Action influencer 2: they are getting something that other’s won’t – its restricted, limited or exclusive
The last time I bought a car I did my research online, worked out the model I liked and then went to two different dealers to test drive cars the options I’d shortlisted. I put refundable deposits down on the cars to prevent someone from buying them after I’d seen them, and then after driving both I called the dealer of the car I liked best and negotiated the price. We agreed a collection date and that was it. I was sent some paperwork, I signed it, done.
While waiting for the keys the next weekend I witnessed a very different purchase process. A salesperson was talking to a prospective customer about optional extras. The customer wasn’t particularly interested in them – or so it seemed – until the customer asked “can I add them when I collect it later if I want?” “I’m afraid not, sir,” came the answer. “They have to be bought at the same time as the car so we can put the paperwork through together.” Chink in the armour exposed, the salesman pressed on and at the point I left with our car the other customer was signing paperwork for two out of four optional support packages.
What is the incentive of a dealer to say ‘no’ to selling a customer care package after they have sold a car? Putting aside the risk that something may go wrong on the car in those days between the paperwork being signed and the car being collected, isn’t the support worth the same to the dealer when purchased with the car as when collecting the car? Why would a dealer decline the offer for future potential revenue? The answer is less about the dealer declining the revenue, but more asking the buyer to decline the potential for a support in case of a future problem. ‘What if something scratches it on the drive home?’ ‘What if I wish I’d had that extra paint protection?’ ‘Will I regret it if I don’t decide now?’ The dealer may say with their mouth “take as long as you need to think about it” but with their actions they’re saying “decide now.”
Most times when someone is making a decision to move forwards with a next step towards a purchase it’s because they feel they can capitalise on an opportunity or because they’d be losing out if they didn’t. They’re two sides of the same coin – an opportunity seized is a loss avoided – but the calculations behind them can make them appear quite different. Why do shops put items on sale rather than simply reducing the price? It could be that they have limited stock, but if that were the case why are the end dates of sales so heavily promoted, rather than simply ending the sale when all products are exhausted? Because limitations – even artificial limitations – are a powerful motivator.
The process of putting a boundary on an opportunity may seem counter-intuitive; surely you want to make it as easy and as likely as possible that the maximum number of potential customers can engage with you, so why add limitations? Restrictions, limitations, constraints or exclusivity should not be used to make engaging or purchasing harder – that is the antithesis of good practice. Instead, constraints can be used to frame the parameters of engagement. Most decisions seem more valuable when there is an immediate consequence applied to them. It could be time limited, supply limited or one of a number of other limitations, some of which we’ll explore in this section. The goal of creating a feeling of restrictions, limitations, exclusivity or scarcity is to embed the idea within the mind of the audience ‘if I don’t act, I may miss out.’ This inception device has a secondary benefits; it can also create the idea ‘if I don’t act now, I will miss out’. When there are no limitations or consequences it’s easy to defer a decision. ‘I could decide tomorrow? Ok, I won’t decide today.’ Applying limitations at the right time and to the right degree drives actions both faster and with higher likelihood of positive outcome.
Supply-bound limits
Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the most famous painter that has ever lived, only completed 15 works in his lifetime. While it is believed that he worked on many more, the authorship is highly disputed or their state of completeness is variable. Because of this limited supply, Da Vinci’s paintings are some of the most replicated, admired and valuable in the world. In 2005 the painting Salvator Mundi, thought to be a replica of Da Vinci’s original, sold at auction for just under $1,200. Over the next 12 years it was re-evaluated, reappraised and re-auctioned multiple times. In 2017 it was it sold for $450m, making it significantly the most expensive painting ever sold at the time of auction. There are many replicas or Da Vinci’s work. He had many very good contemporaries, peers and understudies. But he is the gold standard of limited supply.
