5 Things The Super Successful Marketing Funnels Do Better Than Everyone Else
We’ve all seen those ‘Top [insert random number here] List of Random Facts’ and like most people I typically get sucked into reading half the list, but I recently came across a historical factoid that left me intrigued, informed and curious. So, like usual, I did some digging to verify it (expecting to discover that it was yet another false fact) and turns out it was 100% true.
Frank Hutchinson Dukesmith back in 1907 published the AIDA theory of selling. He was the only editor of the little-known publication The Air Brake Magazine, and he created a sales course for air brake purveyors that focused on the teachings of AIDA.
So what is AIDA? It’s the simple (but revolutionary in the early 1900s) concept that drives all marketing and subsequent sales from said marketing. Simply put, it stands for Attract, Interest, Desire and Action – AIDA.
Attract: founding father of modern marketing David Ogilvy once said, “When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents of your dollar.” At its core, marketing must attract an audience first and foremost, and headlines do the work here.
Interest: Once you’ve attracted an audience, you want to get them curious about what your message represents. This comes through appeal statements and demonstrating the worth of your product or service.
Desire: Interest may be a fairly low bar to clear. Now comes the hard part: to get pure desire and make your audience feel that they absolutely need your product in their lives.
Action: Finally, you want to create a call to action strong enough to form leads to take action and buy your product. This is often the foremost important step within the campaign.
Sure thing! And it makes sense because once you pitch the big marketing message, pull your client into a familiar journey. Get their attention, generate interest, make them want it, show them the way to get in on it.
This concept has worked for many years – a century actually, but in the world of conversions and funnel building, AIDA just isn’t enough.
In order to create a high-converting funnel, you need to take the century old AIDA and update it for our modern digital marketing times.
Meet The New AIDA: AEIST
While AEIST isn’t obviously as catchy or buzzy as AIDA, and it’s not even a real word, it is the new AIDA of digital marketing. It’s with great pleasure that I introduce you to AEIST!
Attract: One of this is unarguable, that no marketing campaign can get off the ground, let alone succeed, if it doesn’t attract the right audience. And this is where the new AEIST comes into play. In a digital marketing funnel these attractions come from many sources; social media, paid media, organic traffic, affiliates, blog posts, webinars, emails and more.
Engage: This is where we partner up interest with desire, and we make the new couple very engaged (see what I did there). AIDA is a one-way communication method meant to incite one purchase, and that’s where the relationship with the buyer ends. But AEIST knows it’s better for long-term sales to keep customers engaged and coming back.
Inform: Content drives this action. Informing someone might not appear to be a really conversion-oriented action but in reality you’re not just education or informing your customer you’re trying to push them (lightly) to interact with your content and at times, with each other.
This is also where lead magnets are most often utilized.
You offer a content rich and very informative ebook that entertains as it educates in exchange for a visitor’s email address.
Now, your site visitor has just entered your marketing funnel and didn’t even realize it. But that’s okay because, after all, you provided some very helpful information in exchange. Now you can market to them via email and through your content they’ll trust you enough to purchase.
Sell & Upsell: You’ve attracted, and you’ve informed (engaged) and now it’s time to sell. This is when you’ve moved on to your revenue-generating offer. Your customer is in the funnel, and it’s time to make your sales pitch with a product page and offer, video sales letter, well written article or post and a strong call-to-action.
Don’t jump the shark on this step! Take your time to attract, engage, inform and develop a relationship with your customer (through an automated funnel with ServerWise preferably). If you go for the sale too soon, the customer will lose faith and trust and will simply unsubscribe, and it’s over.
Warm up your customers first with valuable content before going in for the sale.
Upsell: An upsell must always follow a sell. Simple as that.
In an upsell, you’re trying to persuade your customer to purchase a product that is related to the one your customer has already purchased from you. Depending on the upsell you can anticipate an average of 30% of your customers to jump on the upsell train and make that additional purchase.
You already have them buying one item from you – why not try for two or three!
Thanks: I like to think this one is self-explanatory and if thanking someone for purchasing, subscribing and trusting you isn’t obvious, well, we’re not going to get along. So that’s the last one – THANK your lead/customer/subscriber and mean it!
It’s the sales page where the magic happens. This is the page that gives you a return on your marketing investment. It is on this page where we convert visitors to paying customers. Do you know the valuable elements of a high-converting sales page? You will soon. Keep Learning >
Content marketing is the backbone of the biggest success stories over the last decade. I’m referring to companies like Zomato, Canva, ThinkGeek, HootSuite and even Blendtec. It’s not surprising that so many brands are focusing on content marketing, given the average ROI is twice any other type of digital marketing. Keep Learning >