21

AIDA 04
A business model for improving
marketing communications

What the model looks like and how it works

The AIDA framework (Figure 4.1) is one of the most familiar in the world of
communications. It is widely used in advertising and promotions to describe
how communications are made effective in four important steps. As with
any marketing framework, the AIDA model should be targeted at a specific
audience who are interested in the product in question.

Figure 4.1 The AIDA model

Per cent of the

total population
(example)
Awareness
80%
(The market potential for your product)

40% Interest
(The people who may buy your product)

Desire
20% (The people who want to
buy your product)

Action
(People who
10% buy your
product)

Awareness
The starting point of all effective communications is to be noticed. If people
are not aware of a product, they cannot be interested in it and no action
22 The Business Models Handbook

can be taken. Typically the promotional opportunities include mass media

such as TV, radio, newspapers, journals, billboards, public relations, direct
marketing (such as flyers, e-mails, personal calls from salespeople), point of
sale, packaging and social media.
Achieving awareness is critical to all promotions. The components of the
promotional mix that are selected to build awareness will depend on the
target audience and the product or service that is being advertised.
Most promotional campaigns comprise a mixture of different media.
Promotions that hit consumers from many directions make it hard to say
exactly how awareness was created. This gave rise to the famous saying
credited to both John Wanamaker (1838–1922) and Lord Leverhulme
(1851–1925): ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble
is I don’t know which half.’
In general, the greater the amount that is spent on promotion, the greater
will be the level of awareness – bearing in mind the above comment about
much of it falling on stony ground. As a rule of thumb, companies allocate
around 2 per cent of revenue for their promotional budget.
The amount spent on promotion is not the only driver of awareness.
Awareness is built up over time through the repetition of a message. It is also
heavily influenced by headlines, images and colours – all generating impact
of one kind or another in an attempt to win attention.
Word of mouth is important in building awareness. Social media fulfils
this role today. Just a few years ago it was literally one person talking to
another. The UK retailer Marks & Spencer carried out hardly any above-
the-line advertising for 100 years, relying on its customers to recommend
the brand.1

Interest
Achieving a healthy awareness of a product is not in itself enough. There
has to be an interest in the offer if the promotion is to generate action.
The promotion will need to resonate with the target audience. The audience
must feel that it is relevant to them and offer something that will satisfy their
needs and wants.
The offer, which could be a product or service, will have features and
benefits. The way these are portrayed determines how interested someone
will be in moving forward to consider making a purchase. This portrayal
of the offer is the customer value proposition (CVP). As the term suggests,
the proposition must be valued by the potential customer if interest is to be
generated. What is more, the language that is used to interest the customer
 AIDA 23

should be colloquial – the language of the consumer; the language in which

they think and speak.

Desire
The promotion must now generate a desire for the offer. The potential
customer will have considered the CVP with all its features and benefits.
Effective promotions focus on the one or two parts of the value proposition
that are most appealing to the potential customers. Finding things in an
offer that are unique, distinctive and alluring – and communicating them in
an advert – is not easy. Promotions often fail because they try to cover too
many benefits and so dilute the message.
At this stage, the potential customer may be considering a number of
alternative offers. These alternative offers make up ‘the consideration set’.
A potential customer may start with a handful of products that are given
consideration, whittling them down according to their perceived value and
perceived benefits until a choice is made. The final decision may be based on
emotional or subjective factors such as a predilection for a particular brand.

Action
At its conclusion, the AIDA model looks for action. The action could be the
purchase of a product or it could be something less commercial such as a
visit to a website or a request for a brochure – whatever are the goals of the
promotion.
AIDA is a sequential model in which the proportions of people at each
level decline significantly. For example, if 80 per cent of a target audience
are aware of a promotion, we can expect that the proportion who are inter-
ested in the offer will be much less, maybe just 40 per cent. This proportion
declines again as the promotion builds desire for the product – perhaps only
20 per cent of the total target audience. Finally, we reach the small propor-
tion who take action as a result of the promotion. A 10 per cent conversion
to action is, by most yardsticks, highly commendable.

