The AIDA formula is the oldest and most popular copywriting model used to convert undecided consumers into paying customers. Over the years, AIDA has been utilized in everything from direct-response newspaper ads to sales pages and video marketing campaigns.
AIDA consists of four stages:
- Attention—You use a catchy and relatable hook to interrupt your prospects attention and pull them into your campaign.
- Interest—Using facts, anecdotes, or stories, your prospects becomes intrigued and relates to the problems you’re diving into.
- Desire—You offer a solution to their problems. Your prospects forms a preference to own your products or subscribe to your service.
- Action—You guide them through the buying process. Your prospects form a commercial intent and are ready to convert.
Let’s take a closer look at the AIDA formula in action.
The AIDA Formula in Depth
Again, AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Each stage plays the role of a sieve: it filters out more and more people until it arrives at a small number of prospects who are ready to buy your products and services.
All stages serve a unique function in the AIDA framework:
Attention
Attention is one of the most underutilized concepts in marketing. If not even a single consumer reads your message, they won’t be able to buy your product or recommend it to their friends later.
No eyes on your products mean no sales, and zero sales generate zero revenue.
This is why it’s critical to grab your prospects’ attention in the first stage of the AIDA copywriting framework, which can be achieved by creating a catchy headline. Most users don’t read anything past it, so the headline needs to be interesting, provocative, and relevant to your target audience.
Here are some attention-grabbing headlines:
- Beat Google: How to Do SEO in a Counter-Intuitive Way
- 5 Reasons Why Weight-Lifting Is Ruining Your Dating Prospects
- Are You Unhappy in Life? Here’s How To Get Your Mojo Back
Apart from headlines, you can also use evocative imagery, stylistic font choices, and catchy radio jingles to spark curiosity and make consumers pay attention to your message.
Interest
Now that you have your audience’s attention, it’s time to generate interest to keep them engaged in the second stage of the AIDA framework. Here, the goal is to use compelling language to make your prospects follow along and form a connection with the message you’re trying to convey.
Specifically, you can use captivating facts or interesting anecdotes to tease the introduction of your products, or even demonstrate a comprehensive use case on top of your initial hook to make the campaign feel like a cohesive story. Readers are more likely to stick around and move to the next AIDA stage if they feel like they’re getting value for their time.
If you’re still unsure how to proceed, ask yourself the following questions: What separates your product or service from the competitor’s offers? Is there an underlying tidbit about your product that, when revealed, will make your audience gasp in awe? What are some of the most effective words you can use in your copy to make it interesting to read?
Here are some examples of well-integrated facts and anecdotes to generate interest:
- As a video creator, you can use a LOVE LAMP to decorate your room, improve the lighting, and create a cozy atmosphere all in one go. High-quality live streams have a higher chance of being featured on the homepage where more people can see your work!
- Did you know that your emotional state has a heavy influence on your ability to learn? Recent findings in neuroimaging have shown that the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, and the medial temporal lobe work together with the hippocampus to improve learning retention, encode new memories, and consolidate existing ones.
- Our construction enterprise is 100% employee-owned, which means that we’re naturally focused on delivering high-quality service at a competitive market price.
Desire
This stage is meant to evoke desire in your prospects or to make them want to own the product or service themselves. You can achieve this by painting a “before” and “after” picture in your audience’s imagination. How is their life looking now without your product and how will it improve when they finally get your product in their homes?
This part of your copy has to sound natural and be part of the logical continuation of the previous two AIDA stages. Sometimes, you can get away with a sales-y copy, but the AIDA formula is not meant to push for a hard sell.
Also, you have to build trust with your audience to make them listen to your suggestions and read your offers in full. They’re more likely to follow your recommendations if you’re being honest with your readers and build a rapport that rests on directness and mutual respect.
For example:
- Do you like free beer? You don’t need to preheat this 1500W air fryer to prepare a delicious meal. Compared to a traditional 5kW oven, it cuts your cooking time in half and it saves you about $35 a year—the equivalent of 35 12 OZ bottles of Coors Light.
- By limiting social media access (and removing AI-generated content), this browser extension made me 80% more productive in a single week.
- Before getting this multi-purpose, upright vacuum cleaner, Susan wrestled with chronic back pain. Now, she doesn’t anymore: it’s as simple as that!
Action
The action stage is where you guide your prospects to convert and purchase your product, subscribe to your service, or download your course’s free trial. It’s the final step in the AIDA copywriting formula and one that focuses on writing an irresistible call-to-action (CTA) that makes it easy for customers to buy.
A compelling CTA has to satisfy three criteria:
- It has to be low-friction, meaning your CTAs need to have a simple, actionable language and a recognizable, often contrasting visual style that separates them from other elements in your AIDA copy.
- It has to feature one or multiple appealing incentives such as early access to a popular multiplayer game, extra goodies for a SaaS subscription package, or exclusive materials for an upcoming course in international law.
