Do you know how marketing strategies have evolved with the emergence of several eCommerce businesses? Psychological factors play an important role in your purchase decisions. So, sometimes businesses use eCommerce scarcity as one of their marketing strategies. Are you familiar with the term eCommerce Scarcity Marketing? Well, it is a marketing scheme to increase the product value by reducing its market supply. Earlier, companies used a similar technique by stocking goods in their warehouses to reduce their supply and later sell them at a higher price.
Modern-day marketing has developed its ways, this is now done by lowering the supply of the products causing an increase in demand, as often seen in various eCommerce websites. The amount of stock is specifically mentioned to make the consumers know the scarcity that there is, of the particular product, or when the product is advertised as rare or limited as in the case of fan merchandise, target customers are generally willing to pay more to acquire it. The anticipated scarcity increases your desire, in simpler words, when you see a limited or scarce item, you feel the immediate need to get hold of it.
As you have seen that various eCommerce websites also provide certain stock clearing sales which leads you to buy products you wouldn’t have bought if the term “sale” wasn’t mentioned, the advertising of the items with the possibility of their unavailability after the sale, leads the customers to perceive the idea of the eCommerce scarcity of these products. Let’s now delve deep into the world of scarcity Marketing and see how it works –
5 Scarcity Marketing Tactics
1. Use of Numbers to Exhibit Scarcity
To foreground eCommerce scarcity, one of the most efficient tactics is to make use of numbers. Customers keep a keen eye on the availability of the items, and if the stock is running out, they immediately buy it (for example – 2 items left in stock, 85% of the tickets are sold out, sale ends at midnight). If you’re using this strategy, it is a necessity to be honest about the availability of the stock, in case you want to increase the price of a product, reducing the production helps to develop a higher demand, and thus buyers are more willing to buy it. To be precise, if you want to use eCommerce Scarcity as a marketing strategy, deceiving your customers shouldn’t be the way to do it.
2. Offering Deals for a Specific Period
You can make use of scarcity marketing in your eCommerce business by implementing certain deals on a daily or weekly basis into your website. This can be done by selling items that are available only for a day, introducing new items every day, or giving a certain discount. If you sell items by using this policy, daily deals use a scarcity marketing strategy by making the customers sign up to your website and keep an eye on the various deals to make sure they don’t miss it out.
3. Accentuating the Exclusive or Limited-Edition Options
When a brand launches a limited product line, for example, a fashion brand making a line of clothes available specifically for a season, there tends to be an increase in desire among the customers. Making use of scarcity marketing in this way allows the buyers to take interest in the time-bound offer (for example: buy two, get one free) that your website is offering, along with the joy that it provides in buying something that will soon be discontinued. Exclusivity makes customers more inclined to buy an item.
4. Exhibit the Demand to Increase Sales
You know that the natural fluctuations of demand and supply lead to customers rushing to get hold of certain products. As you have seen, the increase in demand for sanitizers and masks during the Covid-19 pandemic because of the limited supply increased their costs as well. If a businessman sells a wide variety of products, what he needs to do is push forward those items which are valued by the customers. Letting your customers know exactly how many in-stock items you have will increase the sale as it increases the will in customers to make a purchase just to be on the safe side; as they fear the stock running out.
5. Use Countdown Timers
Along with the date on which a particular sale ends, a countdown timer can be used on your site, like several eCommerce websites like Amazon, Nykaa does it for the flash sale that they often provide. If that is paired with the limited availability of items, it doubles the scarcity impact which will get the customers to check out and buy the products before the time runs out.
Use a countdown timer for shipping offers as well. Free shipping charges lead the customers to act quickly.
What Must Not be Done in Scarcity Marketing?
Making responsible use of scarcity most definitely works out, however creating an idea of scarcity when that’s not the case might not be beneficial in the long run.
The scarcity that you’ll create must be logical, and properly put out before the customers so they understand that why a certain product is a limited edition. A countdown timer can’t be used for anything and everything, you can use it only to provide an offer like a discount or next-day shipping.
Overdoing it won’t help you. Customers should not feel pressured to buy items from you. If they feel they were forced to buy and regret it later, they might as for a refund which will affect your business.
The scarcity marketing strategy will not work if there’s no demand for a particular product. It cannot increase the sales of an item if there is not enough interest among the customers.
To Sum up
If you want to make use of the scarcity marketing strategy for your business, you should take into consideration applying one of the tactics to your business, not all. If you apply all the tactics it may look like you are overdoing it. How you advertise your product plays a huge role in its sale, the availability description along with the exclusivity of items may result in a big change in your sales. If you sell products that are always in demand, using scarcity marketing could be your way to increase sales and your business will definitely grow bigger!
