Episode 053 - Use The AIDA Framework In Your Business

You know, and you can have different framework content for the same product but for different audiences. So for example, you know, you may need to speak to women differently than you do to men to sell the product, right? If you're doing like, you know, let's say outdoor sporting equipment, right? Women may need to be talked to differently than men, right? And they may, you know, men may be like very impulsive and be like, yeah, love the shoe, gonna buy it. Women are going to want to know a bit more about it. Okay, today's episode we are going to be talking about a framework, and before we tell you what this framework's all about, we really want to preface why this would be important to you as a business owner. And we come across this, you know, probably unbeknownst to us, very subtly, and a lot of times when clients are like, well, you know, I don't really know what messaging to put out, I don't know what content to put out, and all that kind of stuff. Really what you gotta do is you gotta frame where that content is going to be in that customer journey or prospect journey. And that's where this framework that we're gonna be talking about today comes into play. And Jodi's very well prepared for the episode. I know you can't see it, she's got a ton of notes. So, you know, I want you to also, if you're listening to this, if you're not driving, but if you're sitting at an office, a desk somewhere, in a hot tub, doesn't matter where you are, if you have the ability to take notes, you're gonna wanna do that today. At least to get the high-level points of what we're going to be talking about. So Jodi, you know, I know you come across this because you're creating content a lot for people, and you know, we had a client last week who, you know, was struggling with, you know, what content to put out there. And we always say put your best content out, and then they had, you know, some, some hesitations or reservations about, you know, giving away all this content and where it really fit. And we're, we're in an era now where Keeping your content or a portion of it kind of hostage where you're kind of like baiting people and saying, okay, well, here's a little bit, but in order to get the rest, you gotta buy from me or become a client is really, it's not a good thing to do.

[Speaker] Yeah, it's definitely ineffective with all of the resources out there. You can learn anything on YouTube now. You can search up anything you could ever imagine that you don't know how to do. I do that. If I don't know how to do something at home or building something, you just look up a YouTube video. So there's no sense in hiding the content that you have, because it's just going to defer people to other resources and other people.

Absolutely. And, you know, just think about yourself, you know, if you are looking for a solution to a problem, right? The first thing that happens is you become aware that there's a problem that you need to fix. And that could be anything. I mean, maybe, maybe your car is starting to break down. It's like, okay, now I'm aware that I should start to look for other vehicles. Or, you know, you've got a, you know, a sore ankle and now it's like, how do I fix that, right? It's that whole awareness stage. And that's the number one, the top of this process that we're going to be talking about first is awareness. And a lot of times if you've got a new product or service that nobody knows about, meaning it's just something new, you are really having to make them aware first that this exists and then why they would want it, right? Okay, so that's the top level of this framework. It's a 4-part framework, and we'll tell you the rest as we go through. But the top one is awareness. And a lot of times, if you're running ads, you know, this is, is done through video content, educational content, you know, all that kind of stuff that you want to put out there. And its purpose is not to sell, right? You're not running sales ads and everything along those lines. And, you know, that usually falls in things like articles, you know, webinars, podcasts like you're listening to right now is all awareness. I mean, if you're listening to this and you had no idea of this framework, by the end of it you became aware of it.

Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, it's all about that message of like, read this. You know, you want to stand out, um, you want to provide a reason for them to take notice, you know, something that will catch their attention, whether that be, you know, like a statistic, a fact, any resource that would, you know, provide value to them.

You know, you said statistic, you know, you see these a lot of times, uh, Instagram and things like that, you know, people put together the, these stats, uh, graphics. It's, you know, like 96% or 68%, you know, we do a lot in the financial industry and a lot of times, you know, I don't know what the exact number is, but one that's very, um, prominent is that, you know, you know, 68% of Canadians, um, you know, don't have, uh, an estate plan, right? They don't have a will, they don't have this. Now if you're in that space When you say something like that and you don't have one of those, you're like, "I'm part of that." Like, this is a problem. You become aware of that.

Exactly.

