AIDA model explained: Examples and tips for using this strategic marcomms planning model the real world

The AIDA model, tracing the customer journey through Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action, is perhaps the best-known marketing model amongst all the classic marketing models. Many marketers find AIDA useful since we apply this model daily, whether consciously or subconsciously, when we're planning our marketing communications strategy.

What is the AIDA model?

The AIDA Model identifies cognitive stages an individual goes through during the buying process for a product or service. It's a purchasing funnel where buyers go to and fro at each stage, to support them in making the final purchase. It's no longer a relationship purely between the buyer and the company since social media has extended it to achieving the different goals of AIDA via information added by other customers via social networks and…

Review how to integrate digital marketing into your marketing team's structure through Digital Transformation

The latest Smart Insights research study shows how common Digital Transformation projects or programme are today with 30% already having a programme up & running and 31% planning to within the next year. Yet, digital transformation doesn’t occur overnight. There are a series of steps to go through to get there and the critical factor is the staff. Imagine a world where your Digital Working Party, Digital Group, or Digital Collective is in place, they’ve had several meetings and agreed on an action plan! What’s next? Let's take look at options and examples of how you structure your digital team. Also, crucially, what does this mean in terms of your marketing funnel? We've got marketing tools and templates to support you in building a strong digital strategy, and structuring your marketing team to get the most…

Three Go-to-Market models to help you strategize, plan and deliver

Business and marketing go-to-market strategy is an essential component in the delivery of any successful product, service, or promotional launch/campaign. We’ve written extensively at Smart Insights about the importance of defining a target audience, producing a clear value proposition and optimizing the right marketing mix; just three elements of good marketing strategy to help ensure brands create a competitive advantage, deliver value for customers and generate profit for the business. However, the success of any strategy is dependent on how this is ultimately executed and within this post, I’d like to look at a few different ways this can be brought to life as part of a Go-to-Market (GTM) plan. [si_guide_block id="21479" title="Download our Premium Resource – Business marketing plan guide" description="A marketing plan provides focus, defines the approaches to grow your market share, expand products or move into new markets and ensures you…

Audit your content and SEO with our content strategy tool to get more from your content marketing

One of the biggest appeals of digital marketing is that it's data-driven - we can readily review the effectiveness of our activities and make informed improvements. This is particularly true for using content marketing and SEO to attract and convert visitors to lead or sale. Yet, the tools that are available within analytics to help us visualize and optimize our content haven't really changed since I've been involved in digital marketing. If you dig into the Behaviour reports in Google Analytics you still see long lists of Top Content and Landing pages to try to interpret. Using content groups in Google Analytics can help simplify by grouping related content. Although you can sort the lists, it's not easy to identify which content is performing well and can be enhanced and which is under-performing…

Use the honeycomb model to help inform your social media strategy

Back in 2011, a group of professors from Canada; Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens and Ian McCarthy created the Honeycomb Model to review social media effectiveness, looking at reasons why users engage with social media. The idea behind the honeycomb model is that of the 7 key building blocks delineated by the model, companies can select the ones most relevant to their business, and focus their attention on the key functionalities. [si_blog_banner_cta] We created this simple table to help you evaluate each of the seven blocks, so you can decide which ones, and how many, your organization should focus on.

Social media building blocks:

Identity: Data privacy controls and tools for user self-promotion Presence: Creating and managing the reality, intimacy and immediacy of the context Relationships: Managing the structural and flow properties in a network…

The RACE Framework and PASTA model are complementary models for your marketing communications plan, one is strategic and one is operational, get started today to win more customers

Commercial as well as non-profit organizations, routinely confront these typical questions about a marketing communications plan: Do we need social media? How do we introduce our new website? What can we do to publicize our eCommerce Store? How do we introduce our new product? How will our market share rise? These are five commonly asked questions that require marketing and communications expertise. In this article, we will address 2 complementary models for your marketing communications plan - the RACE Framework and PASTA model. Whether it be a strategic plan, a business plan, a marketing plan, or a communications strategy, marketing communication planning requires systematic, step-by-step development that takes into account elements of all the other types of plans. This article describes the PASTA method, a new…

A practical tool for linking business or digital vision with goals, objectives, strategies and KPIs

What do you want to achieve and how will you get there? OGSM is a widely-used approach for getting focus to translate a vision into business and marketing strategy.

What is OGSM?

OGSM stands for objective, goals, strategies and measures. It's a way of defining what you want to achieve, and how you will get there. The model divides your aims into broad objectives, fixed and measurable goals, strategies to guide your actions, and measures to give you a direct way of monitoring your progress. Here is how the parts of the OGSM model link together. Here's a more specific definition of OGSM: Objective: Defining an over-arching breakthrough vision Stable, concise and linked to company mission Goals: Stepping stones to achieving the higher level objective Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Compatible Strategies: the choices we make to…

Do you know your 4Cs from your 4Cs? Read more about these two marketing models, plus find practical examples to apply to your marketing strategy

What is the 4Cs marketing model? Two groups of marketers have created the 4Cs marketing model. This often leads to confusion about what’s being discussed and where! Let’s clarify the two models:  The 4Cs to replace the 4Ps of the marketing mix: Consumer wants and needs; Cost to satisfy; Convenience to buy and Communication (Lauterborn, 1990).  The 4Cs for marketing communications: Clarity; Credibility; Consistency and Competitiveness (Jobber and Fahy, 2009).

Lauterborn’s 4Cs: Consumer wants and needs; Cost to satisfy; Convenience to buy and Communication

What is it? In 1990 Bob Lauterborn wrote an article in Advertising Age saying how the 4Ps (he didn’t address the 7Ps) were dead and today’s marketer needed to address the real…

A strategic digital marketing model of technology acceptance for those looking to bring about digital transformation

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is designed to measure the adoption of new technology based on customer attitudes. TAM is largely credited to Fred Davis in 1986, when he was part of the Computer and Information Systems, Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Michigan in the US. Although there are now many variations of the model, the original Technology Acceptance Model is agreed as the following: This was at a time when computers were being introduced into the workplace and Davis was looking for a way to predict and explain system use both for vendors and IT managers. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Free digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template is structured across the Smart Insights RACE Framework. Join Smart Insights…

Tool for structuring thinking about one of the crucial 4Ps of marketing: The Promotion Pyramid

The Promotion Pyramid is a strategic marketing model digital marketers use to plan marketing activity in relation to the breadth of audience targeted and the resource required (financial and staff time). McCarthy's 4Ps of the Marketing Mix famously highlights 4 of the most crucial elements of marketing strategy: Price, Product, Place and Promotion. There is much discussion of the relevance of the 4Ps today which we cover here, but suffice to say we think these are still key strategy considerations for businesses of all scales - that's where the Promotion Pyramid comes in.

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When thinking about promotion online, digital marketers all too often try to rush into starting campaigns without properly analyzing the merits of different tactics and channels. The resulting approach wastes resources in the long run because the lack of a proper…