The trick to a good offer is getting your customer to act then and there when they read your content—before they forget.
Once you let them carry on with their day, they lose the sense of excitement they felt when they first heard your message. The idea that your product could offer so much value eventually becomes less and less exciting to them. That’s how you end up losing a potential customer.
Instead, you want to create a sense of urgency so they don’t end up waiting. We’ve talked recently about the importance of creating an unbeatable offer and how you can add value to that offer. Now the next step you need to take is to create a sense of urgency.
How? Here are a few tips you can try:
1. Limited-Time Offers
Offer Time-Bound Discounts
“I’ll do it later” are famous last words in so many situations. They’re especially deadly to sales offers. If you want to create a sense of urgency, make it clear that your customer should jump at the chance immediately—or at least, before too much time passes. By making your discount apply for only a limited time, it becomes something your customer can’t put off until later, and you’ll see many more lead conversions than you would with an evergreen discount.
Countdown Timers and Expiry Dates
On the subject of limited-time offers, specifying your expiry date really drives home the point that this discount doesn’t last forever. You can even increase the sense of urgency with a countdown timer, which is an effective visual element that shows your customer how their time to take advantage of this discount is steadily getting closer to going away.
Content marketing is especially effective when it comes to time-based urgency. Consider sending an email every day with a reminder that the deadline is approaching, or posting a graphic to Facebook and Instagram with the number of days remaining.
2. Scarcity Marketing
Highlight Limited Stock or Availability
When there’s not enough of something to go around, people want to jump at the chance to get it before it’s gone—if they wait, they might miss out. Creating a sense of limited stock (whether or not your stock is actually limited) is what’s known as scarcity marketing. You can increase the sense of urgency with content marketing that illustrates how your product offers value to your customers while emphasizing how available stock is decreasing every day. And on that note…
Showcase Real-Time Notifications
Real-time notifications, whether they go out via email or social media, can alert your customers when there is only so much of your product left available. Do you have only 100 left? Fifty? Twenty? As you have less and less stock available, you can alert your audience that they have fewer opportunities to take advantage of your offer. This creates a sense of urgency and increases your lead conversion among people who have shown interest in your product.
3. Social Proof and Testimonials
Display User Reviews and Testimonials
The tough thing about persuasive marketing is that a lot of consumers don’t trust it. You have to say your product is great because you’re trying to sell it. When you can demonstrate that your product really does meet a need in the lives of your customers, this is a gamechanger. Such social proof could come in the way of statistics or testimonials. You can use this social proof to reinforce what’s known as your value proposition—your claim that your product meets a need your customer has. Once they understand this value, your customers feel a greater sense of urgency because they don’t want to wait for their lives to improve.
Share Success Stories
There are testimonials, and then there are success stories. While a testimonial might be a sentence or two hyping up your product, a success story will go a little bit more in depth. It will illustrate the profound way your product changed a customer’s life. This usually includes an explanation of the problem, why the customer felt compelled to try your product, why your product worked where similar products didn’t, and how your customer’s life is much better with your product. These success stories are best told through content marketing—a blog post, a video, or a newsletter—as this content gives your customer a chance to elaborate and get personal as they tell their story.
4. Leverage FOMO
Create a Sense of Exclusivity
Nobody wants to be left out. If everyone around you is enjoying something, wouldn’t you want to join in too? If you found out you couldn’t enjoy something, wouldn’t that make you want to join in even more? That’s the idea behind creating a sense of exclusivity around your product. This creates a sense of FOMO—that is, a fear of missing out—in your customers, and they will want to see what all the fuss is about as soon as possible. This urgency helps increase lead conversions because nobody wants to get stuck being the one person who didn’t take advantage of the opportunity you offered.
Use Urgent Language and Calls to Action
So much of creating that sense of urgency comes down to the language you use. Don’t be afraid to tell people to act now or else they will miss out. Even if you communicate clearly how your product can improve a customer’s life, how it’s only available for a limited time, and how your customer doesn’t want to be the only one left out of this opportunity—well, some people still won’t take action unless you explicitly tell them to do so. Make sure all your content marketing ends with a CTA (call to action) that uses urgent language: “Don’t miss out!” “While supplies last!” “Get it before it’s gone!”
5. A/B Testing and Optimization
Continuously Test and Improve
Okay, here’s a bonus tip for you: Don’t be afraid to A/B test and optimize. In fact, you should be doing A/B tests so you can figure out which of your strategies works the best. Content marketing is dynamic and a little unpredictable—the content that you think will resonate most with your audience might disappoint you, whereas the content that you consider less interesting could prove to be surprisingly effective. The only way you’ll know is if you test two pieces of content against each other.
Till’s Takeaways
Creating a sense of urgency can make or break your marketing strategy, but your approach to creating that sense of urgency doesn’t need to be complicated. These reliable tactics—create limited-time offers, emphasize scarcity, share social proof, and leverage FOMO—will elevate your content marketing efforts by making your customers realize they have to act fast.
So, what can we say? If you want your content to be successful (and we know that you do), start incorporating these tips now—don’t wait! Your next piece of content could be your most successful yet!
Want to learn more about optimizing the content you’re putting out there on your website? We have all the details you could want—be sure to check them out here. It’s just one of many, many ways we help you connect with the people who are interested in what you have to offer.
