Your content is only useful if it attracts potential patients’ attention, generates interest, creates conviction, and motivates them to schedule an appointment with you. For as long as your content follows this formula, it’ll be successful in helping you achieve business goals.
But what’s that formula?
AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.
What is AIDA?
It is a framework that acts as a guide to your healthcare marketing activities and makes your content useful, engaging, and informative.
The AIDA concept marketing model is a valuable tool in understanding the patient journey and effectively engaging with them through various marketing channels.
AIDA Model Explained!
The AIDA marketing model is designed to help healthcare marketers understand the patients’ minds. Made famous in 1898 by American marketing innovator Elias St. Elmo Lewis, this model explains the journey of turning prospects into patients by following specific steps. Missing even one of the following four steps could negatively impact your marketing strategy’s effectiveness. Here are the four steps of the AIDA model:
Stage #1: Awareness: Getting a potential patient’s attention and making him or her aware of your services.
At this stage of the AIDA approach, make potential patients aware of your brand and service. The different types of content generally used at this stage are videos, advertisements, podcasts, and social media posts.
Your biggest challenge at this stage could be attracting the attention of prospects. You can’t engage with them if they don’t know you exist. In this digital marketing age, when your target audience is looking at hundreds of marketing messages every day, how will you make sure that they notice you over competitors?
Well, to attract their attention, you may need to be innovative in your approach and try one or a combination of the following ways:
- Share striking pictures with witty captions.
- Use bold graphics to attract visitors to your website.
- Create an entertaining video informing prospects of your services.
- Include provocative graphics on social media pages.
The idea is to startle the prospects into paying attention. However, be careful about being innovative – there’s a fine line between being smart and annoying.
Stage #2: Interest: Creating an interest in your service.
After you gain your prospect’s interest, you need to retain it—a milestone that can be harder to achieve than attracting attention in the first place. You’ve piqued the interest of your target audience enough to click a link or watch a video, but how will you keep them engaged?
This stage of AIDA model marketing uses website content, newsletters, blogs, and email campaigns to engage prospects.
Retaining prospects’ interest will become easier if you create and share informative and entertaining videos. Try to keep your web page light with short text paragraphs and break them up with quirky headings and exciting graphics.
Stage #3: Desire: Stirring up a desire to choose your services over competitors’.
As you build your prospects’ interest, you have to tell them how your service is better than competitors. This is where you persuade your target audience that they need your service to solve their health-related problem.
In this stage, you want to emphasize the features and benefits of your service and show how they are different from your competitors’ services. Remember, instead of focusing on features, focus more on the benefits.
Stage #4: Action: Getting the prospect to visit your practice.
After you gain prospects’ attention, retain interest, and create desire, you need a call to action (CTA) to compel the potential patient to schedule the appointment. You can add a link to schedule an appointment on your website, sign up for a free consultation, or have your staff call the prospect to understand their requirements.
Essentially, this means you need to compel the prospects to stop looking at competitors’ websites and visit your office.
Conclusion
There are many benefits of using the AIDA marketing model for your medical practice. You will be able to grow the patient base, increase revenue, and generate more profits.
Since you can understand every step in the patient journey, you can influence your prospects’ decision by implementing different marketing tactics for each stage, right from consideration to scheduling appointments. That is the power of knowledge!
Want to know how healthcare marketing experts at Practice Builders can help you leverage the AIDA marketing model for your medical practice? Contact us today!