For your business, generating sales and gaining awareness is essential to success. From a marketing perspective, this means adopting a strategy that reaches customers and convinces them to interact with your small business. One such strategy that has been proven to be a great technique for businesses looking to do this is “A.I.D.A.”, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. This technique identifies different stages of the consumer buying process as they go down the purchasing funnel.

The first stage begins with your business getting the attention of a potential customer and ends with that customer taking action in the form of purchasing something from your small business. In short, this technique focuses on convincing prospective customers to become interested in your service or product and then eventually become a customer by making a purchase.

Each portion of the technique helps to identify potential customers and get them to take action in the form of interacting with your small business. By following the AIDA technique, your small business can develop relationships with customers and generate sales, which will have a direct effect on the growth of your business overall. Here is how each portion of AIDA works and how you can use it to benefit your business:

Awareness – This focuses on getting your business out there for people to see. This can be done through advertising via various forms like social media, blogs, and your businesses website. The purpose of this stage is to make consumers aware of your business so they can consider doing business with it in the future.

Interest – The next step in this process is to grab the interest of the potential customer. After gaining their attention, you and your business have to offer something that generates real interest so people will consider purchasing from you. This step is meant to show customers that your business can help satisfy a need or want that they have. By identifying this unmet need or want, customers will begin to take an interest in what your business has to offer to them. In order to communicate this, your business needs to effectively use platforms like social media to reach customers.

Desire – After gaining the interest of your businesses potential customers, you need to create a desire for them to want to use your business and become an actual customer. Building off of the previous step, which focuses on generating interest through the identification of an unmet need or want, this step shows potential leads how your business can meet these needs and wants. To do this, your business must show off the potential benefits and positive effects of its products or services, proving to prospects that it is worth their time and money to purchase. Ultimately, this is done through advertisements and your businesses direct contact with its potential customers. This is the step before the customers’ ultimate decision to engage with your business, so the focus of this step is to convince them this is the right decision.

Action – This portion is the ultimate goal of AIDA as it has to do with a customer taking action and making a purchase from your business. In terms of your small business, this “action” could be when a customer visits your website, makes a purchase online or in person and then makes a purchase. In terms of an online business and its ability to generate sales, you must make sure that you have plenty of conversion opportunities so customers have many opportunities to take that desired action for your business.

Utilizing the AIDA model can help your small business target customers and convince them to take action in the form of a sale. By following the four unique phases of this technique, you can follow consumers as they move through their buying process in order to target them effectively during each step and eventually convert them to a customer.

If you need any help creating and implementing a marketing strategy using the AIDA technique, we’re happy to help – just send us an email!

Danielle Foley, Owner
Foley Marketing Advisors
dfoley@foleymarketingadvisors.com