The origins of the model

In 1904, Frank Dukesmith, an American pioneer in the art of salesman-
ship, suggested that there are four steps leading up to a consumer trialling a
product or making a purchase decision.2 Following Dukesmith’s sequence,
24 The Business Models Handbook

the AIDA acronym was coined in an article by CP Russell in 1921.3 As a

cultured man he recognized that AIDA is also the name of an opera and he
suggested that this would make it memorable.

Developments of the model

The principle of achieving action through a series of steps was not just
limited to advertising. In 1911 the book Successful Selling by Arthur
Sheldon4 promoted the AIDA model for sales teams. He added the dimen-
sion of satisfaction, emphasizing the importance of keeping the customer
happy in order to generate repeat purchases. His modified model was
known as AIDAS.
Others have added their nuances. In 1961 RJ Lavidge and GA Steiner
proposed a slightly different model for predicting advertising effective-
ness,5 though not one that lends itself to a catchy acronym. Like the AIDA
model, theirs was also stepwise but with more stages in the conversion
process:

●● Awareness: as before.
●● Knowledge: deepening the awareness to a point where people had infor-
mation on what they were considering.
●● Liking: triggers are pulled as people learn more about the product to the
point that they like certain features and benefits.
●● Preference: in the consideration set made up of products from different
suppliers, a preference is built up for one in particular.
●● Conviction: at some stage in the buying process there has to be a move
beyond simple preference to one that is convinced the product is the
right one.
●● Purchase: the build-up of knowledge, liking, preference and conviction
leads ultimately to action in the form of purchasing the product.

The model in action

The challenge in today’s overcrowded world, where we are bombarded
with communications, is grabbing attention. People are programmed to pay
attention to things in which they are interested. If you are not a drinker, you
are less likely to take note of an advert for alcoholic drinks than someone
 AIDA 25

who enjoys a tipple. Mothers-to-be will take note of communications about

babies, gardeners will notice ads for garden centres and children will pay
great attention to television ads for toys.
The timing of the communications affects the noise. The vast majority
of toys that are bought each year are purchased at Christmas. In theory, it
makes sense to advertise toys when people are buying them. However, in
the cacophony that takes place around Christmas, when all the other toy
suppliers run their promotions, the share of voice (the level of awareness
that is achieved) may be quite low. One major toy manufacturer avoided the
drowning out of their adverts by beginning their campaign early in October
when the competitive environment was less fierce.
Whenever the ads are launched, they have to have impact. Strong
colours, powerful images and compelling headlines may get the ads noticed,
although these all have to be within the brand guidelines. The creative teams
that design the ads know how to draw the reader from the top of the page
with an eye-catching image to a headline and, ultimately, to the body copy.
Creating impact, interest and building conviction is the name of the game.
It is not always obvious what will work. Air Products, a manufacturer of
industrial gases, showed a number of sample ads to potential customers.
The ads that tested best for impact and relevance were those that featured
people. The ads that were creative and stylish but did not feature people
were rejected.
David Ogilvy, the ad man who established Ogilvy & Mather, made an
astute point in his book on advertising (1983).6 He said, ‘When I write an
advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it “creative”. I want
you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.’ Finding those trig-
gers of interest makes promotions effective. This father of advertising went
on to say, ‘Write great headlines and you will have successfully invested 80
per cent of your money.’ He knew that 8 out of 10 people only read the
headline.

Some things to think about

At each stage of the AIDA sequence, ask yourself three questions:

●● Will the promotion grab the attention of the target audience?

●● Is the promotion relevant to the target audience?
●● Does the promotion drive to a course of action?
26 The Business Models Handbook

Notes
1 MacRury, I (2008) Advertising, Routledge, Abingdon
2 Dukesmith, F (1904) Three natural fields of salesmanship, Salesmanship,
January, 2 (1), p 14
3 Russell, CP (1921) How to write a sales–making letter, Printers’ Ink, June
4 Sheldon, A (1911) Successful Selling, Part 1, Kessinger Publishing, Montana
5 Lavidge, RJ and Steiner, GA (1961) A model for predictive measurements of
advertising effectiveness, Journal Of Marketing, 25, October
6 Ogilvy, D (1983) Ogilvy on Advertising, Vintage, New York