A Roadmap to Higher Conversions
Hey coaches, consultants, and agencies, do you need more sales for your high-ticket business?
What if you could delegate the sales process to a pro who will deliver the results you
need?
Closers.io places proven appointment setters or closers into your business with 100% guaranteed
results.
Visit closers.io.sme to learn more.
And if they don't perform, you don't pay.
Again, visit closers.io.sme.
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle.
And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
Hello, hello, hello.
Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by
Social Media Examiner.
I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business
owners who want to know what works with social media.
Today I'll be joined by Mindy Weinstein, and we're going to talk about how to use scarcity
in your marketing.
If you understand psychological principles or you've heard some of my interviews with
Robert Cialdini and Jonah Berger, you're going to absolutely love today's episode because
we dive deep into the concept of scarcity and how it will work with marketers.
By the way, I'm at Stelzner on Instagram and at Mike underscore Stelzner on Twitter.
If you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you don't miss any of
our future content.
Let's transition over to this week's interview with Mindy Weinstein.
Helping you to simplify your social safari.
Here is this week's expert guide.
Today I'm very excited to be joined by Mindy Weinstein.
If you don't know who she is, she is the author of The Power of Scarcity, Leveraging
Urgency and Demand to Influence Customer Decisions.
She's also founder of Market Mindshift, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses
improve their conversions, and her podcast is called Persuasive Woman.
Mindy, welcome to the show.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
I'm so excited to be here.
I'm super stoked you're here today.
Mindy and I are going to explore how to use scarcity to improve your marketing and your
conversion.
Before we get on that rabbit trail, I would love to hear your story.
How'd you get into marketing and start wherever you want to start?
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
I'm going to go way back.
We're going to do a little time travel to the past.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer.
Actually, with type, okay, now I'm totally dating myself.
I wanted to be a writer too.
Did you?
Nice.
Okay.
I think that's a great thing.
I used to type on my mom's typewriters.
I'd write little stories and I'd illustrate them.
I knew I wanted to do something on that side of things.
But then when I got to college, I ended up studying business.
My very first marketing class, I had one of those aha moments.
I'm like, wait a minute.
In marketing, they write?
So my first job out of school was as a copywriter and then it just went from there.
And so I ended up eventually in digital marketing, but it was really my love of writing that
got me to where I'm at today.
Well, tell me a little bit more.
So you get out of college, you become a copywriter.
Do you work for an agency or do you work for a small business?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great question.
So when I got out of college, my first job was working for a call center training company
back in the day.
And so they were this pretty big size company, but I was in house.
And so my role, I think my official title though, because again, right out of college,
I think I was marketing coordinator or something like that.
But as soon as I got into that job and they realized that I liked to write and I was pretty
decent at it, I was given the job of doing all of our copy.
So brochures, website, all of those kinds of things.
And so that's really what my first job was.
And then as time went on though, I had different marketing roles and I actually ended up in
the personal finance industry, but still in marketing.
I eventually though in 2007 was looking for just something different.
And that's when really digital marketing was growing quite a bit.
And I remember one of my family members had told me, so his cousin, he's like, you know,
you like to write.
Have you ever thought about writing for websites?
And I thought he was joking.
I was at a job.
People pay you to just write for their website, you know, something, you know, that's not
in house.
That's ended up like how I ended up in the whole digital side of things.
And then I actually worked for different agencies.
I first started as a freelance writer, but got picked up by an agency, became their content
manager, then content director.
Then I took over their SEO department.
By the time I left, I had 45 people under me and my various teams.
And then I was recruited by a very technical and one of the oldest SEO companies out there.
And so I ended up on the SEO side of things.
So it was this whole interesting journey of, you know, you get started on more of like
content marketing, creative to very analytical.
So I always like to joke that I get to use, you know, left brain, right brain all the
time and never get bored.
That's for sure.
So somewhere along the line, it sounds like you ended up getting your PhD, right?
And then you wrote a book.
So kind of bring us up to a little bit more of that story.
Yeah, that's one of the questions I get a lot is like, how did you go from that?
Side with digital marketing to now you wrote a book on persuasion and scarcity.
So tell you a little bit about that.
So as much as I love marketing and writing, I also love teaching.
And so I've been teaching for the last seven years, a professor at Grand Canyon University,
and I'm a full time instructor as well as running my business.
And you know, part of that on the academic side of things, you know, having a PhD is
important.
And so years ago, I started that journey.
And I knew I wanted to study something outside of business because I had already had a marketing
undergrad, I'd gotten my MBA.
And I thought, well, as a marketer, what's the area that we really need to be strong
in?
And right away, I thought, you know what, psychology, because it's always been an interest,
especially when it comes to marketing, because we're trying to reach people and understand
people.
So I ended up pursuing a PhD in general psychology with an emphasis in technology.
It's actually a super long degree title, but I just stopped it there.
