Why does scarcity work?
Scarcity principle is one of the best conversion hacks in online marketing. Using the scarcity principles outlined in this post, helped ConversionXL increase sales by 332%!
Scarcity works so well because its been with us since the dawn of mankind … and we’ve evolved with it.
Here’s how …
Since hunter gatherer years, essential resources like food and clean drinking water have been extremely hard to find.
It’s only now in the last 1000 years, of millions of years of human evolution, that we can take food and water for granted.
The human species has lived in scarcity for so long, that automatic responses have been hard wired into our brains.
Our evolution has designed us to focus all our attention on scare items and make acquiring them our TOP PRIORITY.
Scarcity is a powerful emotion that makes us do incredible (and sometimes crazy) things
ROBERT B. CIALDINI // Bestselling author - Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion
Scarcity fuels our competitive drive
If others have the item that we want, scarcity compels us to fight battles to get that item.
empty shelves during covid lockdowns
When we come across scarcity, it hijacks the brain and makes the scare things seem much more desirable to us.
And we yearn to have them …
And if we don’t get them, we know we’ll feel a lot of pain …
And we’d do anything to avoid that pain …
So our mind tells that whenever we are faced with scarcity, we must get off our butts and jump into action …
And do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get that thing …
Not only do we want the same item more when it’s scare, we want it most when we are in competition for it
ROBERT B. CIALDINI
Scarcity hijacks the brain
Whenever we’re faced with scarcity, we realize that there’s limited time to act … or we might lose the item while we’re taking time to think it over.
So our brain goes into fast action mode and starts relying on mental shortcuts - which we’ve learn from living everyday life.
The scarcity shortcut goes like this:
How The Brain Works When Things Are Scarce
Item is difficult to get -> That means lots of people want that item -> That means the item is better than a similar, easily available item -> That makes me want it more -> So I MUST get it now before it’s gone
Our brain uses such mental shortcuts because the pace of modern life is frantic …
there’s so much information coming to us, especially on the internet, that we need to make quick decisions … so we don’t take too long to figure things out …
because the thing we want won’t be available for much longer.
This response in our brain is so strong that it ALWAYS comes up whenever we’re faced with GENUINE scarcity.
And no matter how much we try to trick our brain into not feeling it …
It happens automatically and we have no control over it …
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost
G. K. Chesterton
Journalist, novelist, essayist, poet
When we get the scarce thing, we feel relieved, even elated, to own that item
We feel proud our ourselves for having taking action and getting what we wanted so badly
And the item becomes a prized possession … Because we almost lost it …
And if we manage to get what we want and save money doing it …
That’s the best feeling in the world 
And something evil in our brains loves it even more … if the others had to pay full price for it 
completing the purchase just before the countdown timer hits zero
when you get a discount and your friend pays full price
The simple FACT is
Most people (including your customers) think they make logical purchase decisions.
But extensive research shows that most purchases are emotional decisions.
Scarcity is a big factor in making the "buy now" decision.
To know more, read Robert Cialdini’s groundbreaking bestselling book: Influence.
In the book he breaks down the psychology of why people buy stuff and the unknown things happening in our brains, influencing our decisions every day, every moment
Click to play
Why you should use scarcity marketing
1. Getting procrastinators to act …
Do you ever procrastinate?
Me too … In fact, everyone does.
Including your customers.
Let’s assume:
You work hard on creating a product/service you want to sell and after spending a lot of time, effort and money, you’ve finally got some customers interested.
But if your customers don’t buy today, the product will still be available forever and they’ll still pay the same price.
So your customer might think:
How Your Customers Think
“Hmm … I need this product but I guess I’ll wait.
I’ll check out what the competitors are offering and come back in a few days.
After all, there’s no downside if I don’t buy today.”
And then a few days pass … and they’ve either:
Either way, you let your customer postpone making the decision, their excitement for your product fizzled out and you lost the sale.
But if you have a scarcity timer on your site, you can get the procrastinators to take action by offering them a discount or telling them that the product won’t be available for long.
