Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.
Need a fail-safe marketing framework for your content strategy? Learn more about AIDA marketing, examples of using it, and drawbacks to watch out for.
Whether you are writing website copy, social media posts, or blog content, marketing frameworks can help improve your efficiency and effectiveness. There are several frameworks to choose from, but the AIDA model is one of the oldest and most popular in the industry.
The AIDA framework enables content marketers to simplify the content creation process, and AI tools like Jasper help you create compelling content within the AIDA framework even faster.
In this article, we’ll explore the AIDA model and how to use it. We’ll also explore how AI tools help you scale your content using the AIDA framework.
Developed in 1898 by St. Elmo Lewis, AIDA is a selling model that follows the customer journey from product awareness to purchase. The AIDA model works as a funnel to convert prospective customers into buyers.
AIDA follows four steps:
As a busy marketer, entrepreneur, or business owner, it’s critical that you know how to create effective content. The AIDA model saves time while empowering organizations to generate effective marketing strategies.
AIDA acts as a template to optimize your marketing strategy. Businesses use this model to focus their marketing efforts and better influence the customer journey, boosting conversions and sales.
By following a proven template, marketers and business owners can speed up the content development process.
The AIDA model encourages marketers to understand their customers better. Each step deepens the emotional connection between the consumer and the brand. As a result, businesses offer a more personalized customer experience.
Without proper implementation, even the best formulas can seem abstract. Let’s explore the four steps of the AIDA model and how to apply them in real life.
Attention is the customer’s response when they learn about your brand. The attention stage should define your outreach strategy, driving brand awareness and curiosity.
The most popular marketing channels for first encounters are search engines, ads, and social media.
This is the stage where businesses differentiate themselves. Here are a few ways to get customer attention:
Example: Venture firm Fifth Wall uses memes to connect with its target audience.
In this example, the fund—which invests in real estate, property, and climate technologies—builds brand awareness with a scene from the television show The White Lotus:
Source: Twitter - @fifthwallvc
On social media, memes can be a great way to gain users' attention with humor. This meme is effective because it matches the brand’s voice and ties back to the company’s mission. Fifth Wall also posted this the day after the show’s finale while it was trending on Twitter.
Example: Paramount Pictures placed actors in stadiums in several Major League Baseball games to promote their horror movie Smile. The actors, visible behind home plate, smiled creepily at the camera for extended periods:
Source: Distractify
This strategy uses guerrilla marketing to be memorable. Paramount connected with the movie’s target audience during an unrelated public event, creating a lasting impression.
Once you’ve captured your audience’s attention, the next step is to get them to like you—in other words, to generate interest. The Attention phase often takes shoppers from a search engine results page or social media to your homepage or blog. Then, it’s up to you to hook them with engaging content.
Here are some ways to keep potential customers interested:
Example: Cleo, a money app targeting Gen Z, uses clever copy and edgy animated visuals on its homepage page to entice them to learn more:
Source: Meet Cleo
By using language and visuals tailored to Gen Z users, the company effectively communicates their message to its target audience.
Once you have a customer’s interest, how do you motivate them to buy? The desire stage occurs when your customer moves from liking your product to wanting it.
Brands generate desire by building trust. Before-and-after photos, testimonials, and case studies establish credibility and help move your target audience down the purchase funnel.
Example: At Jasper, we use real customer reviews to build trust and show the value of our product:
Example: Ritual, a health and wellness brand, reveals the process of creating an essential vitamin for women. By taking customers behind the scenes, the brand highlights its credibility.
Source: Ritual
This final step prompts your customer to act. This is where you offer a compelling call to action (CTA). Whether you want customers to purchase a product or sign up for a free trial, you should make the process as easy as possible and create a sense of urgency.
Example: Headspace, a meditation app, uses “Send a gift” as a CTA, making it effortless for customers to purchase a subscription to the app during the holidays.
Source: Headspace
Headspace knows that its users likely have holiday shopping on their to-do list. The company makes gift-giving easier with one click.