So bringing those stats to the forefront are going to be key in that. So you have any questions that you've come up with in your notes around the awareness stage?

I guess other than advertising, because I think that that's the obvious direction to go, how else can you gain attention or awareness You know, what can you include in your brand awareness strategy other than just simply advertising?

That's a fantastic question. I mean, anywhere that people will see you, and it doesn't have to necessarily be your product or service, it could be you or your business. So, you know, you look at all these different touch points to resonate, to kind of bring home what a brand is. You know, think about, you know, vehicle decals, your voicemail, signage, your website, just being in the community. Maybe you have a branded jacket and you're, you know, part of the community, you're volunteering, right? That is all awareness as to who you are. You know, when I first started out here in this location, and I've been here 10 years now, you know, I'd start to go to trade shows, and what was really funny was people would come by and they're like, like, yeah, like, I know exactly where you are. I drive by there all the time because I used to have a sign outside. The really funny part was some people would say, I see all your vehicles around town. I was like, wow, that's awesome. I only had one, right? But the awareness that I was out there so much that they kept seeing it, they thought there were multiple vehicles, right? So that was— it's all awareness. So when you think of, you know, marketing, you know, on a local scale, stage, or stage here, you know, people will think of us because they've seen the brand around, right? For sure. Now, you know, once you've got that awareness, so, you know, you become aware of that problem or that solution and what it is, now you want to try to drive people to interest, right? So we go from awareness into interest. And what that means is they start to validate, hmm, maybe I could use this, or maybe I want that. It's a lot easier from a, you know, a towards purchase, something of luxury, right? So, you know, let's go back to the example of a vehicle. Your vehicle's like clunking and banging, and you're always kind of in the shop, and you're like, you know, I think I can afford another vehicle. You know, now you're going to want it, and you're going to want it really, really well. So you're going to start to look around and start to say, okay, well, what are my options that are out there. And that's where your website really comes into play, that web content. People are gonna start to search around and see who's out there to do that. And that comes into also being able to have lead magnets on your website, so when they go there, you get them into your funnel, you start to nurture them along those lines. Get them subscribed to your newsletter, social media, your blogs, email campaigns, all that stuff is in that interest, right? It's like that first date where they're really trying to see who you are.

Yeah, and see, I think it's important at this stage to understand that you can gain attention. It's actually quite easy to gain attention. Advertisements, you know, even throughout my life seeing advertisements, I've remembered a whole bunch that are completely irrelevant to me. But if you want to gain customers from that and build that interest, that next step of after having their attention, there has to be something that they can relate to. Or something that's meaningful to them or emotional to them, or talking about their problem or their problem that needs solving. You know, I kind of think of it as a stage where it's like, "Yeah, I have your attention, so now look at this. It affects you, so you need to keep reading." It's not just like, "Hey, read this." It's, "It affects you, so keep reading," kind of thing.

Yeah, so you think about it, it's like, you know, here, here's a problem that's out there. Do you have it? Um, you know, and now it's like, hey, we help with this problem, right? Not like, like, buy from us. We're still not selling at this phase, right? We're still— we're trying to start to say, okay, come and drink our Kool-Aid, come and see, kind of play in our sandbox, along those lines. So, you know, just to reiterate, you go from awareness to interest. Is there anything in the interest stage that, that you kind of would like to come across in a question?

