Several advertising formulas are in existence today but the most commonly used is the AIDA model, one of the founding principles of modern marketing and advertising.

AIDA stands for Awareness , Interest, Desire, Action.

The first three stages are the ones deriving anyone from thinking of purchasing any product or service to finally owning it, that’s the final action and the fourth stage.

Who created AIDA model ?

The term, AIDA and the overall approach are commonly attributed to American advertising and sales pioneer, E. St. Elmo Lewis. The AIDA model was developed in 1898. The original main purpose was to optimize sales calls, specifically the interaction between seller and buyer concerning the product.

The AIDA Hierarchy 

The AIDA model is based on four individual stages that attract interested parties who are deciding on a product or service.

It’s a purchasing funnel where buyers go to and fro at each stage, to support them in making the final purchase.

1. Awareness :

The very first stage in the AIDA marketing model is Awareness, or Attention. It simply means that an advertisement must be seen to be effective.

Often, the awareness part is overlooked by many marketers. It is assumed that people are already aware about the services and products offered they are offering, which may not be true.

You need to break the existing patterns of behavior through a highly creative message. Your advertising material should be eye catcher and tell people about what you sell.

Use some unexpected location for placing your advertisement, personalize for target consumer, add something provocative to grab attention.

2. Interest :

Once you have got enough attention, you have to keep it. You need to keep interested the people with your product and services.

This could be actually trickier than the first step. Its about delivering the information in a way that is entertaining, memorable, or funny.

Focus on what is most apt for your target market in association to your product or service, and on conveying only the most important message you want to communicate to consumers.

3. Desire :

The second and the third step go together. As you try to build interest among the people for your product and services, it is very important to make people realize why they need this product or service. The story must become relevant in order to make the product irresistible.

Your content should aim at providing interesting information and benefits of buying your product. You should keep layering the facts until a consumer gets amazed and reaches at a stage when he/she is thinking that yes this is useful for me.

4. Action :

Now that you have made your consumer understand the worth of your product and services in their life, you need to get your initiate the action of purchasing or putting a query or visiting the website or anything that will take consumer closer to purchase.

Your advertisement should end with a call to action- a statement designed to get immediate action from the consumers.

For example you can use, “an amazing offer”, “Free shipping is waiting for you” and much more that could get consumers out of their chairs.

Example How AIDA Model in Implemented 

AIDA model can be more understood with the example of Netflix in India. Its a big task for Netflix to appeal and convert Indian users who seek for free content.

Stage 1: Awareness

Netflix uses some common advertising mediums such as print advertisements, Youtube advertisements, Adwords, several partnerships.

It advertises some rally famous shows or series that you can easily view and some of the Indian Netflix originals exclusively on Netflix, all just to make us aware of what it can provide.

Stage 2: Interest 

For further generating interest, once the consumer decodes to visit Netflix’s landing pages, it offers a one month free trial to explore all the shows and features.

Stage 3: Desire

As viewers get to some of the features, they develop a liking towards Netflix, at this point additional features offered create the desire to purchase the subscription plans. For example,

– high resolution videos
– multiple profile under an account
– multi-screen viewing

and many more….

Stage 4: 

Once the user gets hooked to the offering, Netflix converts it into customer who pays by providing with the option of subscription plans.

Conclusion

This is all about what basic AIDA model is and how it can help you advertise correctly for your products and services.

With time the model has also developed, but the basics remain the same.