People want things that are hard to get.
An ice cream cone from the place that only opens on Sunday and sells 100 cones a day will taste better to many people than an ice cream cone from the rundown corner shop that’s open every day of the week.
… Even if they’re both secretly the same ice cream.
There are more ways to communicate scarcity than shouting “limited offer!” though, and that’s why we’re writing this.
How to leverage scarcity in creative ways
Here’s a list of a number of creative ways we’ve seen successful marketers use scarcity:
- Volume: “Only 3 left!”
- Volume ambiguity: “We keep our client list small. Limited spaces left.”
- Time-based: “The sale lasts until Friday.”
- Limited edition: “This is the only time we’ll ever sell this product.”
- Rare: “We’re only making 50 of this product.”
- Geography: “Only available in Vienna.”
- Disappearing discount: “Every day of the sale, the price increases by $10.”
- Lottery: “Due to demand, we’re picking 50 people from our waitlist at random.”
There are other ways to use scarcity, but these are most of the big ones you’ll see in e-commerce and B2B.
Pick your tactics carefully
Some, like the lottery option, are best when you want to collect lots of emails.
Others, like disappearing discounts and time-based scarcity, are good for converting customers fast.
Just depends what your goals are!