Well, I think in the interest phase it's important to ask yourself a couple questions. So in this stage, the content strategy really comes into play. You need to start thinking about not only what content you're putting out to build that interest and then to eventually move them to the next stage, but you also have to think about where. Also social proof, because once somebody gains interest, you know, what's the first thing they're going to do? They're gonna go looking for you online. So again, like you mentioned, your website, where are your reviews, where are you posting them, do you have any reviews or testimonials, social media pages, you know, are you making sure that you have a significant amount of content that, you know, proves that you're reputable and should be trusted. So I think that's a very important part of the interest stage and then also you just have to think about the simple fact of how can you gain interest.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and this is a great stage to start to think about what questions might people have, right? Those FAQs. If you've been in business long enough, you probably know what the questions your clients have had in their sales process, and that's where you can start to create content around that, you know, have the FAQ on the website, because when people are going to start to look at you, they're going to start to, to want answers to those questions, right? Which is key. So our third stage in this is really kind of where people start to really validate, are you a viable option? And this is the desire stage, right? So let's go back again to the vehicle stage. Awareness was, hey, my vehicle's crap, it's starting to break down. Interest is like, okay, I think I need to look at a new vehicle. You go around, you start to kind of date the different dealerships and check them out. And maybe you start to then go and say, okay, I've narrowed it down to like 2 different types of vehicles. Then you're gonna start to desire those, right? Now you're starting to go a little heavier into starting to find out what it is about that dealership, that vehicle, the service, right, the quality. The reviews are really gonna start to come into play in this. And you can get into this where people are gonna start to consume more content. You don't have to be selling a physical product, right? Maybe you're a coach or a consultant. But developing things like white papers, ebooks, brochures, having longer form content, people are going to start to really see, are you really worth or can you do what you say you're going to do?

And, you know, to add on to that, I think it's really important to show examples of, you know, success stories of your services, people who have greatly benefited from your products, whatever it might be, whatever problem you're solving, you need to put that on a pedestal and show them exactly why they should want it and why they should desire it. A lot of times that's done through before and afters. I'm sure you can think of many, many examples where you've seen before and after and you're like, hmm, wait, that's actually, that's impressive, you know, and it starts to slowly convince you that you do actually want the product or service.

There's a psychological thing that happens in people's minds called aspirational identity, where they see something, you know, And let's just use acne, right? I mean, because it's very visual, right? It's painful, it's emotional, that type of stuff. Now if you're in that stage where you have that, you know, those breakouts all the time and you're trying to find stuff out as to how can I fix this, you find a couple of companies and then you see these before and afters, you're starting to desire that. You're gonna see the afters and you're gonna be like, that's what I want, right? I'm aspiring to identify with that, right? And once somebody can grab a hold of that feeling, right? When you connect with somebody emotionally in the sales process, it's so much easier to, to close that sale and get a customer that way, especially if you got those before and afters. And they don't have to be visual. They could be just, you know, in the financial world, it could be somebody that's in debt. Now they hear, you know, case studies and stories of somebody who, you know, now can take family vacations every year.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And in the sales industry too, even working retail, they talk a lot about feature versus benefit. And so just to kind of touch on that, because I think it's quite relevant in the desire stage, you talk about, you know, you can say that a jacket, for example, is waterproof, but touching on the fact of how it's going to impact them, you know, saying it will help you stay dry instead of saying that it's waterproof is so much more effective. And that's just one example, but just because it plays on people's emotions and that's what the desire stage is truly all about. You have those rare products or services that are completely utilitarian where they only talk about usefulness, but that's pretty rare. I think that a mix of both, you know, showing its usefulness as well as playing on that emotional side of things.

Yeah, and people buy those benefits, right? That's what they want, that's the outcome of it. You know, they don't necessarily buy, you know, the feature. The feature is a means to that benefit and coming back to that rain jacket idea, it comes down to the creative messaging and the way that you, you portray it. You can say it in 10 different ways. You know, it could be, you know, like, do you hate that feeling when you're out for a walk and suddenly you're caught in the rain and then you got to come home and change all your clothes because everything under your jacket is soaked, right? Everybody knows that feeling. It's disgusting. You hate it, right? But now you can put in this jacket that, like, our jackets are breathable, right? They're fashionable, but also they're 100% water resistant, right? So now you're not selling the feature first, you're selling the benefit and connecting to an experience that somebody has had and can relate to along the way. One thing also with the desire side is this is a great way to get people to start to become part of a community, so to speak. And I'm gonna come back to bringing in a previous client where if the end goal is to work one-on-one in a consulting business, maybe in your desire stage you have a community, a Facebook group, an online group, whatever it is that you can actually invite people into to start to feel what it's like to work with you. And that's where you're working on that one-to-many phase. And a lot of times the price point of entry is a lot less than working one-to-one for obvious reasons. But that's like, they're not ready to make that full-blown step yet. Here's a step back, right? It's a great way to add kind of a sales level into that desire. Now lastly, the last one in there is action. Action, that's right. So action is really where they're going to start to like pull the trigger, make the decision. Yes, this is the company, this is the person, this is the product that I want to work with, that I want to buy, or want to invest in, whatever, whatever your, your goal is that's there. And that's where people will start to really, um, you know, dive even deeper. And they might be going into fuller, longer consults with you. And that's where you need to really have a sales process and a sales stage and understand how do you sell. It's okay to ask for the sale in that stage, right?

