial or makes a purchase now the model describes how one person moves through it but it's also useful to think about how many people might move through it as a set of prospects move from one step to another within the model the total number of prospects decreases so a relatively large group of prospects become aware of your product through advertising and a subset of those move to the interest step and then a subset of those move to the desire step and finally an even smaller subset move to the action or purchase step so you can see in this example we started off with 10 000 people becoming aware of us through advertising and we finally end up with just 10 people taking action now the model is best used to create or review a marketing campaign it isn't really suited to situations where you want to check the effectiveness of a single element or single creative within a campaign so let's look at the critical questions you should be asking yourself during each stage of the model so in the first step of the model attention the critical question you need to answer is how will you make potential buyers aware of your product or service you can do this in many ways including attending trade shows radio advertising television advertising online display advertising and content Marketing in the second step of the model interest the critical question you need to answer is how will you make potential buyers interested your goal in this step is to establish trust and engage your prospects so they're interested in moving to the next step two ways to do this include providing your prospects with information or maybe statistics they find useful or helping them to solve a problem they're likely to be having right now now the higher the quality of the information you provide in this step and the more it helps them the more likely they are to move to the next step and in that step the critical question you need to answer is how will you make prospects see your product or service as desirable some techniques you can use here are using testimonials to show how others love using your product showing case studies to demonstrate how others benefited from using your product offering product demos to highlight the benefits of your product or displaying product comparison tables that illustrate why your product is better than your competitors the better you are at creating desire the more prospects will move to the final step of the model and in that final step the action step the critical question you need to answer is how will you call prospects to action again multiple mechanisms exist to do this including free trials special offers consultations and face-to-face demos so some tips for using the model before you rush into using it it's important to take the time to create your customer Avatar also known as your buyer Persona which is a representation of your perfect customer or your ideal customer now doing this will help you target your advertising more precisely engaging the right type of prospect for your business and your product and ultimately that's going to save you marketing dollars now the other tip is that once you've used the Ada model to determine your marketing Communications combine it with a B testing to improve your return on investment at each level of the funnel now before we look at a couple of examples I've put together an ADA template that you can use if you'd like to craft your own marketing Communications you can download it by following the link below this video okay so let's look at some examples of using the model in real life so for this example imagine you are a realtor or estate agent who wants to sell more houses in your your area how can you do this using the Ada model well one way could be to use a flyer that you post through the mailboxes of your best potential customers and that's going to make prospects aware of your business and you decide to remain top of mind you're going to repeat this every month now to get prospects interested in what you offer your flyer shows prospects images of other properties you've sold in the area and the amount for which they've sold you use the text these houses have recently sold in your area and by doing that it's going to get people interested in how their house might compare price wise to the ones they see in your flyer to create desire you add the text would you like to know what your house is worth in today's hot Market and finally to get them to take action you add the text call us today for a free no obligation Market appraisal of your home now for our second example I want you to imagine you run an online store selling hiking backpacks direct to Consumers how might you go about increasing your sales using the Ada model well one possible way is shown here to make prospects aware of your backpacks you could decide to use Facebook display advertising to Target people interested in the outdoors to capture interest your ad could show a video of your backpack under a shower to demonstrate its waterproof capabilities you could also include the text click here to learn why our backpacks are the toughest on the market which gives them a mechanism to satisfy the interest you've created now when they click that link they're then taken to a fact sheet showing them why your product is the best on the market and finally that page is also going to show them a call to action to buy now but if they don't buy immediately and they leave your website you'll use retargeting to show them more ads calling them to action again there are several advantages and disadvantages associated with the Ada model in terms of advantages then it's easy to understand and use the Simplicity and focus on human nature means it's still in use today after more than 100 years secondly instead of focusing on product features the model helps marketers focus on the needs of their customers in terms of disadvantages then as humans we don't always take action linearly so the Ada model isn't applicable to impulse buyers or very short sales Cycles the model only considers first-time purchases and not other important aspects of marketing such as branding positioning customer retention cross-selling or upselling and finally it takes no account of what should happen after a sale is made so in summary the Ada model is a marketing Communications model that can help you tailor your marketing to suit the human process your prospects go through before making a purchasing decision using the model will make your marketing campaigns more successful than if you just focus on providing a shopping list of features your product or service contains so that's it for this lesson really hope you enjoyed it I look forward to speaking to you again soon