Donnie Bryant: Is AIDA Outdated As A Marketing Process? (Part II)

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Last week, we started to discuss whether AIDA was outdated as a marketing process.

So, What’s Missing?

Really, there are only 2 things that stop someone from buying a product that has grabbed his attention, held his interest, aroused/concentrated desire and given him a way to take action: 1) lack of resources and 2) risk.

You can’t do much about the Number 1. Eliminating Number 2 is your duty.

So what are you doing to demonstrate your trustworthiness? To give the would-be buyer the feeling of security they need to give you their credit card number?

Do you have testimonials?
Awards, certifications or recognition?
A strong guarantee?
Have you already established a solid reputation? Like Gary Oldman says in the commercial for the new HTC One M8: Can your potential customers “ask the internet” or inquire around the neighborhood about you?

Without trust, AIDA is incomplete. Without trust, you’re losing sales.

You know what I find interesting, though? The AIDA formula came from American advertising pioneer E. St. Elmo Lewis. As legend has it, the first iteration comes from this quote:

“The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he will look at the advertisement and start to read it; then to interest him, so that he will continue to read it; then to convince him, so that when he has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement.”

If that’s the case, trust was a part of the original formula. And it’s well worth resurrecting, don’t you think?

Here’s your homework:
1) Think through each step of the AIDA process, adding trust as a factor. How are your marketing and sales messages doing on each point?
2) Come up with specific ways to improve any areas that need strengthening.
3) Think repetition. The old maxim that says the average customer buys after the 7th time they hear from you is still true. If you’re treating your marketing outreach as a one-and-done, you’re barely giving yourself a chance to succeed.

To answer the original question, yes, AIDA is outdated. We can’t just talk about attention, interest and desire; trust is essential when we are trying to convince prospects to take action.

Ironically, we can update the AIDA formula by reexamining at Version 1.0, which is a century old. Now let’s go back in time and recapture what we’ve been missing.