Urgency is an emotion created to boost sales in your online store, which means you are applying the fear of missing out (FOMO) strategy to increase the need for urgency in making the purchase.
Online consumers often come across the urgency-creating strategies used by these eCommerce businesses. These days, almost every online store engages in this strategy to increase sales.
Now, if you are a new owner of an online store looking for tips to increase sales using urgency marketing, you are sure to find this post to be of great help.
What Is Urgency in Sales?
Giving your audience the sense that they must act quickly or risk missing out is how you create urgency in your sales campaign.
As a result, “FOMO,” the feeling that someone (or everyone) is enjoying something — an event, a product, or a TV show — that you are aware of, is directly related to urgency.
With nearly two-fifths of those between the ages of 18 and 34 reporting that they “frequently” or “occasionally” feel as though they are missing out, FOMO is particularly common among younger audiences.
Compare Real Urgency And Implied Urgency
Two main “flavors” of urgency include:
- Real urgency. The customer feels an overwhelming sense of urgency because they will lose out if they don’t take quick action. There might only be a small amount of product left or a promotion expiration is coming.
- Implied urgency. There is no real stock limitation or deadline available. Instead, implied urgency means the use of direct language to recommend that a buyer make a purchase immediately instead of later.
You probably can’t rely fully on leveraging real urgency to complete the deal unless you’re always having flash deals or experiencing stock shortages.
Fortunately, implied urgency can still be a powerful sales tool if real urgency is not an option.
What Advantages Come From Creating Urgency in Sales?
Using urgency in sales is mainly used to boost sales. However, there are several other advantages, or sub-advantages, to using urgency in sales and marketing conversations. When effective, urgency can:
- Make your goods seem more appealing
- Increase the public’s opinion of your brand and products
- Encourage customers to decide more quickly
- Direct feedback on your sales process is given
- Stop customers from comparison shopping
Best Ways To Create Urgency And Boost Conversion On Your Online Store
Writing Strong Ad Copies
These days, ads with strong words and a call to action can make consumers want to buy. It affects whether your visitors will hesitate or click the CTA button to continue with the purchase. Additionally, words with a time sense make visitors feel an additional sense of urgency. So be sure to use powerful language in your CTAs and ad copy, such as:
- Limited-time deal!
- Hurry!
- Clearance Sale!
- Before it ends!
- Grab now!
- Last chance!
- The offer ends soon!
- One-time offer only!
- Don’t miss it!
- Today only!
Offer Free Shipping Options If Possible
Offering free shipping for a limited time will surely make customers feel pressed for time. It’s even better if you provide limitations like “Free Delivery Only for Today”. Since more than three-quarters of customers expect free shipping, this certainly creates a sense of urgency.
Additionally, many e-commerce websites add language like “Delivery is free if you order within X number of hours” to increase the sense of urgency. In most cases, this strategy is successful with both new and returning customers.
Numerous online stores even advertise their goods by providing same-day or next-day delivery. This is yet another well-known tactic that a lot of major online stores use to induce customers to act or buy swiftly.
Moreover, you can use the same strategies to reach out to cart abandoners via email and offer them free delivery in exchange for finishing their purchase within a specific period.
A sense of urgency is increased when you remind your customers and give them a short window of time. Therefore, be sure to include this free shipping option in every campaign you run.
Highlight Low Stock Warning
Another great way to generate urgency for sales is to show how much inventory is still available for each product on the product page. The visitor becomes concerned that they might miss out on the product if the stocks run out as a result.
Many e-commerce websites use a bold font and colors, usually red, to show the stock level and quickly attract the visitor’s attention. When buyers consider the chances that their preferred product will soon sell out, this information not only helps them take action but also increases their sense of urgency.
This strategy can even be used to create a sense of urgency in the minds of customers who have left shopping carts at your store. Send them emails requesting action, noting that the item in their shopping cart is nearly out of stock and that they should order it before it is fully gone.
This stock level display urgency strategy creates urgency and makes the conversion process easier for an average percentage of customers, so it should always be used on the cart page and in cart abandonment emails.
Keep Creating Fearlessness Among Customers
This urgency tactic requires that customers feel like the things they’ve been viewing have only a few left or are about to run out. similar to showing the stock level mentioned in the previous part.
Therefore, highlighting the limited quantity of your products or services gives new customers a sense that the product must be great because it is selling quickly and is likely to run out. More customers will click the “Buy Now” button when a product is this scarce than when it has an unlimited supply.
Therefore, it is typically a good idea for online stores to highlight or point out that the product or service that customers are viewing on the site is in limited supply and may run out quickly if they don’t act. If you’re selling a service, you might specify that each month, a specific service is only available to a specific number of customers.