And as I was in the PhD program, you know, I was thinking about my dissertation and also
thought, well, I want to study something that has to do with what influences us as humans.
And as I started diving into all of that, I came across scarcity, the principle of scarcity
and quickly realized that of all the influence factors, things that really persuade us on
a day-to-day basis and impact our decisions, scarcity is the most powerful.
So that was my dissertation.
So I ended up studying that for quite a few years, you know, doing my own, you know, research
on it, you know, reading other studies, you know, doing experiments and, you know, finished
my whole program and everything.
And then later COVID hit and with the whole to whole of paper shortage and that craze
that went on, I remember thinking to myself, oh my gosh, I'm actually watching my dissertation
play out in reality.
And at that point I'm like, this needs to be a book because I feel like all this research
and this knowledge is very much housed in an academic setting.
But as marketers, all we know about this topic is things that are like, by now, going to
sell out forever.
And that's what we think about, but it's so much deeper than that.
So when did you publish the book?
Yeah.
So the book came out, well, I started the process a while ago, but the book came out
in November, 2022.
So that's when it was released.
But what was really fun with the whole journey is, you know, sometimes you think like, I
feel like I've got a good idea.
I feel like I'm on to something with the whole idea of getting the scarcity information out
there.
But then when you're actually validated by a publisher saying, yes, we agree with you,
it felt pretty good.
And so that's pretty much what happened when I thought, I think this would be a good book.
I ended up getting with a literary agent.
We did the whole proposal, sent it off to publishers and McGraw Hill was one of the
first ones.
And they came back really quickly and said, we want to talk to you.
And that's like, okay, I'm on to something here.
That is so cool.
Yeah.
We've had Robert Cialdini on the show multiple times and you and I talked, I think you know
him.
I think you know him as Bob or whatever, right?
Because you probably know him so well.
So today are you teaching and running a business?
Like kind of bring us up to the, obviously the book has come out now it's 2023.
I'm just curious what you're doing now.
Now fast forward to where I'm at now.
I'm actually just finished up my semester.
And so I am going to take a little break from teaching, but I am now doing, yeah, running
my marketing business.
And I've actually been doing a lot of speaking and training on the principle of scarcity
because again, it's one of those as we unpack it today, you know, it's one of those things
that applies to so many businesses.
And when people start to realize like, I can apply this in marketing and I could apply
this in sales, you know, they're wanting to learn more.
And so I decided to take a little break from teaching so I could spread the word of scarcity
out there.
That sounds super cheesy.
No, but I love it.
Your time is scarce and you choosing to use it to make a bigger impact, right?
Absolutely.
What I love about your story is you started out, you know, getting this degree, then you
got your MBA, then you proceeded to go and get a psychology.
I have a master's.
I was going to get a PhD, but I decided not to.
But yeah, I mean, my master's is in speech communications, which has a lot of psychology
around it.
And that's where I first came across Robert Cialdini's book, his very first book, Influence,
or one of his first books.
But what I love about what you're doing is you did your dissertation specifically on
this, right?
So if anybody who's ever done a thesis or a dissertation, there's enormous amount of
work that goes into that and analysis and studies and submitting things into journals
and all this kind of stuff that people in the business world might not understand.
So the fact that you did your dissertation on this and you published a book on this,
folks pay attention to what we're going to talk about today, because there probably hasn't
been anybody that's done as much work on scarcity specifically as you have.
And that's what I'm excited about today.
So there are people listening right now that might be a little skeptical.
They might say, oh, that's just a gimmick.
What do you want to say to everyone listening right now, whether they be marketers or agency
owners or entrepreneurs as to why they should pay attention and why this is such an important
concept?
The first thing that I want to just say is that scarcity doesn't have to be negative.
And I feel like that's the first thing that people think of is, well, I don't want to
go down the road of scarcity because that is so negative and I don't want to turn off
customers.
But the truth of the matter is scarcity actually can be used in a positive way and not in a
way that's doing any kind of manipulation.
As we unpack it today, you're going to realize that you probably have scarcity that naturally
exists in your business.
And it's just a matter of how do you get that message out there.
And you can actually use scarcity to have fun with customers, to create excitement,
to create community.
And that is something that's huge, even building relationships.
And so as we already started talking about, I studied this from an academic standpoint
for a really long time, but I'm also a marketing practitioner.
And so I'm always looking at how do you apply this in a practical, ethical, and again, positive
way.
And what was really interesting is that I did get into academic research.
So I got that part down.
I know the psychology, but as I was working on my book, I ended up doing quite a few interviews
with different executives at all size companies.
So I had interviewed the former VP of global marketing for McDonald's.
He'd worked for the company for decades.
And I also interviewed the founder of 1-800-Flowers and they own Harry and David and just all
different people.
