Scarcity marketing is an approach that can drastically increase your clientele, with
relatively little work on your part.
It’s not about paying for this or that, spending hours crafting the perfect offer,
or your more traditional marketing tactics, but rather an idea surrounding how you present
your marketing.
Scarcity marketing is all about focusing on your audience’s fear of missing out.
Hey y’all!
Savanna Bell here with My Massage World where I give business advice and strategies for
the real world and to put it simply, if a product or service is hard to get or not available,
it suddenly becomes more attractive.
So if it’s hard for someone to get an appointment with you, or a special offer has a fast-approaching
deadline, the client is far more likely to book.
It’s a psychological phenomenon with a lot of research to back it up.
Many business owners tend to think the most attractive thing to a client, the thing that
will entice them to book immediately, is a big discount; it’s not.
It’s the urgency of that discount that usually draws people in.
If you’ve been offering discounts, you may have noticed that without an upcoming expiration
on it, the response is relatively slow, but if you say the discount is only good for those
who book in the next 3 days, you’ll get far more clients.
It’s this sense of urgency, this fear of missing out on something good, that makes
people skip many of the objections they may normally use to talk themselves out of booking.
But there’s more to scarcity marketing than just great deals and discounts.
So how do you use this to market your practice?
Using terms like “sale ends soon”, “final hours”, or similar phrases may seem like
a great idea, but because this is so often used, our inboxes and social media feeds tend
to be inundated with these lines, screaming that it’s our last chance to save.
So we need to approach this in a more sophisticated, less obvious form of scarcity marketing, like…
A limited introductory price.
If you like to offer an incentive to get new clients to book, a special introductory price
is a great way to do just that.
While you can absolutely do this all the time, offering this only a few time through the
year is even better.
If someone is on the fence about booking with you, doesn’t seem to have the time, etc.,
seeing that you have an introductory price available any time leaves them knowing that
they can always get that discount “when they have the time” to book.
And y’all know I’m not big on discounting unless there’s a serious strategy around
it.
So on the other hand, if you offer this new client price for only 1 week every quarter,
say you’re “now accepting new clients” they’re far more likely to see the urgency
and make it work so they can get that discount.
Think about it this way…instead of offering a savings of 10% or $10 or whatever for every
new client, choose your slowest 4-6 weeks out of the year and offer a much larger discount.
In the long run you’re not losing nearly as much money, plus you’re filling your
slowest weeks of the year and getting clients who, with a solid rebooking strategy in place,
will become regulars.
Or maybe it’s a limited time for add-on promotions.
Short promotions offering a free add-on upgrade can be a great way to entice people to book
their first appointment, but can work even better to get some of your existing clients
to try out add-ons they’ve not wanted to spend the money on before.
Maybe they weren’t sure if they’d like the hot stones or didn’t see the value in
dry brushing; but if you’re offering those things for free with any massage booked during
a specific timeframe, they’re likely to take advantage of it.
Then, once they see the value, many will begin to add that onto their regular sessions, increasing
their average spend which acts to increase your overall revenue.
You may also try same or next day appointment availability.
I know a lot of you may avoid same-day appointments, and I get it, but what about announcing when
you have something available the same day or the next day.
So instead of only notifying people of the openings you have through the entire week,
send out an email blast every now and then to let people know that you only have 1 or
2 appointments available the next day – first come, first serve.
That very limited number of appointments and last minute offer is likely to get someone
who’s been on the fence to finally act.
It fills your book and gets another client to turn into a regular.
Or, it could be limited service offerings.
It’s not only about pricing being available for a short amount of time, but what about
offering a service for a very limited time as well.
You may already do this a bit with holiday specials and such.
For example, you might offer a spa package that’s specific to the season; but what
if you took this same concept and did it year round for other things.
If there’s some certain modality you like, but it’s hard on your body, or it’s not
something that seems to sell very well, could you only offer it in short bursts throughout
the year, making people more likely to book it.
So, let’s say you enjoy Thai massage on a mat, but you don’t want to have to switch
back and forth between a mat and a table throughout your day, so you just don’t offer it or
promote it much.
What if you took an entire week in the spring and again in the fall to offer that service
only for that time – or maybe just one day out of every month that was entirely devoted
to that service.
It saves you from going back and forth between mat and table constantly, but it also entices
people to try a modality they may not have considered before you pack up your mat for
the season.
Obviously that’s just one example, but are there other services that you think would
work for this strategy?
Maybe a spa service or a special service combo that doesn’t sell much, or even a partnership
with another solo therapist to offer couples or tandem massage…keep it off your normal
menu of services and instead only offer it a few times a year.
And lastly, and one of the most effective and simplest to implement, limited appointment
availability.
Perhaps the most effective forms of scarcity marketing is reminding people consistently
that it’s hard to get an appointment with you.
This may contradict your train of thought on the subject, but it’s been shown time
and again that people want what’s hard to get.
Telling people how open your schedule is can make them question why; either consciously
or subconsciously they think there is a reason you’re not in high demand…and that may
be that you’re not that good at what you do.
Or that they can always just call last minute to get an appointment because your schedule
is so empty.
However, if you’re consistently staying booked up weeks in advance, they want to know
why; they’ll automatically think you must be great at what you do.
In my practice, when I was booking several months, and then a year in advance, when new
clients would call and ask for an appointment, I’d tell them I didn’t have an opening
for a year.
The response was usually something like “holy cow, you must be good”.
Then they’d get on a cancellation list and do whatever they could to make the random
appointments I’d offer work for their schedule.
Even if you’re not booking far in advance yet, wording things so you appear to be busy
is a great way to build that scarcity.
When someone asks what you have available next week, instead of saying “my schedule’s
open most of the week”, reword that to put the ball in their court, saying something
like “What days are best?” and “Are mornings, afternoons, or evenings best for
you?”
Then once they narrow it down, you can pick very select times to offer them.
Doing this avoids letting them know just how open your schedule is while building that
scarcity concept of limited availability; so you may say “I have a 5:00 on Tuesday
and a 6:00 on Thursday.
Would either of those work for you?”.
Scarcity marketing isn’t about some crazy tactic to convince people to book.
It’s simply wording and offering things that persuade someone to book so they don’t
miss out on something great.
How can you start adding scarcity into your marketing strategy?
Let me know in the comments.
Thanks for watching and be sure to check us out at MyMassageWorld.com, follow us on Facebook
and Instagram, subscribe to our channel on YouTube, sign up for our emails, join our
Facebook group, and keep an eye out for updates, business tips, free content, and all kinds
of other goodies to help you grow your massage practice.
See you next time!