Now I also want to touch on the fact that this doesn't always mean a purchase or a sale, right? There can be the AIDA framework for signing up for a newsletter. That can be the call to action and the action that they take from that process. But most times it's going to repeat itself, so then you're going to have a whole different ADA framework for an actual purchase decision, if it was for a service, for a consultation, or whatever it might be. But I think that's something that's important to remember is that it doesn't necessarily have to be a purchase. It can be, you know, getting your lead magnet, finally deciding to, to sign up for the newsletter like I mentioned, or going to the webinar or whatever it might be.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'm going to tell you an example that I personally had with a product. And it came around, you know, the whole pandemic that we had. You know, I love Howard Stern. I listen to him on Sirius Radio when I'm driving. And there was an ad in there for a company called PhoneSoap. And what it was was I was like, I had no idea what this was, right? So I heard the ad and I was like, okay, what is it? So I'm listening. So I'm in that attention phase. This is a very short sales cycle for me, but they went through all the phases, you know, in that process. So what is it? They told me it's an infrared. You put your phone in it, close it up, you know, 3 minutes later, all the bacteria has been cleaned off of it, right? So I was like, I like that, right? Now I'm interested in it. And then I, you know, I started to go to the website, PhoneSoap.com. I checked it out, read the reviews, you know, saw the social proof, saw the price point. I was like, now I desired it, I wanted it. And they made it real easy. It was cheap, there was a promotion there, and I took action. And this happened probably within 10 minutes from the moment I first heard the ad. I went through the entire framework model there to buy that one single product, right?

Yeah, and that's the thing is depending on your business, your industry, product, service, whatever it might be, the, the AIDA framework is always going to look different. It's always going to be different timeline, different steps might have higher importance or higher priority. There's just a lot of variation, and that's why you have to actually take the time to sit down and write it out and, and actively think about what what your customer is thinking through each stage and what message you want to get across to them.

Yeah, and your messaging is going to change in each stage, and leveraging tools, you know, for Facebook ads and retargeting and having the different messaging come out, especially if you've got email newsletters, text messaging marketing, all that kind of stuff. It's the way that you talk with people at those different stages, you know, and I'd strongly suggest that you're talking with people and not talking at them, right? So you want to have means of communication that they can ask questions and respond back. So You know, one little thing is if you're going to do text messaging, make sure it's a system that if they reply back, you get that and you can reply back to them. Like, nobody wants just to be blasted with one-way text messages too.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think my biggest advice, both from a marketing perspective as well as a consumer perspective, on this, you know, call to action phase is making it easy for them to move forward and make a decision. You know, having links, having buttons and emails to click, providing the information right there, the signup popup, you know, just making sure that you're not losing people simply because they're too lazy or don't want to type in your website and go look for the signup page. Just make it as easy as possible, and that right there improves your chances of them actually taking action from your call to action.

And one mistake that people will make when they first try to implement this is they start to figure out how long should it take somebody to get through attention, through interest, through desire, right? So let's say, you know, you say, okay, well, you know, my intention content, I want people to see that, and then I want them to see it for like a week, and then we're going to hopefully transition them. People will move at different speeds through this. So while your intention may be to educate them first, you know, they may get to that desire stage very quickly, and you want to make it easy for them to be able to, you know, make that purchase. So, you know, if you're sending out emails that are educational in means after they subscribe, then you want to also have maybe in the footer a link where they can actually go and book that consult. It's not primary in the content where you're not screaming, hey, this is what I want you to do, but if they went and looked for it, it was there and a way to do that.