And what was so interesting, and this is really what I want everyone to hear today, is that
even for me from the academic research side, I still was amazed at all the different benefits
of using scarcity.
Things that I hadn't even thought of from an academic standpoint that I realized as
I was talking to these different executives and different brands that they're using scarcity
and they're using it in creative ways.
And it doesn't have to be something that's that, again, just more manipulative way of,
you know, for limited time only today only.
It's so much more than that.
What are some of the benefits of scarcity before we get into like the rest of my questions?
I'm just curious.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, which some of them I kind of touched on when I was just throwing out different things,
but with scarcity, there's different things that occur.
And so that occur in the brain.
And I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I'll talk a little bit about that
because it gets into then what are the benefits of scarcity?
So the reason that scarcity is one of the most powerful influence factors is because
of the way that our brain treats scarce situations.
So our brain is wired to overcome scarcity and it's something that's primal.
And a lot of that is because you think about our early ancestors, they were trying to survive
when there were scarce resources, food, water, shelter.
And even today, our brain still reacts the same way.
And our brain has a hard time understanding the difference between what is scarce for
survival and what is just a Nike drop.
Our brain is still like, oh, this is urgent, you know, and so it just kicks into gear.
And so that's something really important to understand.
So that's what's going on with the brain.
But with that comes quicker decisions that are made.
And so we've seen through neurological studies that when faced with scarcity, that the brain
will skip the normal process in making that decision and decide quicker.
The same thing also happens with valuation.
So when we see something that's scarce, so something that might be harder, you know,
I should even step back.
So when I'm seeing scarcity, it's anything that's a little harder to get or some restriction
of some type.
So when we're even faced with that, our brain goes straight to the valuation process, which
means that we value something higher when it's scarce.
And these are things that have been seen in MRI scans.
So it's harder to argue with those and say, well, you know, is audience a little skewed
or biased?
We're watching brain activity.
But even with all of that being said, because what might be coming to your mind now is,
well, then isn't that still manipulating if you know that goes on with the brain?
Not when we're doing things that are helpful to customers.
And so if we can help a customer who has all these different options, they don't know which
to choose and we're marking one as a bestseller or most popular, that helps with the decision
making process.
And so those are some of the benefits.
But the other things that building community.
So when you have something that's scarce and people feel like they're able to be a part
of this exclusive group that either owned a product or joined your membership, it builds
community.
It also does make excitement.
So we like to have things that are a little bit harder to get and we get excited about
them.
Builds relationships.
So if you are letting customers know about some type of scarcity, so whether it's a VIP
event or it's there are only so many seats available and you're just updating people,
actually really does build relationships.
And so those are some of the benefits, I would say, to scarcity, just to keep in mind.
You know, this is fascinating as I'm listening to you folks that listen to the show regularly
know I have another show called Web 3 Business, which focuses a lot on digital collectibles
and NFTs and how businesses are using them.
And I'm pretty active in that space.
And in this digital collectible space, like there's these rare traits on some of these
NFTs that go for a lot more money than all the others.
We're talking like sometimes 10 times more just because it has diamond eyes and there's
only so many diamond eyes or whatever.
And these small, like it's pretty much the same thing except slight alterations and rarity
of them.
And that's where you mentioned like the Nike drops, right?
The whole sneaker head movement, right?
They have a limited supply and people want these things and they're willing to pay a
premium for these things.
And it's the same thing if anybody's ever had like collected coins or collected cards
and the mistake cards are worth a lot because there's so few of them.
Right.
So it's really intriguing.
And then you were mentioning earlier about the whole toilet paper thing, right?
During COVID, right?
Like I'm not going to lie.
Like I've got a big stash in my garage of backup toilet paper because I didn't want
to not be able to have it when I needed it.
Right.
It's just crazy.
Or I watch Survivor, right?
And people are running around looking for these, these limited advantages, right?
And they hide them and they treat them like they're like they've just won the lottery.
Right.
And it's fascinating how all this works.
Okay.
So putting this now into a marketing context, if we as marketers are going to try to employ
scarcity, how ought we think or what do we need to know before we get underway here?
Because obviously, you know, you might've teased at some of this stuff already, but
I, but there's probably things we need to think about if we're about to employ this
very powerful persuasive process.
Yes.
That is, I feel like one of the biggest things that I came across in my research, because
I think it's easy for us and myself included before I started studying scarcity, just think
of like, Oh, well, I'm just going to make something hard to get.
And then I'm going to have a spike in sales.
So whether that's hard to get, meaning that it's just some type of sale for a limited
time, or you are only releasing so many products at a time.
The thing about it is as I was digging into this research and getting in depth with it
is that there are different types of scarcity.
There's actually four different types and each type of scarcity works differently and
it speaks to different types of customers.
So it's not a one size fits all.
So you could end up like really starting this whole campaign and you're using scarcity,
but it turns out you're using the wrong type of scarcity and you've actually completely
turned off your customer.
