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Using Scarcity to Improve Conversion Rates on Your Landing Pages

How do you design fans And welcome back in this section, we're going to talk about principles of persuasion. These are concepts that are applicable in everyday life. There are concepts that you probably know very much about. They're particularly powerful when applied to marketing campaigns and especially landing page design robert killed any. We've spoken about him before, wrote two books. He's one of the preeminent writers and influencers on topics of persuasion. Human psychology as they relate to marketing his books, influence and persuasion are both fantastic reads. I definitely recommend you checking them out. Um, and we're gonna take a lot of his principles and talk about them as they relate to landing page design. You could read his books, you'll find a lot of supplemental research. Lots of cool case studies, cool experiments that he's run with his people. Um, We've spoken about a couple examples already in previous lectures and we're gonna talk about some more. So we're gonna st...

art off with the concept of scarcity and to get into things. Let's jump into the slides, scarcity implies some sort of limited resource. And scarcity sells. First off scarcity creates a sense of urgency. Right? If people feel that something is a limited quantity or there's a deadline, there's just there's just an immediately automatic function inside the person that feels that this is something urgent. Whether or not I'm gonna convert is another story, right? But there is that sense of urgency, interestingly enough, behavioral psychology has shown that people would rather make a quick decision, even if it's the wrong decision, then risk missing out on a deal. It's important to remember because that's how you're gonna use scarcity to increase conversion rate. If people think they can come back any time to buy a product or to register for the webinar and you know, there's no time constraints, There's no limited quantities. They're much less likely to actually make a decision now. Right. So in introducing scarcity as a way to help people or to encourage people or to quote unquote in a nice way, manipulate people into making a decision. Now, scarcity could be applied in any context, right? It could be applied to physical goods to lead gen campaigns to services, whatever it may be. There are different creative ways and we'll talk about a few examples to implement scarcity into your actual landing page design, scarcity could be time driven, right? There's a deadline, You might have a sale that has a deadline or it could be quantity driven availability. We only have three left in stock and you see the giants and e commerce um doing this left and right, right. But you might have noticed it, but it really does make a very, very powerful impact. But of course don't overdo it. We're gonna talk about believability. Um, but you could scarcely could be overdone where it just looks cheap and gimmicky and it actually turns people off by delegitimizing your brand. So be careful to make sure to do it tactfully all right. Using deadlines to create urgency. That's one of the most common ways brands use this persuasive concept of scarcity to increase conversion rates. Over here we have a screenshot from amazon's company called Woot Right, which is flash flash sales. So in the big hero section, last chance gifts for the holidays, right. And it's a countdown timer One day, 16 hours, 15 minutes, 32 seconds left to shop for Christmas. Right? So that is a sale. That's creating urgency through scarcity, meaning you don't have that much time left to order your gifts and get them by Christmas. There's a deadline, there's a sense of urgency. You need to make a decision quickly if you want these gifts delivered by Christmas and like this example shows it doesn't have to be a hard deadline. Like we're not going to be having these products available after a certain amount of time. This example shows it's kind of like a soft deadline. You can always order these products, but for this specific goal of getting your products by christmas, which is something which is very believable, right? Then it's, it's a great tool to use. It's a great sort of believable technique to increase that sense of urgency. You can also have deadlines for seasonal products, right? Like ski packages. Ski vacation packages was, was one example that I thought of. So if you have a certain timeframe where people are less likely to, to make decisions about booking a hotel for a ski packages like early on in the season. Right. A lot of people are last minute shoppers with these sorts of things. You could incentivize people to make decisions early by offering coupon codes for early bird specials. Right? The early birds sort of thing is super, super common. It's prevalent across e commerce deals, but it's powerful. Why not? Because not only because people getting it for cheaper, but because people make decisions quicker when they're on, when they feel that they, that they need to make a decision now or they're going to miss out on a deal. You could also have deadlines to use a coupon code by a certain, you know, for a local service. So if you're a local plumber or you're a local craftsman, you could offer coupon codes on your website and say that