Yeah, absolutely. Now just touching on something because I think it's important to acknowledge, this framework in the past was kind of seen as the be-all end-all of marketing and, and whatnot. But now with especially modern technology and, and digital marketing, there's a lot missing from this framework. So firstly, is the targeting right? Before you even think about attention, interest, desire, action, you have to think about who you want, whose attention you want, whose desire do you want. Um, and sometimes that can just come into play when you're starting to build interest because the people who see the advertisement they have— sure, maybe they— you gain their attention, but then as soon as it comes to the part where they're supposed to relate to it, they just scroll past it or, you know, click through it. But I do think it's important to acknowledge the fact that there's a lot of gaps in this framework that do need to be filled in.

Absolutely. You know, and you can have different framework content for the same product but for different audiences. So for example, you know, you may need to speak to women differently than you do to men to sell the product, right? If you're doing like a outdoor sporting equipment, women may need to be talked to differently than men. Men may be very impulsive and be like, "Yeah, love the shoe, gonna buy it." Women are gonna wanna know a bit more about it maybe. Different geographical areas too. So keeping in mind, you need to really understand where your client base is coming from and try to become as much like them in your thoughts beforehand., and figuring that out. And that's why, you know, when we're going to implement this with clients, this is not the first thing, right? This is coming down that phase in where the marketing stage— we really need to understand who are we selling to, who is that person, what it— like, why would they want to work with you, those type of things. Why do they want to buy your product, which is extremely key.

Yeah. And if you're just starting out with the AIDA framework, it's a good idea to have multiple versions of it and do split testing like you do with advertisements. There's no shame in that trial and error of marketing. That's what you have to do to be successful really and find that sweet spot in your marketing efforts. So I think doing split testing, A/B testing with different AIDA frameworks is a good place to start.

[Speaker:SHAUN] Absolutely. And if you want to learn more about this, I mean, you can hop on Google and search AIDA framework. There's a ton of examples there. You can hop over to our website. We're gonna actually be posting a blog post which will probably be active by the time this episode and you're hearing this, and I'll actually put a link to it in the show notes with this as well. So any final questions before we hop off? Oh yes. Oh great, here we go, pages of questions.

So the years that you've been in marketing, and obviously you've been aware of this framework for— been aware of the framework for a long time. That's right, look at that. What stage in your opinion and in your experience is the most difficult to achieve successfully?

That's a good question. I think for a lot of people, it falls in that stage of the desire, right? You know, people struggle with how to make people really want the product or service. And it's because maybe they're very close to it, right? They know a lot of stuff about like the how they do it, how they deliver the product, what it does. Um, you know, for us, you know, we know how we work with clients. Um, so it's hard to identify and portray like the why. Like, why would somebody want to work with somebody that does it this way, right? So you can do great from, you know, getting attention with all the targeting, get that out, get people to be like, yeah, that's great. But then you have that desire stage where it's like How do you do that? I think that's gonna be the hardest one for people to come across and do, because I think a lot of people struggle with, with talking about themselves and doing that, right? They're really focused on, like, I know my product, I know my business, and to be able to step on the outside is a big challenge.

Yeah, and I think the building desire phase too is also that kind of turning point where it actually turns into something tangible, I guess, where there's actually a desire specifically for your product or service. So it would make sense that that would be the most challenging.

And a great way to kind of get some intel on that is when you start to get clients and customers, asking them, what was it about us, or what was it about this product that made you purchase it? And they'll start to tell you, and that's the desire that they had for it.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So with businesses that you've worked with, what do you think is the most overlooked phase of, of AIDA? What do you think people tend to kind of just brush off, but it actually has a significant importance.