So that is something that's huge and you need to understand that.
What about perceptions of false scarcity?
Is this something we need to be worried about?
Because especially if you're marketing to a savvy audience.
Absolutely.
And so you need to always be authentic.
We know we live in this digital world.
People are going to find out if you're doing something that's misleading.
If you're doing something that you're trying to say, oh, there's only five left yet there's
been five left and it's going up and down the number, which I know things could break
on a website.
I'm not talking about that, but doing it deceptively.
People are smart and they talk.
We all do that.
So you have to be very genuine with it.
And that's where it gets really to me, the creative side of things is that you can have
real scarcity and it's going to just depend on the type of scarcity that you're using.
And so you always have to be, like I said, though, truthful with it because it'll backfire.
I actually put an entire chapter in my book about not misusing scarcity because the short-term
gain that you're going to get if you do that is definitely not worth it in the long run
because your reputation will be damaged.
So that's something huge to keep in mind.
So let's get into the first type of scarcity and maybe describe it and give some examples.
So as I mentioned, there are four different types of scarcity.
So it's important to understand the differences between all of them.
But I'll start with time-related scarcity because that's one that I think a lot of us
think about right away.
And that's a restriction on time.
So you are not competing with other customers on availability.
You're competing with the clock.
So you're competing with.
But remember that I said scarcity is a restriction of any type or something that might be a little
bit harder to get.
So that's where time-related scarcity comes in.
Time-related scarcity is actually out of all the ones I'm going to be talking about today,
works for the most types of products and services and also the most types of audiences because
it doesn't have to be something that's very exclusive.
You're just offering something for a limited time.
So some examples of time-related scarcity are countdown timers, which I always have
to stop because if you're watching it, like I'm smiling right now because I have a love-hate
relationship with countdown timers.
They work, but they work.
They work.
Yeah, and that's what I'm going to say and I'm sure people listening do because as a
customer you're like, oh, there's a countdown timer and you start to feel stressed out.
You might feel a little annoyed, but you know what?
You're going to buy.
And that's what I talked about, the love-hate relationship.
And so there was one company that I had interviewed in my book and they talked about that when
they added a countdown timer to their website or every time they've done that for a sale,
so they're already doing a sale.
I mean, that's happening and not, by the way, a sale is time-related scarcity.
But what they do is they add in the countdown timer as well and they were talking about
when they do that, their sales have an upward movement of about 40% on average.
So I mean, it does work.
But you can also do what I love too with countdown timers.
I've talked to other businesses that use them to count down towards events.
So the event's coming up and you know, your amount of time to get tickets or just something
fun that you could be doing, but you could put countdown timers in your emails and your
social media.
I mean, there's so many different things you could do.
So instead of saying something's coming soon, just count down towards it.
But also what falls into this category.
So I'll just list actually some things and then I want to get into limited time products,
but flash sales, definitely time-related scarcity.
Coupons are time-related scarcity.
So anything that has a time limitation on it falls in this category, but limited time
products.
So that falls into here too.
And I want to give some examples of McDonald's probably a couple of different times, just
because I feel like they've done such a great job with scarcity, but the McRib sandwich,
the McRib sandwich is a limited time product.
It comes and goes.
It just had its farewell tour this last fall, but don't worry because they've had about
five farewell tours.
So if you missed it and you're getting FOMO right now, it's okay.
You can probably get one at some point in time, but the reason it's a limited time product
is because it comes and goes.
And so we see that, we see that with the pumpkin spice latte with Starbucks, which of course
that's going to be fall related, but it comes and it goes.
And so those are things that people get excited about.
So there's excitement that gets created with time-related scarcity, but it's one of those
things that when we talked about how do you really add scarcity and still be genuine?
Well, you could do something that's a limited time product.
You could even do a limited time service that you're providing.
You can have a sale, you can have a coupon.
I mean, those are legitimate ways to really apply scarcity.
One of the things that we found, and we've tested this pretty extensively, is the doors
closing kind of a thing.
There's a lot of people that sell online courses and they have enrollment periods and then
they close the doors, right?
And it seems like having that close and you got to make a decision, are you in or are
you out, right?
By that date versus just having a sale that ends and then having it go up to full price
almost always accelerate sales.
Is this something that you found to be true as well?
Yes.
I'm not saying anything like that because it, and one of the things I didn't even touch
on when I was talking about scarcity and why it's important is that feeling of FOMO.
And so I have to throw that out there, but really actually from a psychological perspective,
it's not FOMO, it's loss aversion.
So it's a lot deeper than just FOMO.
And what happens to us again with our brains and how we are wired, as much as I said that
we focus on things that are scarce and our brain wants to overcome that scarcity and
it puts urgency on it.
If we think that we're going to miss out or lose something, our reaction is pretty strong.