this coupon is valid until right. Another very prevalent. You've seen it 100 times, but once again it creates a sense of urgency. If you host a webinar on your site, we do this at our agency and you use those webinars for legion, right? In order to access the webinar give us your name and email, you could say that this webinar is going to be hosted on our service for you to watch for the next three days. Right? But once again it has to be believable Neil Patel who is a famous marketer, one of the kings of scarcity. One of the kings of persuasive techniques, uses this when he's trying to get people to register for his seminar, right? Yes. Reserve my seat now. If we just analyze that text, reserve my seat now reservation right. It's not like an open, it's not open seating. It's not come one come all right. You might not have a seat left. Just just the, the, the, the wording implies a sense of urgency, but then right below the main call to action. The trial starts in nine minutes and 12 seconds and there's a countdown timer, right? So that's an extreme sense of urgency. Obviously he's tested and he knows that it works. This might be too over the top for you, but you get the idea of what he's doing and how it's working. Here's a large e commerce company called blue fly and big header section up to 80% clearance, but up to 80% clearance is powerful but it's not as powerful as the next line, which is hurry these steels won't last long. Once again, soft deadline. There's no specific timeframe, which there probably should be. Typically when there's a specific timeframe, you'll see greater results but still 80% clearance by itself says, hey, I can come back in a, in a week when I get my next paycheck and I could check out the clearance, but these deals won't last long. It implies it kind of conveys, you need, you need to, you need to act quickly. If you want to get these, you know, if you want to get these deals Zappos right? Zappos is a great example of being specific, being believable. Right? So I'm shopping, this is was real like I was actually shopping for these Stacy Adams went to boots. I didn't end up buying them yet, but they did a good job at convincing me that if I do want these boots, I should order them soon. Because if you look at the ad to cart button right above it, only two in stock, right? It's not in my face, it's not obtrusive. It's very believable. It's very specific, right? There's two left in stock, not limited quantities. We literally have two of these boots in our warehouse. Right? So two more people want them. You're, you're out of luck, right? So instead of a limited time or, or limited availability, be specific as long as it's believable and as long as it's true, definitely be specific when you can, but don't be atypical. If it's uncommon in your industry to post a deadline on a white paper, download, then don't do it. Right? So if all your competitors have a resource library where you can just download the resource, you can download the the industry report, you can download the white paper or you can register for the seminar and it's like just not normal to have a deadline for that, then then don't do it because then it turns people off, right? Also don't pretend if returning visitors come back day after day or week after week or month after month and they see the exact same 10 minute countdown timer or they see the same one left in stock, then you're right. It's like the boy who cried wolf, you lose the legitimacy of this tactic of scarcity and just people end up becoming desensitized to your actual offer and no longer works. Of course, another great principle of scarcity um, in action is amazon right on today's deals. They have the percentage claimed of that item, right? So you can see the first item, the USB drive 55% claim and they have this cute little orange bar that gets filled up as more people buy the product and as fewer become available. Right? So that's a very powerful way. It's very subtle. Once again, not in your face, it's very believable, but it does work. And if the amazon is doing it, you could take it to the bank that it's been tested that it's statistically relevant and that really makes a difference. And that's just another example of scarcity and play. So scarcity really is, it's one of those things that could, that could be applied universally right? We've seen it in legion, we've seen it in e commerce, we've seen in a dedicated landing pages When done tactfully, it really taps in to the subconscious nature of how people work, right? We have a sense of urgency and once again remember this behavioral component of a person is that they would rather make the wrong decision and a quick decision without really evaluating every single one of my offers, then miss out on a really great deal and use that to your advantage. Be specific, be believable, be subtle about it, Be truthful and you'll see a lift your conversion rates if you're able to capitalize on the psychological principle. So in the next lecture, we're gonna continue talking about other psychological principles of persuasion. This stuff isn't really incredible because it's so universal and it has such a strong overlap with marketing and landing page design. And I'm excited to talk to you about these other principles as well. And with that I will see you guys very soon in the next lecture.