A lot of times, the best marketing strategies tap into how people think. To accomplish this, marketers need to understand how the human brain works and use it to change or influence how the audiences behave. It's no wonder the greatest marketers have a good knowledge of human psychology.
One of the most relevant principles of psychology that can be applied to marketing is urgency. When used correctly, urgency serves as an essential tool in e-commerce and other online businesses to boost conversion, increase click-thru rates, and improve sales. This article provides insight into how the principle of urgency helps in boosting conversions and how to apply it correctly.
Urgency is a principle dependent on time and importance, that forces us to take action quickly as a result of worrying we might lose something.
Urgent activities demand immediate attention and are often the ones we attend to first because the consequences are immediate. A study conducted in 2018 and published by the Journal of Consumer Research showed that when unimportant tasks feature an illusion of expiration, people will most likely attend to them over more important tasks.
The principal of urgency taps into the human loss aversion, also known as the fear of missing out (FOMO). This fear is very evident in Millennials and Gen-Z.
Because as humans, when something is urgent, we are more likely to act on it. The fear of missing out describes a form of social anxiety that is defined by a desire to stay on point with what others are doing.
This principle remains true even when the urgency is created artificially, like in the case of an expiring sale when marketing. When people are faced with a limited time offer, they automatically begin to ponder on whether they would feel okay letting the opportunity pass by.
The process of buying is often broad, because people make use of different devices, search across different platforms and websites, and compare prices when making their buying decisions.
For many products, the actual buying process may take weeks or even months. The problem with this long buying process is that buyers may change their minds before they return to your site.
For this reason, many marketers try to hasten the decision-making process by compelling people to make purchases or take any other kind of action through the mere urgency effect.