And actually just kind of on a side note with that, our fear of loss and that feeling that
we get is actually stronger than our feeling of gain, which is sounds bizarre.
But if you think about it, if you've ever lost a $20 bill, it hurts.
You might find a $20 bill walking through a parking lot and you're excited, but that
losing it is a lot stronger.
And so the reason I'm even bringing that up now is because that's the whole thing is sometimes
you have to let people know the doors are closing, like you said.
And so this is your opportunity and they're not going to want to miss out.
Okay.
So the first of the four is time.
And we talked about countdown timers.
We talked about having limited time sales.
We talked about flash sales.
We didn't really say what a flash sale was.
How's the flash sale different than a regular sale?
So a flash sale is going to be in that time period.
Well, which would I recommend is anywhere between 24 hours to 72 hours.
So it's a shorter window of time that that sale is going to exist.
And so that's really what a flash sale is.
Now with those, you need to be careful because if you're constantly doing them, I mean, your
customers are going to be conditioned.
This is like a black Friday kind of thing.
Typically.
Right.
Right.
Black Friday is the classic example of scarcity that has so many of the scarcity factors all
in one, but absolutely.
Okay, cool.
And then we talked about these limited time products that make a lot of sense if you have
a regular audience that comes in like Starbucks or McDonald's.
But if you have like, I even think about Netflix has limited series, right?
Where those TV shows are going to be available for a period of time and everybody wants to
watch them before they go away.
Is there a way that you could do limited time products if you're in the services industry
or if you're selling information, how would we do something like that?
I love that.
And so absolutely.
So you could do some type of limited time.
It could be a service bundle that you offer.
It could be something like a Valentine's days.
Why did I say Valentine's day?
I don't even know why we're like way far from that.
Sometime in the future, someone will be listening to this on Valentine's day.
Yeah.
Someone's going to hear this and be like, great.
I'll plan for next year.
But you could have something that's tied to a seasonal event.
Okay.
When I actually use this example with Memorial Day sales.
I mean like what all the furniture places.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've been talking to real estate agents recently and of course they're not, they don't have
a product.
It's a service they're providing to people.
But you know, we, we talked about at the time, I think it was closer to national hamburger
day.
And so we talked about like how fun would it be if you had an event, an open house and
it was tied to national hamburger day.
And for a limited time you come in from this hour to this hour to view this open house.
Plus you get a free hamburger.
I know it's a little goofy, but there's just so many things that you could do and really
get involved with this.
But I love it.
Like I said, with services, bundles, all those kinds of things, you could just do it for
a limited time.
Love it.
Okay.
Let's talk about the second kind of scarcity beyond time.
What's the next one?
The next one is supply related scarcity.
So that is good, or it could be a supply shortage, a genuine supply shortage.
You know, you ran out of supplies, but it can also be a purposeful restriction.
And so exclusivity falls within this category.
And so it's what we see a lot with luxury brands, but here's something really important.
I want everyone to know about supply related scarcity is that it does speak to a certain
type of person.
So with supply related scarcity, especially if it's exclusivity, like that it's purposely
limited is that that's going to speak to someone who desires uniqueness.
They want to be unique, which is a lot of people and at least the Western culture.
So any type of uniqueness, they want to show self-expression.
So you think about social media, whether it's showing a clothing item that was a little
bit harder to get.
I have a perfect example of this with social media.
Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, founded Blue Sky.
And right now it's invite only.
And everybody wants the invite.
And there's very few invites because you're only allowed like you don't even get an invite
when you first go in, you have to earn the invite.
And it's like everybody wants it.
And Clubhouse was the same way back in the day.
This is a great example of supply shortage, but it was engineered that way.
Right?
Yeah.
And actually I talk about Clubhouse in my book in this chapter specifically, because
what you just said, I mean, it's so exclusivity could be invitation only and we all want to
be invited and we want to be VIPs too.
That's a huge thing.
But having any kind of VIP access or this is by invite only, right?
It makes us feel special.
It makes us feel good.
This also, in addition to what we're talking about invite only, it works really good with
conspicuous consumption and solidify what that is.
But that's basically the things that will show to other people.
You know, again, it could be clothing items.
It could be things around your house.
It could be what you're driving.
It could be a lot of different things, but it's more of that showing what you're consuming
versus your box of aluminum foil in your drawer.
That would time-related would be good for something like that, but not so much supply
related, but those are all things.
So what you just mentioned, that's one of the examples I always give is invitation only.
So that goes back to the whole thing of how can we employ or really get scarcity out there,
but in a very genuine way.
Well, maybe we're going to have an invitation only.
Maybe we're going to invite people to be on a list to hear about our products.
Maybe it's going to be a VIP event that we're holding or VIP membership.
I just got back from a trip from Japan, and so I have American Airlines membership, but
VIP access, you know, you get to go to the Admiral's Lounge and certain things like that.
