The AIDA framework: why we build every script on it

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, action, and it is a running order for anything you write that is meant to make someone do something. You grab them, you keep them, you make them want it, you tell them what to do next. That is the whole thing, and it is the skeleton under nearly every script we write at Zoshl.

I will be honest about how it landed on my radar. I listen to a lot of My First Million podcasts, and Sam Parr mentions this framework more than once. My thinking was not especially deep: if it is good enough for him, it is good enough for me. Then I went and read about where it came from, and it turns out it is older than the podcast by about a century.

What does AIDA actually mean?

Four steps, in order, and the order is the point.

• Attention. Something makes them stop. A line, a number, a face, a question that pokes them.
• Interest. They keep reading or watching, because you are talking about something they recognise as their own problem.
• Desire. They start wanting the outcome. Not your service. The outcome.
• Action. You tell them the one thing to do next, plainly.

The Marketing Museum calls it "one of marketing history's most successful simplifications", and says "its four terms provided advertising and sales practitioners with a common language for the movement from perception to behaviour".

That phrase, the movement from perception to behaviour, is doing a lot of work in a small space. It means the gap between someone noticing you exist and someone picking up the phone. Most small business posts try to jump that gap in one leap, and most of them do not make it.

Think of it like asking someone out, which is the analogy I keep coming back to even though it makes me cringe slightly. You do not open with the wedding venue. You say hello, you find something you have in common, they start to think this could be alright, and only then does anyone suggest a drink on Thursday. Posting a price list on day one is the wedding venue opener.

Is there any actual evidence, or is it just a nice acronym?

This was my worry too, because marketing is full of tidy acronyms invented by someone who needed four slides and a lunch break.

Girard Media writes that "fMRI studies show purchase decisions activate attention networks first, then analytical regions, then emotional centers, and finally motor planning areas in the exact order AIDA predicts". So the brain does attention, then thinking, then feeling, then getting ready to move, in that sequence. Someone put people in a scanner and the old acronym was sitting there in the pictures, which, honestly, is mad.

The same piece says "brands that structure their content strategy around this framework consistently outperform ad-hoc approaches, with A/B tests showing AIDA-structured landing pages converting 23-47% higher than unstructured alternatives".

Have a look at the bottom of that range before you get excited about the top. Twenty three per cent more enquiries from the same traffic, the same offer and the same photos, just because the words are in a sensible order. For a one van plumber that might be one extra job a month. For a salon it might be a full Saturday. Nobody is spending anything extra. The sentences have just been shuffled into the order the brain was going to use anyway.

What that means in practice is that most of your writing problem is not talent. It is sequence. You already know what you do and why it is good. You are just saying it back to front.

Why do so many small business posts die at the first line?

Because the first line is usually an introduction, and nobody asked for an introduction.

Here is the opener I see constantly: "At Smith and Sons we pride ourselves on quality workmanship." That is not attention. That is a man standing up at a wedding and tapping a glass before anyone knows who he is. The attention step has to be about them, or about something odd, or about a number that makes someone's eyebrows move.

Compare those two openers:

• "At Smith and Sons we pride ourselves on quality workmanship."
• "Nine out of ten leaky taps we get called to were fixed by someone else last year."

The second one is a thing that happened. It makes you want the next sentence. That is all attention has to do: buy you the next sentence.

Then interest is where you name the problem better than they could name it themselves. "It drips again after three weeks and you start to wonder if you are going mad." They feel seen, so they stay.

Desire is the outcome, with one specific detail attached. Not "we offer a professional service". More like "we replace the whole valve, not the washer, which is why we have not been back to one twice this year". Specifics are what desire runs on, because vague claims slide straight off.

Action is one instruction. One. "Send us a photo of the tap on WhatsApp and we will tell you if it is a ten minute job." Not "get in touch to discuss your requirements", which is the writing equivalent of a locked door with a bell that does not work.

How do you use AIDA in a 30 second video?

This is where it earns its keep, because short video punishes waffle harder than anything else.

A talking head script of about 30 seconds is roughly 75 words, which is not many. AIDA tells you exactly where they go:

• Attention, 5 seconds. One line. The number, the question, the thing people get wrong.
• Interest, 10 seconds. The problem in their words, the version they would describe to a mate.
• Desire, 10 seconds. What changes when it is sorted, with one concrete detail.
• Action, 5 seconds. One ask, said out loud, with no hedging.

The nice thing about a skeleton like that is you stop writing and start filling in. A blank screen is horrible. Four small boxes with labels on them is a Tuesday morning job you can do with a cup of tea.

It also stops the most common video mistake, which is spending twenty seconds on who you are and then running out of road. If AIDA is right about the order the brain works in, and the scans suggest it is, then front loading your own CV is like handing someone a menu after they have eaten.

AIDA is not the only shape worth knowing, by the way. Problem and solution, myth and truth, before and after: they all work, and I have written about why frameworks make posting so much easier elsewhere. AIDA is just the one with the longest service record and, apparently, the brain scans. Which brings me back to what we do with it.

Where Zoshl uses this

When you make something in Zoshl, you are not getting a random pile of sentences with your logo stuck on top. The scripts are built on structures like this one, chosen to suit the topic.

To be specific about it:

• Talking head videos are written as a short script in six parts: hook, problem, proof, how it works, what changes, the ask. That is AIDA with the middle opened out, because video gives you room to prove a thing before you ask for anything.
• Carousels run four to seven slides with a cover, the middle slides and a closing call to action, built on proven structures such as problem and solution, myth and truth, how to, tips list, before and after, and varied from one carousel to the next so they do not all feel the same.
• Posts give you five options for the line, so you can pick the one that actually grabs attention rather than the first thing written.
• The copy check on carousels suggests improvements one at a time, each with a reason, so you can see why a line is weak instead of just being told it is.

The writing comes from what you have told Zoshl about the business: what you do, who for, customer questions, your real reviews, your own words. It will not invent a number or a quote or a review. Statistic, quote and myth buster posts look up real, sourced facts on the web, which is the same rule I am following in this post. If you want to poke at the details, the help centre spells out how all of it works.

What Zoshl cannot do is know your business better than you. It can put your words in the order that works, and hand them back in your colours and your typeface, and you can change any of it for free. The judgement on whether that is really how you talk stays with you.

The bit I keep having to relearn

I am not a natural at this, and I still get the little voice asking who I am to tell anyone how to write a sentence. The honest answer is that I am not teaching from a lectern here. I am using a framework a lot of cleverer people used first, and I nicked it off a podcast.

That is the quiet gift in something like AIDA. You do not have to be a copywriter. You have to put four things in the right order, and the order was worked out long before either of us turned up.

Try it on one post this week. Write your four boxes, fill them in, read it back and see whether the first line would make a stranger stay for the second. If it would not, that is the only bit you need to rewrite.