- Your CTAs have to be strategically placed throughout your website, radio jingle, or TV ad to spur customers into action without overwhelming them with unnecessary information or making them miss the CTAs due to suboptimal placement.
Sometimes, your prospects are on the verge of buying but aren’t quite ready to convert. This is why it’s a good idea to offer a free demonstration of how your products will help them solve their issues, which can be in the form of a product brochure, a free eBook, or limited access to your service.
Examples of low-friction, high-incentive CTAs include:
- Click here to download the first 20% of our new Rust library FOR FREE
- Join our email newsletter to receive a free lecture each week (you can cancel anytime)
- Call this number to get 40% off this vacuum cleaner (with a surprise!)
Real AIDA Copywriting Examples
The best (and most meta) examples of applying the AIDA formula in real-world scenarios come from legendary copywriters who weren’t afraid to push the boundaries of marketing at the peak of their creative prowess.
The Gary Halbert Letter
One such example is Gary Halbert and his well-known series of copywriting tips in the form of episodic letters.
In this letter, Gary promises to teach the lost art of writing captivating headlines to his readers by giving examples of the AIDA framework and, get this, cleverly using the AIDA formula by himself throughout the letter.
Gary begins by sharing a seemingly mundane anecdote from his personal life to make people pay attention to what he’s saying: “I don’t want to be here at my desk writing this letter. I want to be on my boat. Writing sucks.”
Then, he generates interest by invoking a famous copywriting formula and the way it can be used to create what he calls “killer” headlines: “Listen: if you want to capture the attention of someone in a crowd, what’s the best way to do it? It’s really quite elementary, My Dear Watson. What you do is… You Call Him By Name!”
Next, Gary shares several examples of witty headlines and throws in some additional keywords to create a blueprint for writing a good headline: “Here are some words to use in headlines. Announcing… At last… Now, at last… How to… Here are… 17-Ways to… The art of… The secret of… A startling fact about… Amazing… New…”
Notice how Gary builds a story around his tips to turn the interest of his readers into a desire for his paid materials and make them feel like his letter is part of a bigger storyline in the Gary Halbert universe: “So anyway, if the best way to get good at writing is by writing, what is the best way to get good at writing headlines? That’s easy… it’s by writing headlines.”
Lastly, Gary flips the AIDA formula on its head and introduces the CTA at the midpoint of his letter to facilitate action: “Call and order right now (323-851-8275) and all this invaluable info will be on its way to you in a matter of hours!”
Lastly, Gary concludes his letter by having some fun creating wacky headlines to inspire his readers to do the same:
This helps end the letter on a high note by giving a bit more value. It makes the whole thing more genuine than ending on just a call-to-action
Copyhackers
Copyhackers is a digital marketing agency and copywriting hub founded by Joanna Wiebe, a senior thought leader whose experience includes training teams at Thinkific, Shopify, and AWS and reaching millions of readers around the world thanks to her masterful writing.
The website’s main sales page is a great example of utilizing the AIDA framework to its full potential.
Right from the get-go, it starts with a headline that promises aspiring copywriters a positive change in their working experience, followed by a powerful paragraph that immediately captures your attention: “But imagine for a moment how your life would improve if you wielded the power to generate revenue practically on demand.”
Next, the copy offers a small glimpse of a reality where copywriters don’t have to worry about their financial security, confronting a new client, or becoming the master of living their own lives: “These moments are not distant dreams. They’re not fantasies. Conversion copywriters don’t read them and go—Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice?” This keeps prospects engaged and interested in hearing more about the upcoming offer.
To evoke desire, Copyhackers shares several promising facts about the state of the copywriting industry and how beginners can earn a decent living without a Bachelor’s degree: “Even if you have no experience and no post-secondary education, you could start your career as a copywriter with a $55K/year salary.”
This is backed by showcasing client testimonials of the most successful Copyhackers alumni, further reinforcing your desire to convert:
After following up with even more client testimonials, Copyhackers includes its first CTA at the page’s midpoint section:
And then includes additional CTAs as you scroll further down the page to incite action:
AIDA’s Biggest Problem: The Difference Between Interest and Desire
The AIDA formula is a flexible framework. You can change or remove the parts that don’t work well with your plan and introduce new elements to create a more effective digital marketing campaign. But, you must have an extensive familiarity with all four stages of the AIDA model to know which ones to cut without irreparably damaging the message you’re trying to convey.
The first and last AIDA stages are the easiest to understand. Attention refers to a classic pattern interruption to get someone’s attention quickly, while action is simply the call to action.
