Attention, Interest, Decision, Action

“AIDA. Attention. Interest. Decision. Action. Attention. Do I have your attention? Interest. Are you interested? I know you are ‘cause it’s f*ck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks. Decision. Have you made your decision for Christ? And action. AIDA. Get out there.”

• Blake, Glengarry Glen Ross

Of all the copywriting formulas out there. AIDA is probably the most famous.

The quote above comes from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Blake is played by Alec Baldwin and spends all of 8 minutes in the movie delivering sales rev up speech to end all speeches.

It’s abusive, direct, and designed to do nothing but make the sales team squirm and fire up.

It’s easy to distract yourself with 100 things with marketing but ultimately all efforts come down to one thing: selling.

Why do 10 things when you can do 1?

AIDA is one of the most direct ways to get there.

Let’s break down each step with lots of examples to help you get there.

Attention.

What do you know about your customer that’s interesting about them and will cut through? With your opening gambit you’re not trying to win right away, you’re saying “I’m bringing this to you because it’s worth stopping for”.

Let’s say I was trying to get your attention for this book. Some examples with different styles could be:

• In the time it takes to scroll down this page, I’ll show you how to avoid getting overwhelmed by marketing forever.
• Learn marketing you can actually do today.
• Here’s how you can learn marketing and do-it-yourself.

Attention grabbing openers benefit from repeated tries and learning what works with your audience.

Interest.

This can be an elevator pitch, a declaration, a challenge, or an insight that shows you know what you’re talking about.

Let’s build out some examples again:

• If you’ve ever wasted money on Facebook or Google ads, this book will show you a better way.
• A powerful method for gaining customers that’s repeatable and gets better over time.
• You can learn the hard way, or the harder way this book requires work but it’s still better than countless Google searches.

Decision.

If connected well, there’s now the opportunity to invite a decision directly asking the customer if they’d prefer to keep things how they are or do something about the situation.

I was at a tantra workshop weekend that had an exercise called “The Forest”. Genders alternated being blindfolded, caressed, and fed sweets. I still laugh at what the facilitator asked:

“Does any man here not want to be blindfolded and fed chocolate by women?”

Your decision prompt moves the consideration towards taking action.

Action.

What does the customer need to do to buy what you’re selling? It could be clicking to order, making the call, purchasing the package.

Good salespeople are cycling towards action in nearly every engagement. The faster action is requested, the faster the prospect can decide if it’s for them, or if it’s not. Either way, that’s what the salesperson is focused on to optimise their time.

Wording what you’re offering this way can be done in a short paragraph, or a 60min demonstration video. The structure remains the same.

There are a lot more frameworks for writing, but there’s a balance between learning more theory and simply taking action, writing the words, and putting it out there.

Another reason there’s a preference for getting started and rapidly getting feedback is because it’s going to be…