Effective marketing begins with an effective strategy. With the near-daily release of new marketing technologies, It’s easy to get so distracted by all the new toys that we forget to focus on the overarching intention that guides them.
Tools are important; they’re how we get things done. But they’re only as effective as the hand that wields them, and the thinking that guides that hand.

In this article, we’ll go over the AIDA model that forms the overarching basis of our marketing campaigns, and explain why an emphasis on strategy first, tools and tactics second is essential to cutting through the noise and reaching your target audience effectively.

Introducing the AIDA Model

The AIDA model is a time-tested marketing framework that outlines the four phases a customer typically goes through before making a purchase - attention, interest, desire, action - commonly referred to as the customer journey.

The model serves as a guide for crafting strategies, campaigns and messages that effectively guide potential customers through these sequential stages.

It’s been more than a hundred years since the model was first developed, and yet AIDA remains one of the most well-regarded and useful frameworks in digital marketing.
Why? Because for all the changes in tactics and technologies, the way in which we’re hardwired has stayed the same. AIDA is a framework based on human nature, and for that reason it’s endured.

How We Use the AIDA Model

People are often a little more complicated than our tidy models make them out to be, and it’s easy to go off on a tangent and start drawing the wrong conclusions if there’s no mechanism for ensuring that the model actually tracks reality.
To minimize the influence of guesswork and imagination, we introduced a neat little thing called science.
At its most fundamental, the scientific method consists of formulating a hypothesis, then designing experiments to collect the data that will either confirm or reject that hypothesis

Here’s what that looks like at Drive:

Based on the market research and SWOT analysis we undertake at the start of every new project, we make a best guess as to how we should catch the customer’s interest, capture their interest, spark their desire, and encourage them to action.

Then, we run experiments to confirm or reject those hypotheses, and simply follow the data. This iterative process continues until we’ve narrowed down on the most effective tactics (tools, platforms, and technologies) to achieve our strategic goals.

In practice this involves lots of continuous testing and refinement, but over time this approach allows us to create an AIDA model of the consumer journey that actually tracks with reality, showing us what’s working and what isn’t.

The Importance of Metrics

So how do we know whether our hypothesis can be validated or rejected?

The answer, of course, is data. Digital marketing thrives on powerful data extraction, so we linked every step of the AIDA journey to measurable data points to ensure that our strategy is being guided by facts, and not guesswork.
By running campaigns at every step of the AIDA model, validating each in turn, we generate a funnel that reliably guides prospects through the consumer journey from attention all the way to conversion.

While metrics can vary based on client, offer, and marketplace, the baselines we typically look for are:

This information provides a clear and actionable overview of the current state of marketing efforts, helping us to identify problems, lean into effective approaches, troubleshoot bottlenecks, and adjust our tactics to make optimal use of our budget.

The AIDA model works because it focuses principally on the customer, and on guiding them through the customer journey, rather than on specific methods and tactics, which change with every turning of the season.

For all that, it’s important to keep in mind that there is no “one size fits all” approach. 

While they serve as effective guidelines, the principles of AIDA will apply differently across projects, because every project is unique. In other words, while the overarching strategy may remain consistent, the tactics, or implementation, must be tailored to the project at hand. Effective marketing means staying creative, being able to experiment, to troubleshoot, to think outside the box, and to effectively adapt strategies to an ever-changing digital marketing landscape.