However, the interest and desire stages are often confused with one another when copywriters try to apply the AIDA formula in a live scenario. Figuring out where interest ends and desire begins can throw off a lot of them. Thankfully, there’s a nifty trick to never repeat the same mistake twice, and it has to do with recognizing the inherent sentiment that exists in the interest and desire stages respectively:
- Interest—This pitch seems like it’s interesting enough for me to stay around and hear them out/keep reading; also, their product X COULD turn out to be a possible solution to my problems
- Desire—Wow, product X could actually help me improve my life; in fact, the way they describe its use cases and benefits makes me think I MUST buy it to solve my problems!
Prospects in the interest stage have only now begun to warm up to your idea. If you introduce your product early in the copy, they’ll see it as an item that COULD bring a positive change in their lives, but they can also live without it as well. They’re interested enough to continue entertaining the idea of owning your products, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their daily routine. Here, most of your prospects will bail out at the first sign of a minor inconvenience or if they notice discrepancies between your sales pitch and the quality of your items or service—including the language in your AIDA copy.
On the other hand, prospects in the third stage (desire) will be enticed to make a purchase and become loyal patrons. Simply speaking, they MUST own your products and are now looking for the simplest and easiest way to place an order. This doesn’t mean your prospects won’t walk away if they encounter a confusing UI or aren’t guided well through this stage and into the final step of the AIDA model.
To better illustrate the difference between the interest and desire stages, think of the composition of a typical infomercial you may have come across in your daily media interactions.
Most infomercials start by showing you a problem (attention) and offering a solution to that problem (interest). Then they go through all the various features and benefits that will change your life for the better, either by helping you cook better, clean better, or lose weight faster (desire).
Finally, the infomercials introduce a limited-time offer and put their contact information up on the screen to facilitate action.
So, in a nutshell, interest is about keeping your prospects interested enough to make them stay longer and hear or read your pitch until the end. It’s an extension of the hook you came up with in the attention AIDA stage.
Desire, then, is about how your product or service improves the lives of your prospects. By making them see how your products will fit in with their lives and solve an ongoing issue, you can confidently spur action.
Do you have to use AIDA?
AIDA is a tried and true copywriting formula for achieving organic business growth at a reasonable pace, but it’s far from being the only one.
Alternative models include:
- DAGMAR—Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results
- ACCA—Attention, Comprehension, Conviction, and Action
- REAN—Reach, Engage, Activate, and Nurture
- PAS—Problem, Agitation, and Solution
- OATH—Oblivious, Aware, Thinking, and Hurting
DAGMAR
DAGMAR, or Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results, is the general paradigm the ACCA model often operates under and is considered a recent upgrade to the AIDA formula.
The two main goals of DAGMAR are:
- To develop a specific communications framework that achieves your objectives
- To measure your results against a baseline over a given time
The role of DAGMAR is to communicate effectively rather than to push for a hard sell. It also encourages practitioners to identify a target market that has a high likelihood of being open to your products and services, using a broad or narrow strategy of approach.
ACCA
ACCA is a popular marketing funnel that bears a close resemblance to the AIDA formula but with several key differences in the underlying structure. ACCA fuses the interest and desire stages from the AIDA formula into a single phase called comprehension, and then it breaks down the action stage into two parts: conviction and persuasion which lead to action.
These are the four main phases of the ACCA funnel:
- Attention—Generates brand awareness among consumers
- Comprehension—Explains the features and benefits of your products or services
- Conviction—Convinces prospects they need to own your products or services
- Action—Persuades prospects to buy them
REAN
REAN is a recent copywriting model that has been adapted to work well with some of the other popular funnels in digital marketing. It stands for:
- Reach—Raises brand awareness via digital channels like social media or email marketing
- Engagement—Facilitates interactions between brands and consumers
- Activation—Retains and engages returning and new prospects
- Nurture—Primes prospects to take action and nurtures a professional brand-customer relationship
PAS
You can think of PAS as AIDA Lite, or a condensed version of the AIDA copywriting formula—albeit with several key differences. It consists of three stages and it works by triggering negative emotions in readers:
- Problem—Identifies a common problem your target audience is facing
- Agitation—Exaggerates the problem to the point of frustration to make your audience listen, as well as to engage them with your pitch
- Solution—Offers a solution to alleviate the frustration and provide an emotional release for your customers
Sometimes, PAS can backfire and turn into a farce if the depicted problem is blown way out of proportion. So, you have to be careful in the way you apply PAS to your marketing efforts.
OATH
The OATH model deals with different stages of awareness in the customer journey, or:
- Oblivious—Consumers haven’t identified their problem and are oblivious to any potential solutions
- Apathetic—Consumers have identified their problem, but they don’t care about solving it either immediately or in the future
- Thinking—They’re actively thinking about how to solve their problem, shopping around for solutions
- Hurting—Consumers are hurting by their inability to solve their problems, which makes them extra open to your proposed solutions
Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether to use the AIDA copywriting formula, check out some of its alternatives, or create a unique marketing strategy from the ground up.
