December 2005

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2005</I></div> <div> <I>The following article was first published in the Eastern Daily Press' 'The Business'  on 7 December 2005</I></div> <bR> <div> <B>AIDA - not just waiting for the fat lady to sing</B></div> <bR> <div> How many different marketing strategies do you pursue in your business? Do you plan them carefully and know how well each of them works? When speaking to the owners of small and medium-sized businesses I frequently hear comments like `I don't really do much marketing - customers seem to find us either through recommendations, I guess, or maybe from our advert in the Yellow Pages'. There is rarely much evidence of any specific market research or marketing planning, other than vague allusions to `oh, we tried that once, but it didn't work' or `that's not for us - that's a big business idea'.</div> <bR> <div> There are literally dozens of ways in which a business can market its products or services, and successful organisations usually practice several of them rather than relying solely on one or two old favourites.  They also try new approaches as their business develops.  Here is a list of marketing methods that is by no means exhaustive:</div> <bR> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Advertising: in newspapers or magazines, on radio, TV or cinema, on posters or billboards, on taxis and buses, in the Yellow Pages</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Brochures or leaflets for `door to door' drops or as inserts in magazines</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Newsletters sent to existing or potential customers</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Direct mail campaigns</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Telemarketing:  `cold calling' to arrange sales calls</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Window displays (even the name of the business on a window can attract customers)</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Internet:  website, e-mail campaigns, e-newsletters, inclusion in online business directories, viral marketing</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Mobile phone texting</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">CD-ROMs, DVDs</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Press and public relations</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Networking</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Seminars, open days and exhibitions</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Writing articles</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Radio and TV appearances</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Incentives to provide referrals</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700dc00000000.png" HEIGHT="15" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Just meeting people and telling them about your business</div> <bR> <div> All of these are ways of reaching potential customers, whether merely to create awareness of you and your business or to elicit a direct response to buy your product or service. But I believe it is crucial to remember that in almost all of these strategies there is one fundamental process for generating a response; a process by which people are motivated to act, to buy. To remember that process, sales and marketing professionals since the 1950s have used the acronym AIDA. </div> <bR> <div> A - attention</div> <div> I - interest</div> <div> D - desire</div> <div> A - action</div> <bR> <div> If you want to sell something to someone, first you have to attract their attention.  Observation and research shows that, to do this, you have between 4 and 8 seconds, or about 15 words with which to make the reader or the listener want to learn more.  Newspaper editors have known about this forever - it's one of the reasons good headline writers are so highly prized.</div> <bR> <div> Then, if you get someone's attention, you have only a further 15-30 seconds (two or three sentences) to create an interest in what you're trying to communicate.  If this is successful, you have a good chance of generating the desire in the recipient of your message to take action - in other words to want to deal with you as a business or to buy whatever it is you're selling.  </div> <bR> <div> Whether your marketing message is in written form (on paper or on a web page or an e-mail) or is verbal, the AIDA adage holds true. So, despite the old joke about opera - `it's not over until the fat lady sings' - I'd suggest that it's only really over when your marketing message has been effective and you've made the sale.</div> </td> <td valign="top" width=180 BGCOLOR="#CC3333" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>