Hey Reader,
AIDA doesn’t stand for “am I the a$$hole”.
It’s a marketing funnel structure that’s all about funneling audiences to purchases.
I first learned the term in my Publishing Media Masters and was re-introduced a few years ago in course creation and email marketing spheres.
For some reason, bloggers don’t really use funnels on their site.
But y’all should!
I grew from $6k months to $30k months on my travel blog by setting up AIDA funnels - without any new traffic.
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AIDA stands for:
- Awareness: Make your audience aware of a topic/brand/activity
- Interest: Audience engages with your brand/follows you
- Desire: Audience considers a purchase and starts evaluating your offers
- Action: Audience purchases from you
Most diagrams you’ll find online are specific to businesses offering things like subscription services, so I made one just for bloggers:
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Most blogs tend to stick to the Awareness and Interest phases, with listicles of things to do, tips, and kind of generic introductions to topics.
I’ve done it, too!
Those tend to be the posts with the highest volume keywords or that get the most saves on Pinterest.
But they aren’t going to make your site profitable.
You need posts at every phase of the AIDA funnel, and then to send your audience to make a purchase either of an affiliate or of your own products/services.
I make sure every topic cluster on my site has 1 post in the A-I-D sections of the funnel.
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Let’s use last week’s example of a solo female travel blog with its Safety topic cluster. In the posts I suggested, I moved the audience through the funnel. Did you notice?
- General safety tips for solo female travel (Awareness)
- Is solo female travel dangerous? (Awareness)
- Protecting against pickpocketing (+ other posts on protecting against common solo female safety concerns) (Interest)
- How to dress to avoid unwanted male attention (Interest)
- Is X location safe for women? (Interest / Desire)
- Staying safe in hotel rooms (Interest / Desire)
- Solo female travel safety essential items (Desire)
- Travel insurance for solo female travel (Desire)
I took the audience on a journey from learning about solo travel safety, to understanding practical tips for their trips, to purchasing items that will keep them safe.
I could also have sent them to a safety course or e-book, or even a virtual self defense class.
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Don’t get too hung up on the classifications of Awareness vs. Interest vs. Desire.
People tend to overthink which posts belong in which section.
It’s very likely that you’ll have posts in the Awareness and Interest phases. Focus more on making sure you have posts in the Desire phase that clearly lead to some sort of purchase/action.
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Some of the posts, like the travel insurance one, likely won’t rank.
Travel insurance became a YMYL type of post in the September Helpful Content Update because it kind of deals with finances and medicine.
But it’d be weird if I never mentioned travel insurance on the site. In fact, most audiences will want to know your specific views on it once they trust you.
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Let’s do another example with SEO.
​She Knows SEO has a topic cluster about Internal Linking that I’ve been working on. If it’s italicized, I haven’t written the post yet.
Here’s how I structured and categorized it:
- What is internal linking (Awareness)
- In context link vs. read more section (Awareness / Interest)
- How many internal links per blog post (Interest)
- Internal link anchor text (Interest)
- Should internal links be no follow or do follow (Interest)
- Should you internal link between categories (Interest)
- How to add internal links with ChatGPT (Interest / Desire - for ChatGPT course)
- Link Whisper review (Desire)
- How to use Link Whisper (Desire)
- How to use Link Whisper for affiliate links (Desire)
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Remember, I treat each topic cluster as a Table of Contents for the topic. Each of the posts in the topic cluster becomes a “chapter” in my imaginary ebook on the topic.
It sends the audience on a clear journey to have a single transformation, and to ultimately purchase something to help with that transformation.
In this case, it’s a Link Whisper license. But it could also be one of my SEO courses or my ChatGPT Blogging Blueprint course.
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How does my audience move through this funnel?
Internal linking!
I link all of the posts in a topic cluster together, and end each post on a CTA internal link.
We’ll talk about that next week in depth.
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Cheers,
Nina
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