When promoting a product or a service, always consider leveraging one of the oldest marketing tricks:
- Scarcity: there are only few products left. You better buy now!
- Urgency: this fantastic promotion is going to end very soon, don’t wait any longer!
Scarcity refers to any limitation placed on a product or service with the goal of increasing sales through pressure placed on the consumer. The fear of missing out causes people to make the decision to buy.
Scarcity and urgency should be used carefully in order not to lose customer trust. If your store is going out of business every six months, putting everything out for sale, you will not be credible anymore. But, unfortunately, we experience the abuse of scarcity and urgency every day, for example, when we look at the mattresses business. Everybody knows that after every mattress sale where everything-has-to-go, there will immediately be another similar sale.
Franco Folini 