Notify Customers With Email Headlines
Create a sense of urgency or scarcity in the subject line of your remarketing or marketing emails. Try to include time-related words as well as strong words like those described above. Use bright colors and actionable verbs in the email content to attract the attention of potential customers.
Your chance to get a potential customer to open your email and, at last, persuade them to visit your website to make a purchase is to choose a headline that will attract their attention.
Therefore, if you want to create urgency so that they shop on your eCommerce site, don’t forget to include headlines that easily suit the subscribers.
Give Flash Sales
The best time to run flash discounts is during special events or holidays like Christmas, Black Friday, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, etc. And data show that this increases an eCommerce site’s revenues even outside of its busiest times.
To boost purchasing, it is thought to be useful to provide unique deals during specific periods.
Make sure to promote these special offers on each product page to let people know about them. Remind your customers about the deadline for these flash specials on these special days as well to encourage quick action.
Additionally, an important brand in e-commerce like Amazon offers flash sales to customers through a program called Deals of the Day or Offer of the Day. With a countdown timer, this campaign offers things at a discount for one day only.
Not to mention that to increase sales even more, customers should be informed about these occasional flash promotions via social media pages, emails, and text messages.
Prepare An Engaging Don’t Miss Out Email
One of the best ways for any eCommerce business to convert sales is still through marketing emails. Among all marketing channels, email marketing continues to have the best ROI. As far as remarketing or retargeting your target market, there is still no better way to connect with customers today than to advertise your products or services.
Therefore, online stores employ this tried-and-true strategy to create demand and urgency through their promotions. A key tactic to be used in every online marketing campaign is an email with the subject line “Last Chance” or “Don’t Miss Out.”
These email messages promote sales that are going to expire and create urgency. These emails act as a reminder that they have just a few hours left to take advantage of the great price on the offer.
Set Deadline For Deals
Giving special sales or marketing campaigns a deadline or time limit typically greatly improves the effectiveness of the whole campaign. When a customer is not in a rush to purchase something from an online store, they are more likely to skip over it after they realize it is nothing impressive.
Therefore, giving your exclusive deal a deadline or time limit will persuade consumers that the product is special. They’ll see it as a seldom available item with a unique price offer that they can’t find elsewhere.
Any product can become attractive to visitors simply by including a time limitation in a sale. The copywriter for the advertisement can use words like “Offer Ending Soon,” “For Limited Time Only,” “Offer Valid Until New Year’s Eve,” etc. in this case.
A countdown timer that moves backward in the site with all the facts on the ad page is another incredibly efficient strategy. This gives the customer a sense of how many days or hours are left before they may take advantage of that exclusive discount.
Customize The Deals To Offer
Almost every big online business keeps track of and assesses the visitor’s interest based on the page they have viewed. The relevant marketing team can then retarget those customers and send them a more customized offer with urgency-driven deals.
This means that using information about the products viewed or pages visited that was collected by the site tracking technology, you can simply identify the products or services that your customers are interested in, making it simpler for you to customize a deal and send them discounts by email or inbox.
Additionally, you may create motivation from customers who abandoned their cart by sending those leads customized promotions or discounts via email and notifying them that they only have a limited amount of time to take advantage of this discount offer for the items they abandoned in their shopping cart.
Using Chatbot & Pop-ups
Live chat tools for online shopping or online marketplaces are a very common way to engage with your customers. And these online stores frequently use chatbots to advertise ongoing specials or discounts.
Visitors and potential customers can learn about current upgrades and continuing sales or discounts via the chatbots. More importantly, it can offer a personalized touch while connecting with potential customers to create urgency about your goods or services.
On the other side, carefully written ad copy and attractively designed pop-ups can catch visitors’ attention. Pop-ups are an ideal way to advertise to all site visitors about your most recent products, services, and advertisements. The use of pop-ups also serves as a persistent reminder to site visitors that they are missing out on something amazing.
It can also be used to highlight the products that are selling most quickly in your online store or show off any new products that have just been released.
It’s interesting to note that both pop-ups and chatbots may be described as a light push that a customer needs to make to purchase a product from an online store. To get the most out of them, be sure to use them without annoying visitors.
In Conclusion
Now that you know some of the best strategies, you can use them to create urgency and increase sales in your online store. However, don’t just use these tricks to persuade customers to buy your products. Try to do this without coming across as powerful or annoying.
Refer to more details about online promotion tactics to boost sales in the blog post 6 Dynamic Online Promotion Tactics Will Boost Sales Successfully.
