Believe it or not, the more “unattainable” you make your product or service, the greater the desire is for people to buy from you – if executed correctly, of course.
Here are some examples of the “scarcity mindset” at work …
Cookies
Some years ago, a marketing study was performed, involving two cookie jars. Two cookie jars were placed at opposite sides of a room. One jar had three cookies in it. The other was filled to the brim with 20 or more cookies. The cookies in each jar were of the same flavour.
The demonstrator told a story of how tasty and delicious both lots of cookies were and asked everyone to grab a cookie. 90% of people moved towards the cookie jar with the least number of cookies in it because they perceived that they must have been the most popular because the cookie jar was nearly empty.
Department Store
There’s a major Australian Department Store called “David Jones”. Their display windows are simply stunning. You walk in and are overcome by a sense of elegance. The feeling you get is that the goods are going to be very expensive.
You walk up to a product that you’ve seen elsewhere in a comparable department store – you look at the price and you’re very pleasantly surprised. It’s the same price as at the other store so you think you’re getting a bargain.
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Cosmetics
I have a colleague who is one of Australia’s mail order cosmetic kings. He used to write his own ads and in the “call to action” at the end he would put … “Strictly limited to 2 per customer only.”
This simple statement makes a consumer believe that there is a limited supply and that it is a highly valuable commodity, so they buy. And, they don’t buy just one, they often buy two.
Consulting
Then there’s a masterful strategy that one of my clients in the consulting profession implemented.
Their firm focused on consulting to other professional service firms. They found that there was a certain type of client that they had the most success with and were the most pleasurable to deal with. Given that, they decided to have a qualification or client selection process, in that potential clients needed to qualify before they became a client. They needed to meet a dozen or so criterion based on the attitudes of partners, firm profitability and size and marketing focus.
The result was that they were inundated with firms who wanted to qualify or mould their practices so they did qualify.
Dentist
By now everyone has probably heard the story of Paddi Lund, a dentist here in Brisbane. He has built his practice up on referrals. In fact, you can only get into his surgery if you’re referred by another patient (or guest).
As you can see, there’s merit in the madness. This “scarcity” mindset can work to your advantage, if applied correctly. Having said that, if you want to adopt it in your marketing efforts it’s vitally important that you don’t simply pay “lip service” to it. What I mean is that the “scarcity” that you are promoting must be genuine. In other words, you must genuinely have a qualification process that rejects xx% of prospective clients.
Kris Mills of Words that Sell ( http://www.wordsthatsell.com.au/ ) is a top selling copywriter, trainer and author of numerous how-to guides including Proposals and Tenders (Bids) that Sell. Kris has also produced a FREE ebook entitled “11 Bid Writing Sins and How to Avoid Them”. To arrange a FREE copy, visit:http://www.wordsthatsell.com.au/tendersebook.htm
