We all have a brain … well, most of us do :-) . One of the interesting things about your brain, is that it follows quite a few rules that can be used to predict your behaviour in many situations. Just ask Hunch! Your brain and its rules can also be used in an SEO context, to get visitors to your site, boost its value in their minds, and climb up the Google ladder. Today we explore another tip for using neuroscience in a web marketing context.

SEO

The grossest, but certainly the best, web marketing tool

Use scarcity as a selling point

The neuroscience: Humans are a social creature, and we tend to look for both acceptance and status among our peers. If we believe that a lot of other people have (or want) a particular product or service, we will also want it. Having the same thing as everyone else helps build our acceptance; having something everyone else wants confers status.

The web marketing tactic: So, if you truly only have a limited number of items, or can honestly only provide a service for a limited time, let people know that. You might do this by:

  1. Modifying your ecommerce software to show the number of items left in stock of a particular product
  2. Modifying your ecommerce software to show how many of a particular item have been sold in the recent past
  3. Puttingup a widget on your site that shows people the most popular items, and how many there are left
  4. Creating a special promotion or sale, but only holding it for a limited time. DON’T extend it past the indicated date. This is like telling your two-year old that they will get a time-out for touching the television … and when they touch the television a minute later, simply telling them that they’ll get a time-out again. You are teaching people not to believe what you say.
  5. Holding a special limited time event, such as an exclusive customer party, a product celebration, a promotion to hold inconjunction with a trade show, etc.

Of note: This usually only works when there really is a limited amount of something! For example, we’ve all seen those email marketing letters and landing pages that urge us to ‘Sign Up Now – This Offer Expires in Thirty Days’ … without mentioning what thirty day time period the offer covers. We know that people say this just to get our attention, and when this occurs, it breeds distrust.

The trick is to let your customers know when there REALLY is a limited time offer … not to invent time limits to try and increase signups.