Opera aficionados recognize “Aida” as an Italian opera created by Giuseppe Verdi in the late 1800s to dramatize the tension of love, loyalty and slavery in ancient Egypt. However, the modern Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or marketing professional should recognize “AIDA” as a prime directive; one that must be strategically planned for, meticulously managed, accurately measured and refined on a daily basis.
AIDA in marketing terms is an acronym (yes, more acronyms to deal with) that represents the stages of a marketing funnel. Just as sales has a funnel from opportunity to satisfied customer, the marketing version uncovers (or establishes) the journey from suspect to opportunity. If you aren’t familiar with this acronym, AIDA stands for:
- Awareness: sometimes also called “Attention”, this first stage is required to attract attention to your company and/or solution by establishing a context for conversation. The people you are able to engage at this first level of the funnel would be your “suspects” because you will need to determine the number and type (profile) of Suspects necessary to maintain the appropriate flow through your desired marketing funnel in order to achieve success.Typical effective marketing strategies here focus on PR/AR (press and analyst) relations, social media and of course your web presence.
- Interest: Your pool of suspects will yield a subset of individuals who will show interest in your company and/or solution based on the marketing programs you used to generate awareness. These individuals are classified as “prospects” and will need to be further educated and motivated in order to determine if a Budget, Authority, Need and set Timeframe (BANT) can be established or if this is just another “tire-kicking”, free consulting expecting, tchotchke whore.Typical effective marketing strategies here focus on webcasts, content syndication and tradeshows.
- Desire: Your pool of prospects will yield a subset of individuals who can be classified as “Leads”. This is the stage when you can start getting sales involved, or if in a true low-touch model then use marketing nurture campaigns in order to flush out all of BANT. At this stage you have convinced the prospect that they do have a need but maybe have not convinced them that a compelling event exists.Typical effective marketing strategies here focus on specific nurture campaign (whitepapers, seminars, webcasts, case studies, …) to drive recognition of BANT.
- Action: Your pool of leads will yield a subset of individuals who can legitimately be classified as “Opportunities”. At this stage in the journey the individual is actively evaluating a solution; preferably only yours but likely to include some competition for comparison shopping so it’s time for sales to take ownership and this person moves from the marketing funnel into the sales funnel.Typical effective marketing strategies here focus on very well made websites for in-depth research and calculated use of CTA buttons (Call To Action) whereby you solicit more information in exchange for specific information or sales tools. It doesn’t hurt to also have an inside sales or telemarketing team do specific outbound calls for personal interaction, qualification and engagement.
As the players in Aida, the opera, take the journey through love, loyalty and slavery, so too will a diligent marketing professional learn to love the art of building and managing the AIDA funnel, become loyal to the programs that show predictable results at each stage and become slave (in a positive way) to the marketing laws of physics that govern success.
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