If you’re looking for one of the best ways to convince someone to take a desired action, you’ve come to the right place. 

AIDA is the last--but certainly not the least--powerful formula in our series on copywriting formulas. We covered PAS, the 4 Us, the 4 Cs, and now we’ll delve into AIDA. This AIDA is not an opera, but it may get people singing the praises of your copywriting!

AIDA in Action

AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. In addition to copywriting, it can be a useful way to assess the quality of your ads by ensuring that the copy addresses each of these points. Of all the copywriting formulas, AIDA is especially good for a marketing message that leverages a call to action.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty example to illustrate the basic principles of AIDA:

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The first sentence grabs the attention of the audience and establishes the ad as relevant to writers. The second shows that this is a solution of interest to copywriters and which satisfies the desire they have to save time while maintaining quality. The final sentence provides them with an action to complete.

Now, let’s break down each part of the formula.

Attention

The first step for any ad copywriter is to attract the attention of a busy reader. There are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Establish appeal with text that is customized to engage your target audience
• Impart a sense of urgency by implying, for example, that the reader can save time and/or money immediately by clicking the CTA
• Include numbers because they stand out from regular text, are easy to read, and imply a concrete and observable benefit for the reader
• Appeal to emotions by using certain language – a classic is “love” instead of “like”

Interest

There is a fine difference between attention and interest. The attention “element” in AIDA copy lures the audience, while interest impels them to continue reading because the text addresses some specific pain that they should want to solve.

The ability of the copywriter to generate interest is a result of understanding the specific advantages of the product and the reason why the target audience would derive benefit from those advantages. For example, you don’t sell a mobile phone with an ad that focuses on processor speed. Instead, the ad should focus on how it can handle the most intense gaming experience.

Interest can be enhanced by keeping the text short, logical, and to the point, so that the reader is not discouraged by the effort of reading, or confused by convoluted prose.

Desire

Attention highlights your product, interest explains why it is relevant, and desire suggests how the product will make a positive change to the customer’s situation. The most effective language to spark desire is, again, emotional. 

That being said, the message must be tailored for the audience, so, for a business-oriented product, it might not be appropriate to rely too much on emotion. In these cases, referring to time and/or money savings can be effective.

Action

The entire goal of the ad is to convince the audience to convert by taking some type of action. This can mean watching a video, filling in a sign-up form, registering for a trial, and so on. But it’s not that simple – many potential customers are intimidated by the idea of commitment, even if that means just clicking a link.

That’s why, in support of your ad, there should be an array of trust-building measures that include branding and a CTA that is not too pushy. For more information on trust, read our blog post about being credible as part of the 4 Cs copywriting formula. Also, for some tips on writing CTAs that convert, check out this article.

Speaking of Which…

The reason for using copywriting formulas is to reduce the amount of time spent staring at a blank screen while other tasks pile up.

Now, you can reduce staring time to zero with Anyword's AI copywriting technology. Anyword’s intuitive interface comes complete with composition options including the AIDA and PAS copywriting formulas.

All it requires is inserting your landing page URL, choosing your industry, and clicking on the copywriting formula that you want to try, in this case AIDA. Then, watch as Anyword generates line after line of AIDA-based ad texts. 

Pick the one you like best and post it, or copy the version that gets the best predictive performance score, based on Anyword’s AI engine and big data collection of advertising. Within minutes, Anyword gives you high-quality copy as well as an easy way to save time and get more done.

And who knows — you might be singing some opera yourself once you see the results!