Ignite Your Copy with This Hot Strategy

Greetings! You will love this week’s Web-writing video, as Heather takes it waaaay back old school with her SEO copywriting how-to on writing content the AIDA way.

So what is AIDA? Glad you asked. It’s an acronym for: “Attention, Interest, Desire, Action” and is one of those tried-and-true, powerful copywriting strategies that when skillfully applied, can take your Web writing from lukewarm to smokin’ hot!

Tune in as Heather reveals the magic and mojo of this old-school copywriting strategy:

What’s AIDA?

• Acronym developed in the late 1800’s.
• Describes the common phases people go through when viewing an advertisement (or a landing page!)
• Oldie but goodie – AIDA is still relevant today.

AIDA is an acronym created in the late 1880’s by an advertising executive, describing the common phases most people go through when viewing an (effective) advertisement: attention, interest, desire, then action.

So the elements that you want to have in your copy move people through the sales funnel, from “Oh, this is kinda interesting” to “Oh! I need to buy this right now!”

AIDA is an “oldie but goodie” and still highly relevant today, especially in terms of your landing pages. When people do that search and click on your SERP listing, and then hit your site’s landing page, you want that page to be completely relevant to their needs – particularly if it’s a sales page!

This means that you’ll have to write your content in a certain way that grabs their attention and compels them to take that next conversions step.

So, let’s talk about what AIDA means:

A = Attention

• It’s important to immediately grab the reader’s attention.
• Think about your headlines. Are they compelling?
• To be truly effective, you need to write something that resonates with your target audience.

The first “A” is for Attention: you want to immediately grab the reader’s attention. A lot of times this is done with a compelling headline, although certainly your body copy has to be really powerful, too.

To be truly effective, you need to write something that resonates with your target audience. Heather’s discussed the importance of developing a customer persona and creating content that clicks with your target market many times before, via the SEO Copywriting blog and her YouTube SEO Copywriting channel.

So instead of writing this generalized copy that appeals to everyone, you need to think about the person who is actually going to be visiting your site and looking at your products and services: you want to be sure that your copy speaks to her, directly.

I = Interest

• You’ve got their attention. Now you have to grab their interest.
• This is where your benefit statements and “what’s in it for me” comes into play.
• The benefits need to be targeted towards your specific audience.

You’ve got their attention: you’ve written that killer headline and drawn them into the copy – now, you have to grab their interest.

This is where your precision benefit statements and targeted “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM) messages come into play. You’ll notice Heather’s got her WIIFM guy in the screenshot, because again, you’re writing content in a way that is going to resonate with the specific folks who are coming to your site: your target audience. Your benefit statements have to be directed towards them.

So when you’re developing your customer persona, think about who these people are and what is important to them, and make sure your content speaks to that.

D = Desire

• You’ve got their interest. Now it’s time to spark their desire.
• Special pricing, additional features and testimonials help build that desire.
• You’re psychologically helping your prospect feel better about the purchase/contacting you.
• Help them picture working with you/using your product.

So you’ve got their attention and their interest: now it’s time to get your prospects really thinking that they want your product or your service.

http://www.seocopywriting.com/content-marketing/direct-reponse-copywriting/does-your-copywriting-convert/

Special pricing offers, bonus goodies and testimonials can be highly effective in nudging your prospects towards making the buy decision. What you’re doing is moving them along the conversion funnel, from “Yeah, you’ve got my attention” to “Yeah! I think that this is something I’m really interested in!”

You want to help your prospects to picture working with you, or using your product.

And finally, it all comes down to….

A = Action

This is where that main conversion happens!

• Your prospect is ready to buy/convert. Make it easy for them.
• Add calls to action to your content.
• Don’t clutter the page and make it confusing.

Your prospects are now ready to buy, to convert, to do whatever it is you want them to do – the key is to make it easy for them.

And this is where a lot of sites fall down: they want people to buy that product, but they make it hard to do so, or they want people to contact them, but then they bury that contact information so it’s really difficult for folks to take that next step.

So make sure that it’s really clear what your prospects need to do to take action, and make sure that it’s really easy to do so!

Some e-commerce folks have that “add to cart” icon on the upper right corner of their home page, which is great. But you can also consider adding a call-to-action to your content.

Another mistake some site owners make is assuming that since their prospects are ready to buy, then it’s an opportune time to throw a bunch of other things at them. This is not the case: you don’t want to confuse or overwhelm your would-be buyers by cluttering up the page. Keep it clear, clean and simple.

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s SEO copywriting how-to, and have a great week (and for U.S. folks, a great holiday weekend)! We’ll be back with another hot SEO Copywriting video tip on the Monday following Memorial Day – June 4th. See you then!

Related reading: Angie Nikoleychuk wrote a fantastic guest post for us about AIDA as it relates to link bait. Check out How to seduce readers and woo – bait – links. Thanks for the inspiration, Angie! :)

Want to learn how to Google-proof your Web copy post-Panda & Penguin? Sign up for the free SEO Copywriting Buzz newsletter, either daily or weekly, and get your free copy of Heather’s How to write for Google whitepaper!

photo thanks to EvanLovely