Supply-bound limits are created when numbers are limited. Amazon limits the number of customers that can buy some of its popular deals on Prime Day. And then the following day frequently offers another batch of the same product with the same limitation. Ferrari limits the number of cars it produces in any particular model even though it could sell more if it produced them. When former BBC Top Gear presenter James May started a gin brand, he hand-signed the first 1000 bottles. The Gin tasted the same in the next 1,000, but only the first 1,000 were signed. Browsers of popular travel and tourism website will likely have seen pop-up notifications on some pages that call out information like ‘14 people booked this hotel the last 24 hours’, or may see messages on retail sites like ‘Only xx in stock’.
Is the number of people that booked a hotel a useful fact to aid the decision making of the discerning holiday-maker? No, it’s designed to create inception on the idea of scarcity; this hotel is booking up, if I don’t hurry I may miss out. When online stores include how many items are available on their website is this any more useful than a message that simply says ‘in stock’? No, it’s designed to create inception for the idea ‘there aren’t many of this item left; I should grab the last one before it has gone.’ Does knowing that the first 1,000 bottles of Gin in a batch have been hand-signed make the gin taste better? No, but for someone on the fence it incentivises them to move quicker; why wouldn’t you want the signed version?
I once worked with a service organisation that made a point of sharing its onboarding process with prospective customers as part of their introductory presentations and long before they were close to closing the deal: “we only plan to onboard two new customers a month to make sure we’re scaling our implementation and support teams to meet our high standards and your expectations. We’ve already confirmed two new customers this month but next month still has one space currently.” Informing prospective customers of the constraint can both allow the organisation to reinforce their commitment to service quality while also incentivising prospects to make faster decisions.
An extension of limited supply is oversubscription or a wait list. Wait lists are lists of people that were too late to capitalise upon the limited supply, but that wish to be notified if additional is made available. Re-engaging with prospects on a wait list makes them feel even luckier to be considered because they feel they are being given a second chance – a chance to beat the supply limitation. They are also more likely to commit to buying when availability is lowest but their desire is highest.
Time-bound limits
Where a supply-bound limit creates the perception of scarcity of a resource, time-bound limits define an end-point where an opportunity will no longer be available. Most people will be familiar with time-bound limits from a retail environment. ‘Sale ends New Years Day’ is a typical example. The interested shopper is thus both incentivised to act before that date, and to act affirmatively lest they miss out on a good deal.
When a B2B procurement process takes months and can involve hundreds of hours of commitment from a supplier to work through it, the arbitrary incentive of an artificial time limit has less meaning. Few suppliers would walk away from a major deal due to a milestone being passed. However, in some situations such as when there is a quarter-end target that needs to be achieved, Sales people may use this approach to their advantage – explaining to prospective buyers that they will only be able to offer particular rates or pricing because of quarter-end incentives. This also works in reverse and a buyer may negotiate a better deal because they understand they hold the power on the decision timing.
Research generally shows that supply limits and the perception of scarcity they create are more effective for driving strategic acquisitions than time limits. The wrong decision made quickly is still the wrong decision. However there are situations where time-bound scarcity can be effectively deployed. Consider a meeting with a C-level leader, an influencer, or a celebrity that would otherwise be unavailable. ‘Person X is travelling to Germany between the 7th and 12th March and would love to meet if you are available.’ Within this construct there is a clear logical reason for the time-bound scarcity.
Exclusivity limits
In the mid-1980s a US group that became known as the Washington Wives (due to their husband’s jobs in political leadership) made political waves by campaigning that parents needed more control over the music their children were exposed to. They claimed that violent, drug-related and sexual themes within popular music were corrupting the youth of America. Amid the increasing conservatism of Reagan era politics, some of the suggestions from the group included printing warnings and lyrics on album covers, forcing record stores to put albums with explicit covers under the counter, pressuring television stations not to broadcast explicit songs or videos and creating a panel to set industry standards.
