7 Tips To Make Your Irresistible Offers Sparkle

The first rule of economics is that by restricting supply, you can boost demand.
This key idea can be applied not just to your products and services but also to your offers, in order to make them even more attractive to potential customers.

Here are our 7 best ways to make your special offers convert into sales.

1. Limit Your Offers

If your offer is limited by time or quantity, it will appear more valuable to your customers. The less the time or quantity, the more valuable the offer will seem. Here are some examples:

• • 50% off all items until 31 January
• • Promotional offer – Ends today!

Set a limit on how long you are offering that special deal – is it just for today, this week, this month? Give out vouchers or coupons that have an expiry date clearly marked, like Tesco, Sainsbury’s and even McDonald’s do.

2. Short On Stock

Let customers know when you’re running low on popular items. This really ups the sense of urgency and competition.
You want to recreate that feeling of when there’s only one chocolate left in the box after dinner: there’s no time to be polite and British about it. This sense of scarcity and competition is often enough to nudge buyers into committing to a purchase.

3. Double The Limit

Quantity-limited offers can usually capture customers more effectively than time-limited ones. You can even combine both for a formidable limited offer.

An example of shops using this tactic to great effect is Black Friday in America. By deftly combining special offers limited by both time and quantity, retailers in the US manage to transform usually civilised customers into hysterical hoards of deal-hungry maniacs

Here are some other examples of combining special offers:

• • Free coffee for our first 100 customers, 8am – 8:30am only!
• • 2 days left on our clearance sale!
• • Last 10 gold iPhones go on sale tomorrow!

4. Shout About It

There’s no point having a time- or quantity-based offer and no one knowing about it. You need to make the sense of scarcity loud and clear if you want to add value to the offer. Red is a good eye-catching colour to highlight your offer and it’s also associated with a sense of danger, in this case the risk of scarcity and losing out.

5. Web-based Offers

Just like a newspaper, offers on your website need to be above the fold, which is the first area you are presented with on the computer screen.