3 Ways to Add Scarcity to Your Offers Without Discounting
In fact, limited-time discounts are my go-to option when I want to crank up the pressure on waffling would-be buyers.
Sometimes though you just can’t use discounts.
Maybe you have fixed costs to cover.
Maybe you have a high-end product or service, and discounting would trash your “brand.”
Maybe what you’re selling is your time, and you don’t want to find yourself slaving away in the salt mines for peanuts.
Whatever the reason ruling out discounts does NOT let you off the hook when it comes to generating a sense of urgency and scarcity in your buyers.
Without a reason to act *now*, most buyers will choose not to choose—and you’ll lose a lot of sales.
Here are three techniques you can use:
1. Limited-time bonuses. When they buy now, they’ll get something extra—preferably of equal or greater value than the product they’re buying.
2. Limited quantity. This works great when you can come up with a real-world constraint that makes sense. Like capping enrollment in a class at 10 students, or taking one and only one new freelancing client.
3. The “reverse discount”—announce you’re RAISING your prices, but anyone who buys before the deadline will be “grandfathered in” and get the current lower price.
And one extra idea:
You can “bundle” several products together and offer them at a special, limited-time package price.
This is effectively a discount, since you’re offering the bundle at a lower price than what the products might cost individually.
But the sales you make will have a higher per-ticket value than if the customer bought just one item—and that’s a win in my book.