And so what does it get me to do?
Well, it gets me as a customer to keep purchasing my airline tickets on American.
And so there's that exclusivity there, but any kind of drops.
And so again, going back to Nike, or I think about luxury brands like Supreme, that they
only have a certain number of products that are available.
All of those are supply-related scarcity, and they're really strong because they get
us to not want to miss out.
We want to get those items.
We want to feel special.
A couple thoughts come into mind.
Number one is an application, like for service providers, they could make people fill out
an application to prequalify.
Not everyone is selected.
And then I've also heard about the watch brand.
What's that luxury watch brand?
The one that's the most luxurious watch brand?
Gosh, I'm totally drawn to blank.
Everybody is listening like, I know the name and they're saying it.
So, OK, we'll have to Google luxurious watch brand, but whatever their name is, if I said
it, you would know it.
Supposedly, they make people wait like three to six months to get the watch, even though
they sell a million of them a year.
They put people on a wait list.
They talk about how there's a limited supply and the name will pop up later, or I'm going
to get a million DMs.
But what are your thoughts about making people apply?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big thing because one, that makes them feel that step of now
they're hoping that you accept them, you know, that they are going to be able to be
part of this special group of customers because now they have this product.
And so absolutely, that falls into the supply related side of things.
So Rolex, Rolex, oh, yeah, I was thinking that.
But then I'm like, well, just in case I didn't want to throw something out there.
And you're like, no, no, that wasn't it.
Yeah.
Oh, but I was going to give an example on the service side of things.
So when it comes to supply related, depending on what type of service.
So let's say that you're going to go with the consulting side of things, you know, so
maybe you're a consultant or you offer a B2B service, something like that, because that's
always people feel like it's a little harder with scarcity, but it's not actually saying
things like we only work with X amount of clients or customers at any given time.
Well, that's supply related scarcity or we are very selective on who we choose to work
with.
It's likely all true because I don't think any of us have more than 24 hours in a day.
So if you're doing any kind of service providing like that, well, your team's limited.
You can only do so much.
And so those are signals that you put out there.
But again, it's truthful and it does ignite that feeling of scarcity.
And so people are going to want to work with you.
There was one agency and I can't remember the name of it.
And I don't know, I can't tell you how it works because I feel like they took this idea
to the extreme that they had on their website.
You couldn't even access it.
And they were a marketing agency unless you filled out a form and then they could decide
whether they were going to even let you look at their information.
And so they have this whole thing, you know, that they are very exclusive.
I thought it was kind of funny.
I can't tell you how it's working for them because a little, a little on the extreme
side, but it was definitely interesting.
What's your thoughts on supply economics when it comes to products that are like educational
products?
Like for example, the first 100 people get at this price and then the price is going
to go up.
Have you ever seen that kind of stuff?
And does that actually work to motivate people to like, for example, we're now combining
these two together, right?
Like a sale, limited time sale combined with a quantity.
There's only X number of these available when they're gone, the price goes up.
Have you seen anything on that?
Does that work when you combine these things together?
Yeah.
And actually, um, a lot of these you'll see can be combined together, but to me also,
that's definitely heavier on the time related side of things, but it also, yes, it does
work and it actually goes back to that whole concept of also loss aversion.
So it's doing these other things we're talking about, but you're also showing this is your
price if you're one of the first 100, right?
Here's your price after.
So you're able to see the potential loss there.
And that definitely is a motivating factor.
So it does work.
And again, as we talk through these, cause I have some other types of scarcity.
I mean, a lot of them do intersect and you can stack them if it makes sense.
Okay.
So time and supply, which one is more powerful in your opinion?
Is it time or is it supply?
Just I'm curious.
It depends if that's the worst answer, right?
It depends.
It depends.
Hey, that's probably the right answer.
But it does depend on the product or the service and your customer.
So again, supply is not going to work for everybody.
And I will even just tell you, depending on even the age of your customer, they might
not be interested in supply related.
So if you're telling a customer, let's say they're more of a mature customer.
So thinking closer to retirement years, they don't care as much about something that is
extremely exclusive or something special because they already have things that they're loyal
to.
But they will be drawn to time related scarcity because they don't want to miss out on something
that they can get now for a cheaper price.
And so it does depend a little bit, but I will say this time related is more universal.
And so that goes for more products, more services, more customers and supply related is for that
specific type of customer.
Well, and I'm thinking about things like buying a property in a new community where there's
limited plots.
I can imagine in this particular thing, the supply is absolutely gets people lining up
and throwing money at these if everybody wants to live there and there's a demand greater
than supply.
Is that probable in that situation?
Yeah.
And actually, that's a really good example.
And I was talking to someone who was telling me that he never falls for scarcity, which
is always really fun conversations because eventually they're like, oh, yeah, I guess
I did that.
