Creating Urgency in Marketing 3 Scarcity Examples That Drive Conversions and Sales

Creating Urgency in Marketing: 3 Scarcity Examples That Drive Conversions and Sales

Carl Taylor | December 19, 2017

This type of promotion is known as scarcity marketing. As one of the most popular ways to sell more products and items, scarcity marketing focuses on creating urgency about a deal.

Whether it’s through an invitation-only event or a limited-edition product, scarcity marketing tells customers and clients that they’re being offered something completely unique – but they need to act fast!

When they’re used appropriately, scarcity tactics can help boost your sales. So let’s take a look at how you can implement the scarcity principle into your sales and marketing, including three examples of how companies are using this tactic successfully!

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Applying the Scarcity Principle to Your Marketing

Scarcity sales tactics tell your customers and clients that they’re being given an exclusive or limited deal. Whether you’ve offered them a short-term discount or you’ve only created a certain amount of an in-demand product, scarcity can help you create urgency about a purchase.

When you offer your leads something they won’t always have the opportunity to purchase or others won’t be able to buy, you’re putting pressure on them to make a decision quickly. By shortening the decision-making process, you can encourage your target audience to buy more.

However, the scarcity principle shouldn’t be used each and every time you want to sell a product. If scarcity doesn’t truly exist, you can start to damage the trust you’ve built with your target audience. For example, if you state that a product will only be on sale for one day, but then mark down the price of that product once the sale period is done, those who bought during the sale period will likely become unhappy with you.

We encourage Automation Agency clients to only use scarcity marketing when the urgency is real. If you’re going to state that a deal or product will disappear after a certain amount of time, ensure that it does. While you can always bring the sale or item back later, don’t just use scarcity marketing as a ploy to sell more items quickly.

3 Scarcity Examples You Can Implement on Your Own Website

To help you better understand how you can implement the scarcity principle into your marketing, here are three real-world examples you can pull from.

1. Limited Availability

Travel websites frequently use scarcity marketing to encourage their users to purchase. Because airline tickets or hotel rooms can quickly change in price, telling their visitors how many seats are available at the current price point can create urgency around the purchase.

orbitz_scarcity_marketing_example

In this example, Orbitz clearly informs the user that there are only two seats left at the price being offered. This tells the shopper that they can’t waste too much time making a purchasing decision. If this is the flight they’d like to be on, they need to act quickly.

2. Exclusivity

While Pinterest has since ditched their “invite-only” policy, the early days of the social network used scarcity marketing to encourage buzz about the new brand. By putting interested new users on a waitlist for their invitation, Pinterest was able to create excitement about the platform while also keeping their base of users relatively small.

pinterest_scarcity_example

Creating an exclusive social media platform was a great way to stir up a conversation about the social media platform. Through using exclusivity in their call-to-actions, Pinterest made users fear what they could be missing out on. Not only did this peak interest in their leads, it also created an air of excitement in users and those waiting for their invitations

3. Limited Time Only

As the largest retailer in the world, Amazon knows a thing or two about encouraging sales – including how to implement the scarcity principle. Each day, Amazon offers a collection of “daily deals.” These deals vary in items and discount, but they always last for a 24-hour period.amazon_scarcity_marketing_exampleOffering a new deal each day encourages shoppers to keep checking back to see what items are discounted that day. Not only does this encourage more sales, but it can also develop repeat customers. Because shoppers know Amazon will have a new set of products for sale each day, they know to come back to the website tomorrow to see if there are any other purchases they’d like to make.

Get Started Using Scarcity Marketing

There’s no reason you can’t implement these scarcity sales tactics right away. Let us help you add scarcity concepts to your website and start creating urgency around your products. If you’re an Automation Agency client, simply submit a task with the changes or additions you’d like us to make, and our team will get started.

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About the author 

Carl Taylor

Carl Taylor is the Founder & CEO of Automation Agency. For the past 10 years Carl has been building businesses and marketing them online through the use of Sales Funnels, Email Marketing Automation, Landing Pages, and Wordpress Websites. Carl is also a #1 author and highly sought after speaker and consultant whose work has impacted thousands of businesses across various industries worldwide.

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