I was challenged to demonstrate the causal relationship between generating awareness and revenue. Intuitively, I believe the relationship to be related, but I didn’t have sufficient data to prove it.
I searched for a report or other research that could help satisfy my intellectual curiosity. I found anecdotal evidence, but none that passed any scientific rigor. Maybe my search terms were wrong.
I started to question my conventional wisdom that awareness comes first. That is, if potential buyers don’t know we have a solution to their problem, how would we ever get considered? Awareness drives interest, right? Which brought me to AIDA.
AIDA
AIDA is an acronym for attention, interest, desire, and action. Attention equates to awareness. Interest follows attention: I like what I see; you have my attention; I am interested. Desire connects a need with a product. Not only am I interested, but I also want what you have. Action is what we want a buyer to do. We equate purchase with action most of the time.
AIDA can take me down the path of measurement in a finer grain way. The initial challenge sought evidence for a causal relationship between attention and action. Now I have steps from attention to interest to desire to action that can be measured. In other words, if A is to B, and B is to C, and C is to D, then A is to D. This AIDA thing just might work.
Attention to Interest
Attention is measured in many ways. One simple way is responses to advertising. For argument’s sake, let’s say I delivered 5,000 impressions of an ad that yielded 500 responses. That translates to 500 people who have awareness of my product.
I can measure the relationship between attention and interest. The cost of the 5,000 impressions is $1,000, giving a cost per response of $2. The percentage of Responses is 10 percent. Are you tracking with me so far?
To keep it simple we’ll refer to the responses as sales-qualified leads (SQLs).
Interest to Desire
Desire may sound a little creepy (I didn’t invent AIDA), but hang in there. Think of desire as a marketing qualified lead (MQL). There is more than Interest. There is a desire to want my product. Assume that 10 percent of the SQLs convert to MQLs. That works out to 50 MQLs. The cost per MQL is $20.
So far, the attention (awareness) has a direct relationship to 50 MQLs, but no revenue.
Desire to Action
Assume that five of the 50 MQLs made a purchase. They took the action I wanted. Each purchase was $400. The total amount of revenue is $2,000, and it all started with attention (awareness). In this simple example, a $1,000 investment in attention (awareness) yielded $2,000 in action (purchases).
Wrap Up
The answer is that awareness can increase revenue. But that doesn’t mean it always increases revenue. As you plan your awareness campaigns, what are the goals of the campaign? How do you know you’re achieving your awareness goals? Are you tracking the right metrics?
Take the first step in learning how to effectively generate awareness for your products and register for a Pragmatic training session today.
