Price Strategy

A Different Way to Leverage Urgency in Sales Copy

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Selling with urgency is effective.

Selling TO urgency is almost unstoppable.

Here’s a real-life example.

[Warning: If you have a sensitive stomach, you might want to skip this article.]

On Saturday night, I bit into a piece of caramel… and pulled the crown right off one of my teeth.

It didn’t hurt, but MAN it freaked me out!

copywriter's dental crown laying on teal tabletop

I instantly swore I’d never eat candy again. (I meant it in the moment. We’ll see how long my resolve lasts.)

Then within 2 seconds, I started trying to figure out how I’d find a dentist who could patch me up on a Saturday night.

My situation was urgent. This kind of urgency creates a selling environment with:

Kind of a dream scenario.

So here’s a question for you:

Can you market and sell your offer to an urgent situation your ideal client is freaking out about right now?

If your offer doesn’t speak to an inherently urgent desire or need, how close can you get?

It’s a powerful way to simplify and accelerate your sales.

There’s also a way you can speak to urgency that goes deeper than emergency situations and cuts to the emotional core of your ideal customer. 

We’ll get into that next time.

Wrong Price Strategy Will RUIN Your Business (Lesson for Entrepreneurs)

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I believe 100% in treating prospects with honesty and respect.

So I’m curious to know what you think about this…

It’s one of the worst mistakes in the history of modern retail.

Back in 2012, JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson decided to eliminate coupons from the department store’s business.  

Up until that point, Penney put coupons in newspapers, credit card statements in the mail and online. They were a major driver of sales.

Johnson slashed prices 20-25% on most products companywide to make up the difference. He figured customers would appreciate the built-in savings.

If you’ve studied marketing you can guess what happened — which means you’re more insightful than at least one Fortune 500 CEO.

The strategy flopped hard.

Sales dropped almost 25% and Johnson left the company to “look for other opportunities.”

I remember it like it was yesterday.

At the time, I worked in the stockroom at JCPenney, unloading trucks full of clothing at 3am (I haven’t always been able to pay survive purely on copywriting income).

My stockroom job got whole lot easier because we sold through much less product.

I also remember JCPenney hiring a mob of temporary employees to remove the price tags from all the merchandise in the stores…

Marking prices BACK UP to their pre-Johnson levels…

And starting to send out coupons again.

Revenue popped. Customers came back, happier. And the company tried to forget what happened.

Lots of Lessons. But here’s the main point

Decision-making is not a rational process.

In this instance, customers preferred cutting out a coupon to save $20 on a $60 sweater over walking into a store and picking up the same sweater for $40.

They were happier because they FELT the savings.

So they bought more frequently. And JCPenney raked in more cash.

Everyone wins.

This is not me telling you to add coupons to your business (I’ve found that credits often work better than coupons, anyway) or lower your prices.

I’m suggesting that skillful, effective marketing figures out why your people make their emotional decisions…

And works to elicit the right motivating emotions with respect, honesty and in your buyer’s best interest.