Now that we’ve defined AIDA, let’s explore how to use the framework. Here are three tips to make the most of your AIDA strategy:
Identifying your target customer is essential to success with the AIDA model. If your potential customers are not on TikTok, even the best video won’t generate attention for your brand.
Similarly, suppose a potential customer visits your website and does not see themselves represented in your marketing imagery. They will likely walk away instead of moving down the funnel.
Listing benefits, statistics, or awards can be tempting to gather attention. However, your audience should be at the center of each stage of the AIDA model. Focus on your audience’s pain points and how your product or service will solve them.
Over-exaggerated language and clickbait tactics may generate attention, but you risk losing your customers’ trust from the start. Use direct language to build credibility with customers.
We know the AIDA model works, but is it always effective? Not necessarily. Here are the major drawbacks of the model and some suggestions to help you work around them:
This framework ignores the fact that not all buyers follow the same pattern. Some buyers are more decisive and will make impulse purchases. Other customers may jump back and forth between stages before taking action.
A seamless customer journey is essential. Companies should make it easy to move through each step.
Here are some ways to facilitate that:
AIDA focuses on first-time purchasers. It often overlooks opportunities to drive sales, including options for cross-selling and upselling. While the AIDA model should be a part of your strategy, you will still need to have a plan to reach customers whom the framework might miss.
With the AIDA framework, the customer journey ends at the action stage. The model doesn’t account for the post-purchase experience, such as referrals, returns, customer retention, and customer satisfaction.
It’s essential to consider building customer loyalty and turning customers into brand ambassadors after they buy a product.
To combat the limitations of the AIDA model, you should follow up with customers outside this framework. This includes reaching out to segmented email marketing lists, using referral software services, and incentivizing customers to leave reviews or share their products on social media.
But all this doesn’t mean we should abandon the AIDA framework. When used correctly, it’s still a great place to start the customer journey.
Before we look at how AI tools can accelerate the AIDA process, let’s look at a few examples of companies that used all stages of AIDA in their copy.
First, check out this Facebook ad from SaaS company Sizze. Can you spot the four stages of the AIDA model?
Source: Sizzie
Second, this email is from the direct-to-consumer plant brand The Sill:
Source: Milled
Finally, this landing page is from paint brand Clare:
Source: Clare
AIDA marketing can be highly effective, but providing the same quality content for a large number of clients or copy projects can be exhausting.
What if there was an easier way to apply the AIDA marketing framework?
Jasper is an AI writing assistant designed to help you scale your content marketing strategy. With over 50 templates—including a specific AIDA Framework template—Jasper enables you to generate content up to 10 times faster.
Let’s look at the AIDA Framework template in action:
First, it asks you to tell Jasper about your product and service. Using the AIDA framework, it then uses your inputs to create copy:
What’s particularly notable is that Jasper highlights which part of the framework each paragraph tackles. This ensures you hit every pain point and highlight your product’s critical features.
The AIDA Framework template can also help with various types of copy. For instance, Jasper’s recommendations below would make compelling ad copy:
The length of each output is suitable. Each output starts with an engaging question relevant to an SEO agency’s ad audience and uses data to build credibility. And Jasper even added some additional flair by including years of experience and information about custom SEO plans.
You can use the AIDA model and framework for just about anything, from blog post introductions to sales pages.
For example, Jasper’s outputs below could make an engaging YouTube video description:
YouTube video descriptions should capture your audience’s attention, provide a short description, and include a call to action. Jasper’s outputs speak to the audience’s pain points while promising a solution and offering expertise.
The AIDA model may have begun in the 19th century, but it still works like a charm. While the AIDA framework helps save you time, you can make even more efficient use of it by scaling your content with Jasper.
Using the AIDA Framework template, Jasper acts as a brainstorming partner to help you supercharge your copywriting. And with more than 50 other templates, Jasper can meet all your content creation needs.
Sign up today to see how you can use Jasper to create captivating copy with the AIDA framework.
Austin Distel is the Sr. Director of Marketing at Jasper, your AI creative assistant. He's also an Airbnb superhost in Austin, Texas. You can follow Austin's adventures around the internet and the world at distel.com.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.