I think a lot of times people will start to jump right to the interest phase. They'll put their content out and they're like, everybody's gonna— everybody needs this, right? I hear that all the time, like everybody needs me. You know, real estate's one of the ones where there it's oversaturated. There's a ton of people and they struggle with standing out and coming up with why they are super, super important. You know, the attention phase is really that top one that people They don't separate that between interests. They go right to that interest, and really what it needs to be is bringing everybody to the attention of what you do or what you can solve and that kind of stuff and putting that out there. And that's, it's the biggest one. It's an inverted funnel, and the biggest stage is at the top. So when you look at it, the audience size, the numbers are gonna be proportionate to that. So you need to spend money now to get that out there. It's going to be the advertising, it's going to be, you know, social media, and it's not going to be just doing organic. You cannot create your accounts and just start posting on it and get huge numbers. You're going to have to spend money for that, right? You're not going to necessarily get a return on that immediately, but you need to be building those audiences and then have the rest of the stages in place so that when they start to engage with it then you start to show them that interest content. Then you start to talk in the desire once they go that way. Right. Right.

So, so I know we touched on targeting being something that isn't included, but do you find that there's anything else that's missing from the AIDA model there, or any steps that in your opinion and in your experience you've kind of added in as you went?

Well, there's a lot of talk if you follow some of the big thought leaders in this space that, you know, the model of the funnel, while it was like the prime method, right? It's got that bottleneck, comes down to the action. But now it's more of an hourglass, right? So it will start to spread out and it's the follow-up after. Because, you know, it's very costly to start to keep finding new people. And the people you do work with are the best sources of new business, right? So you have to have, you know, other steps in there for follow-up, getting those testimonials on the bottom end, and really continuing to have people, you know, keep desiring the work that you do, right? You know, the best customers or the best new customers are the ones that you already have, right? Because you just sell them something else. You know, you develop new products for them that you've already come across and broken down that wall, that barrier of, of do they like me, do they know us, right? It's like, how can we develop it?

Yeah, that relationship is already, is already established.

Yeah, the trust, right? So it doesn't end at action, right? I think that's really where it starts to, to ramp up. Um, and you've got your, you're basically a, you know, a very committed sales force. And you hear these terms like building your tribe and building, you know, this whole loyalty fan base. And, you know, that's where loyalty programs really stemmed from is once they bought, now it's like, how do we keep them? Yeah. And how do we get them telling other people?

Right. All right. So this is my last question.

Okay.

All of my notes have been stated. All right. So what is the most important step to get perfect in the, in the AIDA framework?

I'm going to basically say you'll never be perfect. Okay. Right. So there's Like in marketing, there is never perfection. There's nothing that we could ever say or do to say, okay, this is 100%, follow all these steps, you will get this result 100%. I think what you need to do is you need to always be looking at what you've done and then, you know, iterating on that, right? So, you know, looking at not saying, okay, well, I've done it once, I'm going to set it out into the world and I'm going to forget about it, right? You got to look at, you know, the attention. Is it getting You know, is it getting attention? Are people moving to interest? You know, maybe my messaging's off, so I need to change that a bit more. And you're not going to know exactly 100% what that is. You just need to try and put content out there. Now, if we're going to use Facebook as an example, their, their goal is advertisers, right? They want people to spend money to advertise with them, and they want to make it easier for it. You know, up until, you know, probably within the last year, you had to figure out how to create different ads and test different copy and to different headlines and all that kind of stuff. But now they have dynamic content elements where you can create one ad, upload like, you know, 5 different headlines, 5 different photos, 5 different descriptions, and it's going to automatically start to split test combinations to see what's resonating with people. And then it's going to report back and say, this photo with this headline, this description is getting the most attention, the most clicks and everything. And then you can be like, perfect. Now, how can I take that and make more iterations on that one? To see if I can get that even higher, right? So there's tools out there to allow you to, to move along that phase. So, you know, coming back to your question, don't get hung up on trying to be perfect. Perfect— try to, to do better than you did yesterday.