| Effective social network marketing |
| Friday, 27 November 2009 06:53 |
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How the use of the concept of scarcity is your crucial tool.
How the use of the concept of scarcity is your crucial tool. In many manuals and courses teaching marketing on the internet we’re often advised to restrict supply of our products and services in order to create a false scarcity. The intention here is to influence our purchasers so that they buy before the product runs out or the price goes up.Of course, in some cases there genuinely is a scarcity and we will miss out if we don’t take action, and being alerted to the need to take action influences potential customers to take action. An example might be tickets for a particular sports event where the capacity of the crowd is naturally limited by the size of the stadium. For popular games and matches, such as the men’s final at Wimbledon, tickets are often sold years in advance and the opportunity to purchase is something which is taken when it arrives and we’re influenced to act quickly if we wish to participate. Scarcity in our Social ConversationsIn Social Conversations on the Societal Web scarcity may be a rather blunter tool than some of the other areas of influence. It may be a great tool to influence those who do not yet know us to buy our products and services and experience what we do, but overuse can create a natural scepticism to the apparent scarcity. Furniture stores seem to have permanent sales so they no longer drive a change in behaviour. Customers can just wait and the next sale will be along very quickly. Creating false scarcity seems to be a blunt tool, but how can Social Conversation drive our customers to us when we do have a deadline (time scarcity – “last chance to see”) or a price change (price scarcity – “beat the price rise”) or a limited number available (supply scarcity – “nearly all gone”). Getting the message out is clearly key. Twitter and Instant Messenger tools can work well, particular if our own followers tweet the message on to their followers, and making it easy to get in touch is important too. Knowledge scarcity also has an impact on influence. We will seek out those who have specialist knowledge and the more niche that knowledge is the longer the queue to meet the person tends to be. Guiding people to scarce resources that they need before they run out can influence them to like you – which we discussed in “Do you have to be liked to be Social?“, particularly if the scarce resources are not ones you control, for that is an act of kindness aimed only at helping them. That’s a good reason to let your networks know about those things you come across that are scarce. Liking others is a strong influencer too, as we discussed here, so social networks have the means to integrate the ways and means of influencing others. Scarcity drives influence through control of the scarce resource. Understanding what you have that is scarce for others and which they need will help drive how and how well you can influence. William Buist is founder of the Societal Web and runs a consultancy specialising in helping businesses to utilize social media to deliver business results through cooperation and collaboration . For more information please visit http://www.societal-web.com.
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