So and he was telling me, oh, I'm just such a conservative consumer and I don't fall for
all this blah, blah, blah.
And then all of a sudden we started talking about supply.
He actually brought up, oh, yeah, there was this one area that I've been really wanting
to purchase lands in this particular area.
I waited, waited, waited, and then they were all sold.
So then when I saw that a new piece of land was coming available, he just jumped on it
and I spent a lot of money.
So that's what you just said.
I mean, what he doesn't realize is that they could have sold all the land, but they intentionally
did it in parcel so that they could employ these techniques.
Right.
Right.
Right.
And then it worked.
And so even on someone who says that they never fall for scarcity, we all do at some
point in time.
Trust me, by the end of today, you're going to be like, OK, yeah, there may have been
a few times.
OK, let's talk about the next example.
The next one is a limited edition, which limited edition is actually technically part of supply
related scarcity, but I like to pull it out separately because standalone or so much you
could do with it.
So limited edition, I mean, that is any spin on the original product or service.
And it was a little bit of what you're talking about earlier now with limited edition, though,
because it's that different, like I said, spin.
It could be the packaging.
It could be the product itself.
It's like the special monopoly board that happens to be themed with your city or something.
Right.
That's really funny.
We bought one for our cabin, which is so cheesy.
But yeah, it was like the White Mountains Monopoly game.
But the thing about limited edition is there is only so much supply.
And so that's why it does fall within that particular category.
I was as I just mentioned, I came back from a trip.
I was in Japan and Krispy Kreme did a whole limited edition donut.
And it's a slight twist on their original.
It's actually a fox shaped donut.
So I mean, things like that fall into a limited edition, but it could be even something that
you do provide.
You're just positioning it a different way.
And so that's something that McDonald's did.
They had their Cardi B and offset meal a while back.
And so it was still the same food that McDonald's has.
It was just bundled differently.
And so it's pretty interesting.
Or the McFlurry, if they still have those or whatever.
I don't know if they would always have those.
But I mean, a lot of restaurants will do that, right?
So they'll have like a special meal that's only for a limited time, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so the thing about limited edition is it does also speak to some of the same people
in the supply side of things where someone wants something that is going to be a little
bit unique.
And so people who are collectors, it's huge or an enthusiast or they really like a particular
influencer, let's say.
So any type of collab is going to draw their attention.
And so what I like about this too, on the limited edition side with collaborations is
that it could even be two brands coming together, either offering something that's a unique
service or a unique product.
And so all of that is limited edition.
And a lot of times it's going to drive up prices because again, it's limited, it's special.
People want it.
Interesting.
Can this be done with services as well?
Or is this mostly physical products and like food and stuff like that?
Yeah.
So you don't see it most often with products, but you can definitely do it with services.
And so just like I was talking about earlier with like limited edition bundles and things
like, or limited time bundles, you could do the same thing here.
A limited edition, you know, something you're offering this particular time of year only,
or you're combining these two services in this package just for, you know, limited time.
And it's a limited edition because you're going to call it a certain name.
And so we see that quite a bit.
And so that's something you can do on the service side.
Okay.
I love it.
Let's talk about your next form of scarcity.
Yeah.
So this one is demand.
And I purposely wanted to talk about it last because I feel like demand and time are the
ones that everyone thinks of when they think of scarcity.
And so they're like, oh yeah, demand related, it's selling out, you know, I better buy it
right now.
You know, they're thinking of all these things, but demand is really powerful.
So demand related scarcity is just what it sounds is that something is scarce because
of high demand.
I mean, that is why.
And so that is really important to think about.
So with demand related scarcity, that's going to speak to the customer who wants to be part
of a group.
They want to conform.
I mean, they want to, or they were going to rely on choosing a product because other people
are choosing the product.
So that's where demand related scarcity comes in.
So examples of demand related scarcity, anytime that there's a wait list that signals to potential
customers that there is high demand for this.
If you offer pre-orders, let's say for a service or a product, that's actually going to signal
demand.
If you are saying that there's only a certain number of items left, so like on your website,
if you're e-commerce, that's demand.
I see that.
Well, I see that we all see it in travel, travel websites.
You go on there and you're trying to find a hotel and it's going to show you how many
rooms are left at that particular price, that hotel.
Well, all of those things, what they do is they actually cause you to value something
a bit more because other people are interested in it.
And also it's going to push those quicker decisions.
So those two things that I talked about earlier that happened with scarcity happened quite
a bit when it comes to demand.
But I want to give two more examples of demand related scarcity.
Anytime you're marking something as a bestseller, whether it's a best selling software package
or a best selling flower arrangement, because that's one of the things 1-800-Flowers will
do, that's going to help people make those quicker decisions, but it does signal demand.
And then the last one is restock.
So I want to give a little story in this one because I think it's, I love it.
I think it's really great, but I had interviewed a jewelry brand.
