Instilling a Sense of Urgency in Your Marketing

The real bread and butter in digital marketing isn’t the various bells and whistles; it isn’t the new flavor-of-the-week tactics that major blogs endorse; it isn’t about a specific traffic source—though traffic is obviously importantly. It’s really about the psychological motivations that compel people to buy. It’s about pushing your prospects’ buttons so consistently that they have no other option to purchase whatever you’re selling.

Businesses are constantly looking for ways to exponentially increase their revenue. It’s not solely about having the newest-looking website, or about the expensive traffic-generating campaign, or various brand marketing tactics. All of those things do matter, but at the end of the day, there has to be a need for someone to buy your product or service. If that need isn’t immediately clear or obvious to the prospect, then your marketing can never reach its full potential.

Ever watch a sales movie– a movie like Glengarry Glen Ross or Boiler Room? Or, have you ever sold something yourself, whether on the phone or door-to-door? If a sales environment can be condensed into only one word, it would be “now”. Not later, not tomorrow, but “now”. The need to sell will stalk a real salesperson anytime and everywhere. The sense of urgency is so dominant that it’s palpable. It’s what compels someone to take action and buy, because they feel like they have no other choice—no wiggle room.

A sense of urgency is what you may be missing. But urgency is rarely automatic. Most likely, you’ll have to create that urgency.

How to Create Urgency

There are very simple methods that will help you to create urgency for your marketing campaign. There are two elements that urgency is comprised of: Time and Scarcity.

Time: Putting a time limit on an offer is a good way to create urgency. Let’s say that you’re selling a product for an introductory price for 48 hours, and after that timeframe that price will go up. That would be considered a time limit. More example of a time limit would be:

• Beginning on Jan. 5, we will no longer be accepting new customers
• The deadline for signing up for our class is Feb. 1.
• In 12 hours, this product is off the market.
• Order this product within 48 hours and get a special, value-packed bonus

Those are some basic, non-specific example of deadlines and how you can put them to use for your business.

When using deadlines, you need to use the right language. Certain words act as triggers:

• Limited
• Only, or One-Time Only
• Today
• Last Chance
• Instant
• Hurry
• Now or Never

The language you use needs to be aligned with the deadline at all times. People need to know that your deadline is coming to a close soon, so don’t be afraid to tell them.

Scarcity: This is all about limiting the amount of product that is available. When there is a seemingly low quantity of product available, but with a high number of people that want it, your sales will go through the roof. Look at Black Friday, a consumerist bloodbath that compels droves of people to stand in line for hours just to get a chance at a product that will get sold out in a matter of hours. People crave things that are high in demand, but low in quantity. They like exclusivity.

To make your product or service exclusive, you have to shift the way people perceive it. Here are some basic examples:

• There are only 20 spots left! Grab yours now!
• There are only 5 items left in stock!
• We are only accepting 72 new customers in the month of January

Scarcity is about shifting the perception so that people believe that your product is in demand, and that they need to purchase it.

Authenticity and urgency

People are hesitant to start using urgency in their marketing because they feel it is dishonest. It is dishonest if you are falsely placing time and product supply constraints on your offer. However, if you are only shifting the perception of your offer, while also keeping your promises, you are doing nothing wrong. If you say that you’re closing your offer in 25 minutes, then close it. If you say you only have five items left in stock but really have over a hundred, then you are being disingenuous. Now, if you really only have five items, then it is your right to declare on your webpage. Use whatever you can to your advantage.

Stick to your guns, and don’t make any outlandish claims. Urgency works, and it’s even sweeter when you use it authentically.