Sales Strategy: Scarcity Tactic

For the most part, I sell print on demand products which means my items are always available for sale (or can be). So I would post a product and leave it up for months, even years because of time constraints mixed with a healthy dose of laziness. haha!

Now that I’m being intentional with growing my brand, I’ve been limiting the availability of certain items and boy oh boy are people responding. So much so that I’m learning just how much they pay attention to my offerings. In fact, I’ve been getting emails for a particular item that I don’t intend on bringing back until later in the year.

So if you’re like me with a lot of print on demand items, you may want to limit how long it’s available OR work towards finding a new customer base who haven’t seen your products before. I’m doing a mix of both.

You can limit your product to a particular season or have pricing tiers in place if you intend on keeping it around for a while.

Here’s a quick list of seasonal opportunities you can create your products around to make it easier to “Sell Out” or remove once the event is over…

Superbowl
Black History Month
Valentine’s Day
Women’s History Month
Spring
Graduation
Summer (Think Beach Themes!)
Back-To-School
National and Social Events/Concerts/Meet-Ups/Holidays

Basically I’m saying all of this to say that having a scarcity angle to your selling strategy really does work.

Having a scarcity angle to your selling strategy really does work! Click To Tweet

People buy when they think there’s a possibility the item will be sold out or increase in price soon. If your item is always around then they won’t be inclined to make a purchase as they’ve already decided to buy it later. And as entrepreneurs we can’t survive on later!

Also, it can be HARD to deal with tons of products (producing the product photos, placing the orders, handling the questions & customer service, tracking down tracking, etc.) especially when you’re understaffed or flying solo. So by limiting when a product is available, you’re allowing yourself to focus on a fewer number of spinning plates which is good for your sanity.