That'll get them to jump on your offer and hit the buy now button.
2. Makes your product look better
Our brains aren’t really good at figuring out what things should cost.
That’s why shows like The Price Is Right became so popular:
Click to play
remember this craziness?
perception of what’s valuable and what’s not, is more often determined by scarcity
Robert Cialdini
BESTSELLING AUTHOR
The fact is, that our perception of what’s valuable and what’s not, is more often determined by scarcity than anything else.
In fact, studies have shown that we are more willing to pay a higher price for scarce products BECAUSE our brains trick us into thinking they are of higher value.
That means, if you make your products scare, you make them seem worth more than they are.
And this technique is often used by retailers (especially during holiday shopping season) and it goes like this:
- 1hike the prices
- 2announce a limited time discount to sell more of their products at the original price
OR
- 1Create a fake shortage of popular products
- 2Sell at a higher price
Of course, these techniques are unethical (and illegal) and I don’t recommend that you treat your customers this way …
but it does help me illustrate the point that scarcity skews the perception of value and makes scare products look more valuable.
Build an Evergreen Scarcity Funnel
Create real scarcity that sells your products on autopilot!
3. Scarcity can be automated
On the web, the scarcity principle can be automated so you can setup your offers to automatically start on certain dates.
For example:
You can also setup evergreen offers to run automatically.
For example:
(software like Deadline Funnel and Thrive Ultimatum use technology to ensure that the same person cannot signup with a different email address and still get the discount)
Thrive Ultimatum Review (coming soon)
Campaigns can even start automatically when a person visits a certain page (like your product sales page) …
Or when someone finishes watching your webinar (works for pre-recorded webinars too)
Or when you apply a tag to the contact in your email marketing service (deadline funnel feature)
And because the scarcity principle provides a boost in sales, you can get these sales boosts automatically and free up your time.
Of course, if you want, you can still run campaigns manually whenever you want.
How To Sell With Scarcity
- How To Sell
- Techniques
Scarcity Marketing Examples
There are many techniques you can use to sell with scarcity.
Ramit Sethi closes access to his courses.
Only new newsletter subscribers can get access to these courses, and that too for a limited time before they lose the opportunity.
And anybody waiting for the course to open can “join the waiting list” by subscribing to his email list.
This tactic helps him grow his email list AND have lots of people join the paid course as soon as it opens.
A double whammy!
Shane Melaugh from Thrive Themes also does something similar for Coursecraft – a premium course for people who want to start an online-course based business.
Learn how to use this strategy
More Examples of Scarcity Marketing
How Booking.com, Amazon, Bumble & eBay create scarcity
and some more examples here
More Use Cases for Scarcity
Setting Up The Scarcity Campaigns
Get step by step instructions for setting up your own Scarcity Marketing campaigns
Fake Scarcity Doesn’t Work
This is Extremely Important
Some websites put up fake countdown timers that can be reset by simply refreshing the page or by opening the URL in an incognito browser window.
This is a scammy tactic and it doesn’t work. Your customers hate you for this and you could also get into trouble for doing it.
Fake timers harm the reputation of business and you’ll will probably end up losing sales because of this.
For example:
OptinMonster is a great tool but they’ve done this stupid thing of placing a fake timer on their pricing page.
It can easily be reset just by changing your IP address and opening the same URL in an incognito window.
And the worst part is, they don’t need to do this.
It’s an awesome company and they have an awesome product, but they still lose some credibility because someone at the company didn’t think things through.
You need to have real scarcity. That means a countdown timer that cannot be cheated even if the visitor changes IP address, changes their browser, device or even signs up using a different email address.
And if they miss the deadline, they shouldn’t be able to access the special offer page under any circumstance (so they can actually regret missing the deadline which will cause them to become much more serious about any other deadlines on your site)
Fortunately there are tools that can do this: Ultimatum and Deadline Funnel
How to get started with scarcity marketing?
Of course, you wanna know how you can enable scarcity marketing in your business and get crazy conversions …
This 6 part video course will teach you:
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