Why does marketing copy often fail to convert readers into customers? What makes some sales messages more effective than others?
AIDA copywriting has been a cornerstone of successful marketing for over a century. This time-tested approach breaks down the sales process into four crucial steps focused on Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Each step serves as a building block toward converting casual readers into eager buyers.
Read more to discover how to craft compelling marketing messages that guide your readers naturally toward making a purchase.
The AIDA Model of Copywriting
When writing marketing copy, the authors recommend following the AIDA copywriting model, a decades-old template for persuading readers to buy your product. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action: four goals your copy should achieve, in this order. Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.
(Shortform note: The AIDA model was first described in a magazine article by the American marketer Elias St. Elmo Lewis—all the way back in 1898.)
Step #1: Attract Attention
First, your marketing message needs to grab the attention of potential customers. The authors note that unless your message is immediately interesting, no one will bother to read your full copy.
This part of your message doesn’t need to be persuasive in itself—it just needs to stand out enough to make people pay attention. For instance, if you send someone a letter that plays a song when they open it, they’ll read your copy to try and understand why.
(Shortform note: Research shows that grabbing someone’s attention isn’t only valuable because it gets customers to read more—it’s valuable in itself. If you’re trying to promote brand awareness, momentarily grabbing attention is all you need to do. One study found that when an advertisement presents something unexpected, emotional, or loud, viewers automatically pay a little bit of attention to it at a semi-conscious level. This semi-conscious attention is enough to create familiarity and generate a boost in sales. That said, the same study showed that ads that appeal to customer needs and trigger conscious attention confer a bigger boost in sales.)
Another way to attract attention the authors suggest is to make your message look different from typical advertisements, so the reader doesn’t know straight away that it’s a piece of marketing. If you can get them to read your message, you have a chance to hook them so they keep reading even after they realize you’re trying to sell them something. For example, the first few seconds of a television commercial might pretend to be an emergency news bulletin.
However, the authors note that whatever hook you use to attract attention must be relevant to your product. Otherwise, your audience will see it as a cheap trick, and they’ll feel irritated rather than interested. For example, if the aforementioned “emergency news” television commercial is a teaser for a science fiction TV series about a meteor about to hit Earth, audiences might accept it, but if it’s for something unrelated like car insurance they may feel manipulated and get annoyed.
| Native Advertising: Ads That Don’t Look Like Ads The practice of designing marketing copy to look like content the audience wants to see is called “native advertising.” Statistics confirm the authors’ belief that native advertisements are effective customer hooks: In 2021, companies spent $85 billion on native ads compared to just $56.7 billion on traditional online “display” ads. Nowadays, native advertising is extremely common on social media; for instance, sponsored Instagram posts look like content from someone you’re following. Experts assert that on social media, the way to avoid having users reject your ad as a cheap trick is to make sure your ads function as the kind of valuable content they came to see—like a New York Times article sponsored by Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black that raised serious points about women’s prison reform. |
Step #2: Create Interest
After you’ve hooked someone to start reading your copy, your next goal is to get them interested in what you have to say, argue the authors. To do this, offer a few interesting facts that tie into your product somehow. For instance, if you’re selling make-your-own-kombucha kits, write about how there are 100 trillion bacteria inside your digestive system (and drinking kombucha helps give you more of the healthy ones).
Another way to get your reader interested is by telling them a story: Describe a problem in your life, then reveal how your product helped you solve it. You might share the story of how you struggled with IBS for years until you started drinking kombucha every day, which alleviated many of your symptoms.
(Shortform note: In Building a Storybrand, Donald Miller argues that the way to make marketing copy interesting is to appeal to basic human needs. He would argue that offering the reader “fun facts” isn’t enough, because the human brain is wired to find certain things interesting: whatever helps you survive and prosper. For instance, if your marketing copy hints that you’re offering something that will give the reader high social status, they’ll automatically pay attention. Likewise, the reason stories are so effective in marketing is because they organize key survival information in a way that’s extremely easy for the brain to process.)
Step #3: Build Desire
The authors explain that the next step is to intensify your audience’s desire for your product by describing all the tantalizing benefits that the reader will experience if they buy it. Although it’s likely that your audience already understands how your product would benefit them, spelling out its benefits in detail will help persuade them on an emotional level.
Don’t just describe the product’s immediate uses—convey what the customer’s life will look like if they buy it. To be the most persuasive, use vivid imagery that evokes positive emotions. For instance, if you’re selling organic sleep aids, write about how good the customer will feel when they get out of bed with no mental fog and can appreciate the shimmering peach-colored sunrise.
| Alternatively, Appeal to Other Emotions In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath argue that appealing to your reader’s self-interested desires isn’t always the most effective tactic if you’re trying to make an impression on them. For some particular marketing messages and target audiences, other emotional appeals will be more successful. For example, one particularly effective anti-smoking advertisement centered its message around intensifying teenagers’ feelings of resentment toward immoral corporations: The television commercial shows a group of protesters piling up hundreds of body bags in front of a tobacco company headquarters, representing the number of people who die due to tobacco use every day. As this example illustrates, vivid imagery can be effective at evoking any emotion—not just self-centered desire. |
Step #4: Spur Action
Last, your marketing copy should push the customer to buy your product, write the authors. Offer them a special deal that seems unreasonably valuable but time-sensitive: If they want to buy, they need to do it immediately. These deals are more effective the more personalized they are to the potential customer’s unique life situation. Additionally, provide a reasonable excuse as to why you’re giving them such a special, exclusive deal.
For example, if you’re selling sleep aids, you could send promotional emails exclusively to people who’ve recently bought another tool to improve sleep, like a sleep mask or white noise machine. Then explain that you’re offering three months of sleep aids free with the purchase of a year’s supply. Why? You used to be an insomniac and you know how painful it is, so you want to help other people who struggle with sleeping as much as you can. However, you only have enough funds to offer this deal for a limited time, so they need to act now!
(Shortform note: In Contagious, Jonah Berger argues that the right deal can generate organic word-of-mouth marketing for your product. People want to make themselves seem high-status by taking advantage of deals that few people can get—so if they think your deal is only available right now, exclusively to people like them (as the Halberts recommend), they’ll tell many other people about it. The Halberts recommend making your deal as believable as possible and offering some justification for it, as customers won’t brag about their discovery if they see it as an obvious marketing tactic.)
To increase the likelihood of someone making a purchase, the authors recommend making it as easy as possible for them to order. To do this, explain in your copy, step by step, how they can buy your product. Err on the side of over-explaining to make sure that no customers get confused.
(Shortform note: If you’re selling online, you can make it easier for customers to order from you than ever before. If you place an order form on the same page as your marketing copy, as Russell Brunson recommends in Dotcom Secrets, you can condense the purchasing process into a single step. No need to tell your reader how to navigate to a purchase page.)
