There are two things, two marketing strategies that are as old as time, that work: urgency and scarcity. 

If you can make something urgent (limit the time or create FOMO) and make it scarce (limit numbers), then whatever you’re marketing will work.

You see marketing is simple – there are a few core principles to follow for a great marketing strategy. But that said, a few core principles doesn’t make it easy – simple, yes, easy no.

And Clubhouse, the newest player in the social app world launched not long ago, is the perfect example of these marketing core principles.

People begging for invites, and it only being available to the 50% of the population who have an iPhone – FOMO at its best. I know people who went and purchased an iPhone just to see what all the hype was about!  $1,800 of curiosity killing the cat perhaps!

Clubhouse has created, either intentionally or accidentally (I suspect a little of both) one of the best marketing strategies I’ve seen in a long time.  They created urgency and scarcity to get onto their platform in a way I’ve rarely seen in recent times.

And as Peter Drucker said many years ago, there’s only two things in business – marketing and innovation – the rest is stuff.

So, the real question is, going forward with new ideas for yourself and your business, new goals, new things to sell perhaps or new things to create to sell is this: how can you create urgency and scarcity?

Oh, and by the way – scarcity is often the better influencer of purchase!

Here are some of my thoughts around offers to do this:

  • Limited time offers (offer only good until midnight Saturday)
  • Limited availability (we only have 3 spots left)
  • Fast action bonus’ (first 50 buyers will get extra bonuses)

Do you have any of these inside your business? What are your offers?  Grab a piece of paper and write them down.

Are they urgent?  Are they scarce?

It’s basic economics as scarcity sits at the heart of supply and demand. When something is scarce, it naturally increases in value – likewise when something is commonplace, its value diminishes.

And as humans we have this natural desire to be included, not to miss out on something.

So, you can see where I’m coming from when I say that Clubhouse has (at this point in time) the perfect formula.

I just wanted to point out here – that’s there’s a difference in “thinking scarcity” as a business owner and using scarcity as a marketing strategy.

If we have a scarcity mindset as a business owner, we are normally thinking about money – the thing that makes the world go round.  Having a scarcity mindset when it comes to business or money will NOT serve you well.

The temptation for a business that needs customers or clients or money is to try and be everything to everybody. Rather than targeting their marketing efforts business owners in this state tend to generalise as much as they can. In the vain hope that this will maximise the number of potential leads, they can generate. This is a mistake!

To create a consistent flow of leads, you need to be very clear about who you want to attract.

So, we go back to the marketing fundamentals of who is your target audience, ideal client, ideal customer avatar and what do you want to be famous for.

Just to be clear, we aren’t talking about a scarcity mindset, rather we are talking about you creating a product or a service that your audience perceives as more valuable simply because it’s scarce!

To wrap things up a little.

I want you to:

  • Have a look inside your business, what you sell, what you offer and see what you can make urgent and/or scarce to sell more of, and
  • I want you to start looking at the world as a marketer. Look around you, watch TV ads (especially those infomercials – they are brilliant at urgency and scarcity – sometimes I almost want to buy that floor mop I’ll never use!) take a look at yourself and what you buy and why and start implementing those principles into your own business.

There’s a reason why we buy two lots of green tea bags because they have a 2 for deal!  If we read the fine print that says “save 10c” – we would probably still buy the two!

Watch how marketing works on you – you’ll be surprised what you can learn!