If you have not read Robert Cialdini’s monumental work, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” – grab it now! Inside on of the major psychological triggers he explains is scarcity. Human beings have been hard-wired to want what is going away. Many more people are motivated by the thought of potential loss than potential gain.

Gary Bencivenga, one of the world’s best copywriters, summed this up perfectly at his “Bencivenga 100″ seminar in New York. I’m paraphrasing but he said something along the lines of, “If I called my neighbor at 3 AM and told him about a 2-for-1 sale going on at the local tire store – my neighbor would think I was crazy and probably be pretty annoyed! But if I called him at 3 in the morning and told him his garage was open and 2 kids were rolling 4 of his snow tires down the street. He’d jump out of bed and go chase them!”

That’s the power of scarcity. If you get this principle right you’ll be astonished at the sales results. A lot of people think they understand scarcity but that’s not the case. Simply saying “x” number of units will be sold. Or “limited time opportunity” or “Buy before midnight tonight” does not always translate to better sales. There’s more to it than just a thinly veiled attempt at influencing.

I know scarcity is one of those triggers that works on me. (Side note: It’s good to step back when you make buying decisions and see what caused it. You can rationalize it all you want – but many buying decisions on based on emotional, psychological triggers.)

For instance, my first sports car was a Honda S2000 when it came out in 2000. The car was impossible to get. My local dealer had an allotment of 2 or 3 cars for the year. Only 5000 were made and about 2000 came to the U.S. I was searching all over the country calling every dealership for this rare combination of Silver with a red interior. I found my S2000 about 800 miles away in upstate NY and drove it all the down to our place in Maryland in the pouring rain. Even today, I sold my Mercedes SL55 for something even more exclusive – an Aston Martin.

I like examples from diverse industries aside from info marketing since this is how breakthroughs happen. This is from Porthos.com, a company I buy a fair amount of wine from and I’ve got to know their owner, Hal Oates. They do an excellent job of using scarcity and making it believable. [Side note: Hal will be speaking at my sold-out Underground® 4 Seminar ]

The mention of how many cases (300) telegraphs exclusivity, rarity and scarcity without being over the top. Also, if you trust Hal and his recommendation (I do) he tells you this wine is most likely to hit $100+ cult status. Then notice at the bottom “NO SALES TO RETAILERS”. Yet another trigger to the scarcity here.

I think Porthos.com does an excellent job of using scarcity along with very solid reason-why in the sales copy for wine. He’s not selling to a starry-eyed crowd of biz-oppers, most wine collectors are considered affluent and sophisticated consumers. You can use this psychological trigger in an ethical way that’s not demeaning to your list’s intelligence.

Let me give you a few more examples…

Ferrari Enzo – Ferrari is a perfect example of scarcity and fueling a passionate marketplace. The Enzo is their $600,000+ supercar made in honor of Enzo Ferrari, the founder. They made exactly 399 cars and that’s it. Ferrari collectors know when Ferrari tells them its limited edition – it really is and they will not make any more.

Part of maintaining Ferrari’s prestigious heritage is making sure that not everyone can have one. Only a privileged few can buy a Ferrari hence the truly created scarcity. But just having a big bankroll still won’t let you drive an Enzo – Ferrari has traditionally made potential buyers apply to buy one of their limited-edition cars, placing various restrictions on what may and may not be done with the car. They enforce these restrictions by threatening to withdraw perks like factory tours and the chance to buy future Ferraris. I was talking to an owner of an Enzo at a car show in NY and he told me you had to have been a registered owner of 3 other Ferraris to have the privilege of applying for one of the Enzos.

You’ll see a lot of special editions created for collectible and high-end merchandise like pens, cigars and spirits. This pen site keep all the sold-out editions as proof they really are sold-out and scarce:

Okay guys, here’s your big SAT word of the day – verisimilitude:
verisimilitude \ver-uh-suh-MIL-uh-tood; -tyood\, noun:
1. The appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true.
2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

I think this is the key to making scarcity work for your business. eBooks don’t really have it. You can say you’ll only sell 500 copies of an eBook but there’s no “appearance of truth”. It’s just bits and bytes – why would it be truly limited? I’ve seen others use scarcity ploys that really had me wondering if they were true or not. If your customers question it – you’re done for.

The best advice I can give is combine scarcity with ‘reason-why’ for an extra comma in your bank account.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Marketing-O-Rama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.