Hey 👋 The Crew here.
Question: Would you agree that there are only two types of remote workers:
- “I need a full home office setup” crew.
- “My laptop is my portable office” gang.
We haven’t met anything in between.
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Time-based scarcity
If you’re a performance marketer, you’ve probably used some form of scarcity to drive sales.
Any time you emphasize a “lack” of something to your audience, you’re leveraging scarcity.
Limited-time. Dwindling stocks. A few remaining slots… you get the gist.
In recent times, scientific studies found a few ways to leverage this scarcity—from emphasizing increased demand, to leveraging a lack of time.
We’ll cover them all in our issues, don’t worry.
But today, we’ll focus on what many businesspeople equate with money: Time.
Why? Time is a limited resource. So if you combine it with another limited resource—such as an interesting product in limited supply—you’ll put your shopper in quite a pickle.
In a nutshell, time-based scarcity creates urgency by limiting the availability of a product or offer to a specific time frame.
Let’s say you open your only streaming app and find out a movie is leaving the platform in the next few days. It’s a fun movie. Maybe even critically acclaimed.
… But you weren’t planning on watching it before.
The new information, however, changes everything. If you don’t watch the movie soon, who knows when you’ll be able to, or where.
So you decide you might as well watch it now.
That’s a prime example of how time-based scarcity can help you “push” your audience to buy.
Here’s how you can use it as well.
Three ways you can leverage time-based scarcity
1) Use countdown timers for limited-time offers to create a sense of urgency
It’s one thing to tell someone they have a limited time to do something.
But showing the time running out second by second… that’s an entirely different beast.
Big marketplaces like Temu are known to use every psychological trick in the book to get you to buy—and one of their biggest is adding a little countdown timer to every big sale they have:
Why? Because the countdown timer taps into psychological drivers like urgency, loss aversion, fear of missing out (FOMO), and decision-making under pressure.
… And all of that makes us more likely to buy.
Many online stores now leverage it as well:
Granted, this is also helping shoppers “see through” countdown timers today more than before.
However, if the item is really in demand and rarely on sale—and your customers know that—it can still be quite effective.
2) Blast “flash sales” or daily “deals”
Another way to leverage scarcity is to do sudden sales and short-term offers.
But to make this super effective, you should do this away from expected sales periods such as Black Friday, Christmas, or other sales days, when these types of deals are obvious.
Instead, go the unexpected route: Create a short window of opportunity out of the blue. This is what triggers consumers’ FOMO and makes the deal actually feel urgent.
Some airlines do it:
Imagine how effective this could be when the customer’s decision is much easier to make than choosing where to travel…
3) Create time tiered pricings
Time-tiered pricing adds time pressure. The more you wait, the less time you have—which is the epitome of time-based scarcity.
What that means in practice: Every time you launch a new product or promote an event, add a time-based deadline for the cheapest, “early bird” or “early adopter” options.
Gaming platforms like Steam do this really well:
You can see there is a special offer that ends by the time the game launches.
The discount is just enough to make you think. If you were on the edge, or if you’re planning on owning it anyway, you’ll be inclined to buy it and gain that extra value.
Time-tiered pricing works best with loyal customers who are aware of your brand and products.
So you can combine them with retention strategies such as loyalty programs or targeting past purchasers with ads for maximum gains.
AI MARKETING: Imagine having a team of AI-powered experts helping to manage every aspect of your business from strategy to execution, all the way to customer support. That’s what HubSpot Breeze does—and it can help you grow faster. See it in action.*
E-COMMERCE: Online shopping is rising—but at which rate? And will it ever overtake the good old brick-and-mortar store visits? It doesn’t seem likely. Yet, there is a lot of interesting data here that tells us how you can mix the best of both worlds for more sales. Check it out.
AI MARKETING: Ready to channel your inner Kubrick? Meta released Movie Gen, a new AI tool that creates realistic video and audio clips based on text prompts. Videos can last up to 45 seconds and should be integrated to Meta’s AI tools—which means easy access. Nice.
BUYER PSYCHOLOGY: How can you set up a launch for something like a protein bar? With some familiar psychology tricks—such as fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) and gamification. If you’re looking for a successful e-commerce launch story, this article will deliver.
*This is a sponsored post
ICYMI, last time we looked at the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
The “time is running out” Crew
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