Using the AIDA Principle to cut Adwords costs

At any given time, Google will only display 11 Google Search Ads at most on their search results pages (SERPS). If you want to be seen here amongst your competitors, you’ve got to be prepared to part with the dollars. But what if we could reach new customers while paying a fraction of the cost?

Let’s first look at how buyers learn about and eventually go on to buy our products and services.

The AIDA principle

This acronym essentially walks us through the sales process. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. A potential customer typically goes through these stages before buying:

Targeting prospects in the early buying stages.

In our paid search campaigns, we can target specific keywords around the Attention and Interest stages – and they’re significantly cheaper than words at the Action stage. Let’s look at the examples below:

Just bidding on these cheaper keywords isn’t enough, we need to connect with this person and educate them on why your product or service is best. We do this with persuasive ad copy, engaging content on our landing page such as videos, calculators, and case studies, and a strong call to action.

But I still need to target the buying keywords!

Yes, and this is true. We still need to target those customers ‘ready to buy’ but ideally, we should be spending some of our marketing budget on a more long term cost effective search engine optimisation strategy, boosting your site’s organic rankings, building trust with your audience and ultimately positioning yourself as the authority in your marketplace.