So founder of a jewelry brand, I mentioned it in my book, this particular jewelry brand,
very popular with celebrities, but it's still affordable.
So most people can still purchase this jewelry.
And when I was talking to the founder of the company and she was telling me that, you
know, the fear, like a lot of people in commerce was, I don't want to run out of products.
And so ordering products was always an issue.
But at one point in time, they sold out of something, they couldn't keep it in stock.
And so she mentioned that, well, what they did is that when they were able to restock
it, they sent an email out and, you know, had restocked in the subject line and the
product.
And then it suddenly sold out again.
And then she said, we realized that actually running out of our product, which of course,
you know, you think about supply, but it was because of demand and showing it was restocked
was actually huge catalyst to growing the business because they were naturally running
out of stock.
And so now this is a multimillion dollar business and scarcity actually accidentally played
a huge role in it.
So I thought that was really interesting.
So sometimes it's just the terminology that we're going to use that's going to make a
big difference.
Well, and, you know, part of the psychological stuff I think about, like I was at a mall,
well kind of a mall over the weekend and there were a bunch of people online to go into a
record store and they didn't understand there was like 40 people online.
I'm like, what the heck is going on?
You know, and it made me wonder if I should get in line because this is what people do,
right?
Like, like, you know, or you go to a club or something or a restaurant and there's a
line outside around the corner to get in.
It makes you want to, what the heck's going on here?
There's something to that, isn't there?
Oh, absolutely.
So, and I have two examples of that.
So I just mentioned I got back from Japan.
So I went with my teenage son, it was just the two of us and trying to even choose the
restaurants.
That was one of the things we'd look for, where are there a lot of people in the restaurant?
Because that many people can't be wrong.
I mean, that's what our brains think is like, well, if people are eating in there, it must
be good.
Or if a restaurant's hard to get into, it must be really good.
And it makes you want to get into there even more.
But the other example I like to give, and this is going to get you if you haven't felt
like you fall for scarcity, it's with this example.
So I apologize in advance.
But let's say you're at the grocery store and we've all been in this situation and we're
not exactly sure which product to buy.
So maybe it's a new category of item that you're purchasing.
And so you're not really sure which one or which brand.
And you're standing there in the grocery aisle, you're looking at these brands.
And let's say that the price is pretty similar between the options you can purchase.
You are going to reach for the one that has less stock available, meaning there's less
of them on the shelf.
Because what your brain's going to do is it's going to take a mental shortcut and it's going
to look at that and say, oh, well, more people are buying that one, so it must be good.
And you just grab it.
We all do it.
And so that's really where that demand-related scarcity comes in, because we're going to
rely on what other people are doing.
So that's a really powerful one.
But the ways to use it is just a matter of the wording that you're using.
At the very least, if you're not sure how to incorporate demand-related scarcity, think
about what is most popular or what is the best seller of all your products and your
services and just mark that.
Because that also is doing a service to your customers, because now they can see, okay,
this is a signal that this is something a lot of people are more drawn to, and they're
likely going to make that decision too.
Okay.
This is, hopefully people's brains are going nuts with all sorts of ideas that they've
learned from today.
Hey, I've got some exciting news for you.
I am super excited to announce a brand new show as part of the Social Media Examiner
Network.
It's called the Marketing Agency Show.
It's a new podcast designed to explore the struggles of agency marketers.
Join show host and agency owner, Brooke Sellis, as she interviews other agency marketers and
digs deep into their biggest challenges.
She'll explore topics such as navigating rough economic times, leveraging AI, service diversification,
client acquisition, and so much more.
Even if you're a consultant or a brand marketer, I'm sure you'll find a lot of value in this
new podcast.
To listen, simply pull up your favorite podcast app, search for the show title, Marketing
Agency Show, and then click that follow button to automatically get weekly downloads of the
show.
Again, be sure to check out the Marketing Agency Show.
Mindy, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Where can people discover more about you?
And if you have a preferred social channel, where do you want to send them?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I'm on all the social channels, but LinkedIn is definitely the one that I spend the most
time on.
LinkedIn for sure.
And then also my website.
And I have a really great scarcity cheat sheet that I have available if you go to my website.
So you can see some of the things we were talking about, plus some more ideas just to
help you with that brainstorming process.
And that's mindyweinstein.com slash SME.
So mindyweinstein.com slash SME.
Awesome.
Mindy, thank you so much for coming on the show and answering all my myriad of questions.
We're so much better because of it.
Great. Thank you.
This was great.
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com
slash 564.
And if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us.
If you've been a long time listener, would you let your friends know about this show?
I'm at Stelzner on Instagram and at Mike underscore Stelzner on Twitter.
This brings us to the end of yet another episode of the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
I'm your host, Michael Stelzner.
I'll be back with you next week.
I hope you make the best out of your day and may social media continue to change your world.
The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.
