While every customer is different, you can influence how people discover your brand, from the moment they first notice it to when they (hopefully) pull out their credit card.
The AIDA model, used for over 100 years, offers a fundamental advertising framework for engaging prospects and driving sales. It’s the basis for the modern marketing funnel and helps you develop a strategy for reaching and converting your target audience.
In this article, we’ll show how AIDA can help you quickly and strategically plan and implement marketing strategy tools so more customers choose your brand.
What is the AIDA model?
AIDA model definition: The AIDA marketing model is a framework that outlines the stages of a buyer’s journey from first impression to purchase. Developed by American advertising advocate Elias St. Elmo Lewis, it illustrates how advertising can impact decision-making. This formula helps businesses optimize digital marketing communications and sales funnels.
It’s also known as the AIDA formula or the AIDA principle. Use the AIDA model as a secure and structured way to guide sales prospects through the four sales stages, starting at the awareness stage and ultimately converting leads into customers.
How to apply the AIDA model in marketing
AIDA is an acronym for the four stages companies use to address potential customers and influence their purchase decisions:
These four stages are sequential.
Let’s dive deeper into each stage.
1. Attention
The first stage is attention. Effective advertising begins with capturing the target audience’s attention through imagery, emotion or copywriting. Marketers can use various approaches to grab attention through advertising, content marketing or social media posts, such as a Facebook ad, a compelling news story, a viral video or eye-catching colors on a storefront.
2. Interest
This stage creates the potential customer’s interest in a specific offer. Companies can present the product details on a landing page, in a flyer or through a product webinar to tap into a prospect’s pain points or needs.
3. Desire
Desire, in this context, means making the prospect want to own the product or use the service. This stage combines rational arguments with an emotional connection to address the target audience’s needs.
Potential methods for driving desire include customer testimonials, celebrity endorsements, social proof or videos showing the product’s benefits in everyday life (e.g., how it offers more joy, recognition, security or whatever else customers desire).
4. Action
At the end of the third stage, the customer knows they want the product because it solves their pain points. Now, they need to complete the purchase.
Use a clear and explicit call to action (CTA), such as a button that prompts people to buy. For online or interactive marketing like landing pages, blog posts or social media ads, ensure the user interface is intuitive to prevent technical issues.
The AIDA framework is a reliable guide for creating structured marketing strategies. Align each campaign stage with this template to attract, engage and convert potential customers. This approach ensures you don’t overlook any steps in your marketing efforts.
Incorporating AIDA model marketing strategies allows you to craft messages that effectively guide consumers through the buying process, enhancing brand interaction and conversion rates.
Extensions of the AIDA model to AIDA-S and AIDCAS
The original AIDA formula now has a couple of variations, which add two more stages: satisfaction and conviction.
AIDA-S
The AIDA-S model assumes the customer journey doesn’t end with the purchase. The fifth stage, satisfaction, measures customers’ feelings about the product by asking whether they would buy from the same company again or recommend the brand to others.
Companies can conduct interviews, analyze customer reviews or develop buyer personas to learn consumers’ thoughts and improve products and services. These tools provide valuable data about retention so companies can enhance the customer experience.
AIDCAS
The AIDCAS model includes the satisfaction stage but also inserts a stage between desire and action: conviction. This stage involves building trust and convincing customers that they need the product or service by showing them proof points (e.g., a testimonial or case study).
Conviction is vital when customers are aware, interested and know they want the product, but still have questions or purchase objections.
During the conviction stage, companies can compare their offer with competitors’ or make the sales team available to potential customers for questions or conversations. These strategies help relieve worries or fears.
9 steps to creating the perfect sales strategy (with free template)
An example of the AIDA model
The AIDA model often depends on multiple customer contacts to reach the final action. To illustrate, let’s consider an example:
A small business seeks a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. The business owner searches Google, and one of the top results catches her eye. Stage 1, Attention, is complete.
While watching YouTube videos at home, she sees an ad for the same CRM cataloging its various benefits. Curious, she watches the full advertisement, which leads to stage 2: Interest.
A few days later, at an industry conference, she sees that the CRM has a booth and chats with one of the reps. The rep shares case studies with her and offers her a free trial. She’s now at stage 3, the Desire to purchase.
At the end of the free trial, she upgrades the company to a paid subscription, completing the process with stage 4, Action. If everything goes well in the satisfaction stage, subscription renewals and sales referrals to other potential customers are likely.
The buying process isn’t always so straightforward, with a purchase after one successful advertisement campaign. However, this case study shows the power and possibilities of the AIDA model for marketing messages.
Critique of the AIDA model
Despite its widespread popularity and applications, the AIDA model sometimes has a public relations problem. One critique is that its step-by-step representation is too rigid. It assumes all stages follow one another chronologically.
In reality, however, the stages can overlap, interact in complex ways or be skipped altogether. For example, a customer may proactively start researching a problem to solve a pain point, bypassing the attention and interest stages to reach a solution.
Another example of rigidity is that the AIDA model depicts a successful purchase. If one of the stages does not function as expected, the customer journey might proceed differently.
Because of this, the AIDA model alone is not enough. It must be part of a diverse content marketing strategy that considers the twists and turns of the modern customer journey.
For instance, what happens if a customer shows interest in a product but decides it costs too much or doesn’t meet their needs? Companies could then offer a different product as an alternative. While not technically part of AIDA, that’s still an effective way to convert a prospect into a sale.
The AIDA model provides a solid foundation, but marketers should know there are other successful sales processes. Combining different approaches often leads to a positive outcome.
Final thoughts
While there’s no universal approach to marketing and sales, the AIDA model’s staying power makes it a reliable framework.
AIDA applies as much to complex campaigns as to individual social media posts or email marketing sequences. Use it as the model prescribes or adapt it to fit your company’s goals when planning or optimizing content.
