It’s 5:50am on a mid September morning and the alarm starts blaring. My wife shuts the alarm off and stumbles out of bed.
She heads to the computer like a zombie and enters a URL. Then she starts refreshing the browser waiting for the page to turn over at 6am.
The pressure is on. It's time to register the kids for summer camp the following year. A big group of the kid’s friends have all decided to go the same week… even though the camp isn’t until 11 months from now.
The problem is, there are limited spots. Hence... the 5:50am wake up.
The clock changes to 6am. Refresh. It's live!
Quickly my wife scrolls down to the buy button. She selects the week that was discussed with the other parents. Now it’s the scramble to fill in the appropriate information.
"Hurry" she's thinking to herself.
Name. Address. Health card number. Now the payment info. Go go go!
She finally gets it all in, hits the final "buy" and gets the screen that says:
"Congratulations, you have secured camp for the following weeks:"
Phew. What a relief. The purchase went through. Everything is booked. She got the weeks we wanted.
Imagine having a business where your customers are setting an alarm to wake themselves up so they can spend thousands of dollars the moment you make the offer available. This is only made possible because of two powerful marketing triggers - scarcity and urgency.
Scarcity means there is a limited supply. Once the cabins are booked, they’re gone. You can’t double book them for the same week.
Urgency kicks in because there is a specific date and time that these cabins become available. If you hesitate or delay, you miss out.
Now don't get me wrong, in order for this to be effective, you must have a great product. My wife wouldn’t be waking up at the crack of dawn if the camp wasn’t good. But when you do have a great product, these two marketing triggers are very effective in driving sales.
My wife returns to the bed. "I did it. I got the weeks we wanted" she said. She smiles and gets back under the covers.
She feels great. Our kids will be pumped. And the business who runs the camp... they're also happy too.
They just made millions in a few hours.
The first question for you is, how could you create more scarcity in your business?
For example, I know a restaurant that is only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It's a great restaurant and with limited availability, it's always booked... months in advance. By reducing the days that they're open, they've naturally created more scarcity and demand.
Same goes with my consulting. I reserve one day a month for my VIP days. That means there are only 12 available a year. With limited supply, I’m able to raise my prices which means I work less and make more.
You could do the same.
The second question is…
How could you create more urgency for people to buy today? What would drive people to make a decision today (vs. them putting it off?)
Is there a price increase? Expiring bonus? Special offer? Limited edition? Seasonal product?
For example, every year we teach our course called The Membership Experience. However, since we launched in 2016, it’s only been made available once a year. So there’s real urgency to get in during the promotion otherwise you’d have to wait an entire year.
Now the key to creating more urgency is to have a deadline. Without it, the urgency to buy fades quickly. And we see this every single year.
The last day of any promotion is always the biggest day of sales. In fact, it’s common to double your promotional sales just on the last day of the promotion. Because the deadline is the thing that is moving people from “thinking” to “taking action”.
So if you want to move people into taking action, be sure to include a deadline by which they have to take action in order to get the offer.
As with anything as powerful as these two marketing triggers, I want to encourage you to use them responsibly. Don’t create “fake scarcity”. Don’t pretend there is a limited supply when there really isn’t. And don’t create “fake urgency”. Meaning, you don’t have a deadline that isn’t real. Nothing will destroy your credibility more than someone asking about the offer after the deadline has passed and you giving it to them. All that does is communicate “you can’t trust their marketing”.
But when used responsibly, these two marketing triggers can drive a LOT more sales.