In September 1985 three musicians appeared in front of the US Senate to testify against the measures. The hearing itself was somewhat of a formality. Ahead of it, record labels had already agreed to add a ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker to all albums sold. Nonetheless Dee Snider of hair metal band Twisted Sister, Frank Zappa and John Denver appeared to argue the case. You can watch Dee Snider’s full testimony on YouTube and it is well worth a watch to see a reasoned, intelligent argument put forth in the face of judgemental and misquoted criticism. Perhaps most aptly, folk music legend John Denver (of Country Roads, Take Me Home fame) summarised the unfortunate consequences of censoring information this way. “That which is denied becomes that which is most desired, and that which is hidden becomes that which is most interesting. Consequently, a great deal of time and energy is spent trying to get at what is being kept from you.”
When something is hidden, secretive or exclusive it becomes more desirable. When it is forbidden, the opportunity to actually acquire it takes on even greater value. Want someone to want something? Tell them they can’t have it. The Parental Advisory sticker consequently, and unsurprisingly, did little to limit the sale of explicit rock-and-roll music. In fact there is much evidence that sales increased as a result of the attention and hidden allure placed upon it. This despite the fact that many stores decided not the sell records that included the label. Commercial pressure not to be associated with potentially unadvised content it turns out was a far greater incentive for action than the direct-to-consumer impact.
Restricted access can be difficult for marketers and sales people because, by its very nature, restrictions are designed to prevent access. There are, however, techniques that can be deployed to leverage it. When organising an event for Executives, ensure that it is kept hyper-exclusive – gently exclude any audiences that don’t qualify. Gated content – one of the most over-used resources for marketers – is in itself a form of restricted access. Unless you register, you cannot read it. Many brands squander the opportunity of gated content by putting all of their assets behind the registration firewall, but organisations that rely upon premium access to content understand the power of content strategies that increase the desirability of gated content. They know that when someone does register for their content they are likely interested, engaged and likely highly qualified.
Limited information
Donald Trump’s claims of ‘Fake News’ may have appeared self-servicing when they only centred on stories he didn’t like, but there is an undeniable conflict of interest at the heart of most large media organisations: their success depends upon selling their reporting or advertising, not on their accuracy or ethics. Digital media organisations have the same commercial incentives as print: if they can get eyeballs on messages they can sell advertising. The best example of this conflict is also the worst: clickbait. Consider the following examples of article titles I pulled from a news site I checked this morning:
Look what happens when X does Y
X reveals awkward moment when Y occurs
Why you should do X before Y
The shocking surprise of how much is X worth?
The secret X behind Y
The next X may cost even less than the last Y
All of these titles exhibit a similar characteristic: they obfuscate their content in a way that makes them desirable to click on. They’re written to imply something surprising or secretive behind them – some piece of information that has limited circulation, and by reading you will make you special. Put another way, they’re all very similar to clickbait.
Clickbait is designed to attract attention and to entice users to click that link. As a technique it is sometimes considered dishonest, particularly when the payoff behind the headline is out of date, irrelevant or off-topic. The principles behind the technique are simple, however, and not fundamentally negative: capture attention with an interesting subject and make it feel exclusive. Clickbait works because it typically tells a simple, unexpected, concrete story and then hides a crucial piece of information. Despite significant backlash from industry bodies, negative feedback from users and attempts to limit its use, clickbait is proven to work. For business-to-business organisations there is balance to be found in creating engaging content titles. Because clicks and impressions are not the overall goal and B2B purchases have higher values and longer sales cycles, the brand harm that can be done with clickbait needs careful consideration. Is misleading a potential buyer worth getting slightly increased engagement? No, it should not be. But is building brand recognition by driving greater association with content sometimes worth pushing the boundaries? That’s your decision. Limited information needs to draw a careful line between creating interest and appearing deliberately clickbait-y. For example, the ‘Annual Agile Business Customer Satisfaction in APAC Benchmark Survey Executive Summary’ will only generate so much interest. ‘Research reveals the 10 drivers of customer satisfaction for more agile business operations’ is perhaps still acceptably on-topic, but far more likely to be engaging.