How accurate customer insight can improve marketing

Without accurate customer insight, you could be marketing to the wrong stage of the AIDA model.

To develop effective advertising campaigns, marketers have been using variations of the AIDA marketing model for more than 100 years.  Channelling potential customers through developing Awareness, generating Interest, then creating Desire through to prompting Action can been seen underpinning advertising across every media channel in use today.  It has been a hugely successful model based on implicit customer insight.

However we are still not using AIDA to its full extent.  If we rewrite the AIDA model from a customer insight perspective, we can access a range of new marketing opportunities to improve marketing effectiveness.

 

Why is a customer insight model important?

In order to reach any destination, it is essential to understand both where you are starting from and where you are going.  AIDA on its own only provides the destinations i.e. customers become aware, interested, desiring then taking action.  However, the CARD Group Customer Insight model provides the start points from which to influence customer behaviour in order to progress to each of the AIDA stages.

We look at the buying process from the customer’s perspective.  Customers start from a position of Ignorance in relation to the product or service.  Once aware, customers are likely to be Apathetic until we cultivate interest.  If we do this successfully the customer will be Affected by what we have to say, and from there we can present an opportunity to Enable the customer to take action.

The CARD Group customer insight model profiles potential consumers across four stages: Ignorant –> Apathetic –> Affected -> Enabled.

So how do we know at what stage customers are in the model?  This is where CARD Group customer research can help marketers to understand at what stage potential customers are on the customer insight model.

Our research can identify common attributes characterising each customer insight stage for your product or service.

These attributes can then be incorporated into your marketing planning to create the most effective strategy for moving potential customers from their current customer insight stage to the corresponding stage in the AIDA model from Ignorance to Awareness, from Apathy to Interest, from Affected to Desire and from Enabled to Action.

There is one major benefit, in particular, of using customer research to find out at what stage potential customers are in the model and the corresponding attributes.  As marketing planning can be accurately focused on addressing the precise needs of potential customers as they move through each stage, customer journey time can be reduced leading to faster achievement of marketing objectives.

Contact CARD Group to discuss how we can provide you with the underlying components of customer insight in our research.  We partner with clients across Ireland, the UK and Europe.