TECHNIQUE #4 - CREATING REAL
URGENCY THAT WORKS...
 It's frustrating, isn't it?...
You see visitors coming to
your site, and then disappearing - not having subscribed, or brought
anything. Don't worry, you're not alone...
Direct salespeople
have this problem, and they recognize that if they don't make the sale
on the day, customers will talk themselves out of buying. So they know
it's vital to create a sense of urgency with the customer, for most
direct salespeople work to the "rule" that says,
If you don't sell it there and then, you probably won't sell it ever.
It's
not always true, but having worked in direct sales myself, I found it
true about 95% of the time. You'd be shocked just how many times a
customer told me they "just had to think it over, then they would call
me back to place their order"... and never did. Fortunately, I soon
wised up, and realized - just like every other sales person - that I
needed to clinch the deal on the day.
Why Is Creating Urgency So Important On The Internet?
The
same is even more true of selling on the Internet. People lead busy
lives and many things are competing for their attention. They may have
clicked on your advertising banner or link out of curiosity, but if you
haven't compelled them to take some form of action while they're on
your site - whether it's a sale or subscription - you may never
see them again.
In other words, you need to create a real sense of urgency!
Why Fake Urgency Will Fail...
Unfortunately,
many people selling on the Internet simply don't know how to create
effective urgency in their sales pages. They might say something like,
"Hurry, we may decide to raise the price at any moment!"... yet the
chances are, you go back to that site a month later and see exactly the
same price...
Where's the urgency in that?...
Or worse,
I've seen many sales pages say, "This price is only valid until
midnight today". They use a small snippet of Javascript code to keep
the date current - yet you return the next day and you're told the
price is only valid until midnight of that day as well!
In other
words, the site loses all credibility if a visitor decides to put your
"midnight" deadline to the test. When they come back and see the
deadline has magically moved forward 24 hours with no effect on your
price, it could have the opposite effect of creating urgency - it may
put people off buying altogether!
The simple fact is...
Only real deadlines and genuinely limited quantities can create real urgency.
I've been marketing on the Internet now since 1998, and I quickly
got tired of seeing those kind of phrases like "Hurry, before I choose
to withdraw this offer..." when, all too often, the offer was never
withdrawn. It reminded me of those stores that were always having
"Closing Down" sales - you know the ones: they'd been "closing down"
since they were founded!
I wanted to create a real sense of urgency in my sales letters, so back in 2003 I came up with the concept of Dynamic Deadlines™
as part of a script called Sales Page Master. Among other things, the
script could generate real, personal deadlines for each unique visitor
that arrived on your site, which meant you could create a real, visible
feeling of genuine urgency - because if they missed your deadlines, you
could put the price up!
I no longer sell the original script, but instead I relaunched the deadlines feature as a PHP program, called Dynamic Deadlines™.
Using
this program, you can create three different types of deadlines on your
website to create powerful urgency and provide a compelling reason to
your visitors for them to buy now:
Personal deadlines - "Buy within the next hour or..."
These
are timed from the moment a visitor first arrives on your sales page.
The program “remembers” the time and date they arrived, and can display
how much of the deadline is left. So the first time they arrive, your
order link might say, "Buy within the next 1 hour to receive a 20%
discount". If they came back 10 minutes later, you could have your
sales page say, “Buy within the next 50 minutes...” and so on. Once the
initial deadline expires, you can raise the price, withdraw the offer,
remove a bonus or begin another deadline - the choice is yours!
You
can have as many deadlines in sequence as you like - so you could offer
an early bird bonus for people who order with an hour (and also to
prove your deadlines are real!), then a smaller discount for people who
buy within the next 24 hours, and so on. And you can set each deadline
to whatever length of time you want, from 1 minute to 30 days or more.
Once
a visitor sees your first deadline expire and the price increase or
perhaps a bonus disappear, don't you think they will take your next
deadline much more seriously?
Personal Dynamic Deadlines™ are an effective way to generate the urgency your sales letter needs.
Fixed deadlines - "Buy before December 25th..."
These
are like the kind of deadlines you get in stores. You can create
offers, discounts or bonuses that expire at a specific time and date.
These
are ideal for any special offers that you're running - you can make
sure your offer expires exactly when you said it would, and you can
display how much time they have left. You could then have another fixed
deadline, to follow... with a higher price!
Quantity deadlines - "Only 17 left..."
Scarcity
sells, and it's a well-known fact that when you limit the supply of
something, people tend to desire it more. With Dynamic Deadlines™ you can sell limited quantities of something. You can show how many have already been sold (and show many are left
to be sold, before the next "quantity" deadline in your sequence), and
you can raise the price or withdraw a bonus after you sell a certain
quantity.
So, for instance, to create an initial buying frenzy,
you could sell the first 10 copies of your product at $10, the next 10
at $20, and so on. The price increases create a natural urgency, based on the principle of scarcity - the lower prices themselves being scarce!
So now you now my four techniques for increasing sales, the question you might be asking right now is...
"How can I apply these techniques to my site?"
Click here to find out.
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Who Is Paul Hancox?
Paul
is from sunny England. He has been
marketing on the Internet since 1998. He edited an email newsletter
that eventually grew to over 160,000 readers, and in 1999 he wrote his
first ebook 51 Steps To Mega Traffic. He also wrote Viral Marketing Secrets (2001) and Small Changes: Big Profits
(2003, 2008). As a programmer he has also created several powerful
Internet marketing tools including Viral Refer Pro, Sales Page Master
and more recently he created the PHP programs Power Split Tester,Feedback Seeker and Dynamic Deadlines. |
How To Increase Your Sales Without Increasing Your Traffic
Technique #1 - Putting Your Site To The Vote
Technique #2 - How To Read Your Visitor's Mind
Technique #3 - Handling Customer Objections - Automatically
Technique #4 - Creating Real Urgency That Works
How To Apply These Techniques On Your Site Right Now
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