Creating a sense of urgency in any marketing piece you do can increase response to any ad very quickly. One of the basic primal emotions is Fear of Loss and, if used right, can create a frenzy in your prospects causing them to make a decision quickly and purchase faster than they normally would.

If your prospects know that they can buy your product at any time and there isn't any hurry, then they are likely to put off making a decision. It's your job, therefore, to get your prospect to buy, and buy now. Using scarcity to sell is a great way to accomplish that.

Here's three basic types of takeaways that you can use to create scarcity and push your prospects to buy now instead of waiting until they get around to it.

Limiting the Quantity
If you are only offering the product to the first 20 people who buy, if they really want your product, they want to act quickly in order to make sure that they don't miss out. This gives them the sense of being Special as they were one of the few that got their hands on this limited quantity item. Think about the commercials about the limited print collectible plates or gold coins. People eat these up because they think that they might miss out on a collectible that might be worth a fortune in a couple of years.

What can you do to limit the quantity on your products or services? Here's a couple of ideas:

We can only take 5 clients at this price, after those slots are filled we will be raising the price.

Limited to the first 20 people in the door. No rain checks will be given

At this price we will book up fast. We can only take 5 appointments this month. After those slots are filled, we will be taking names only for the waiting list. Additional openings will only be given as space becomes available.

Limited Time
Offer only good until ______

I get an email from one of the big book stores with coupons all the time. They send me coupons all the time. At least once a month.

Even though I know there will always be more coupons, every time I get one of those 30% off one book coupons I make sure I print it out and go out of my way to go to the book store to see what I get for 30% off. They always expire in just a couple of days. I usually get the coupon on Thursday or Friday and it expires on Sunday. It never fails, I'm in there checking out the selection on the weekend to make sure that I don't let my coupon go to waste.

Now, my book collection is huge. Do I need another book? No. I have a stack already waiting for me to get caught up and read them all but I am still compelled to buy that book in fear of this great coupon going to waste.

Always include a time limited offer to any marketing advertisement you do. Any coupon or special offer should always include a time limited expiration on it. This will encourage customers to come in just to use the coupon when they might have normally hung on to it for a while until they got around to using it.

Limit the Offer
If you are offering bonus items or premium products with the sale, you can limit the number of these bonuses to a limited number of people.

What bonuses can you add to a promotion? Then limit the number of bonuses.

Free 500 business cards with your brochure order of 1000 brochures. Limited to the first 15 people.

Then when the first 15th people have placed their order, you don't give away any more free business cards. Be sure to stick to your guns on these. You don't want to ruin your credibility by giving away more of the bonuses than you said you had. If you do that, the next time you have a promotion like that people will think they can get away with not stepping up quickly since, Oh he gave it me last time anyway. I'm sure he'll do that again.

In Conclusion, you should include some form of limiting factor in any promotion you do in order to create a sense of urgency and scarcity in your product. This will boost sales and cause people to take notice and buy your product fast in fear of loosing out and not getting the cool extras or discounts.