How to Promote Your Limited-Time Offer
Everyone wants what they can’t have. That’s why a limited time offer is so effective! According to research from Kerry Group:
- 62% of people agree that limited time offers encourage them to visit an outlet
- 56% say they encourage them to visit and buy more often
- 64% of consumers agree they sometimes buy limited offers when they might not have otherwise bought anything
The devil works hard, but businesses with a limited time offer work harder! Problem is, there are too many businesses that try to pretend they have a limited time offer so they can compel people to buy their stuff, hyping up the urgency, even though there’s no scarcity there.
How many times have you seen a piece of clothing that seems to always be on sale, but the price goes up and down all the time? Or something that’s apparently “out of stock” but really it’s in the warehouse, and the businesses is just trying to drum up desire so that when they put it “back in stock” it sells like gangbusters.
It’s always best to be authentic when selling — so if you actually have a limited time offer, this post is for you.
Read through for the tea on:
- How to prep your limited time offer pre-launch
- A promotion strategy for the most popular small business marketing channels
- How to create real urgency
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Best practices to abide by
- What to do post-promotion
Pre-Launch Phase
Before you try to sell your limited time offer, you need to do:
Research & Planning
Consider how long you’ll need to prep before launch — you should shoot for an 8-week window to write all your content, create all your visual assets, and schedule all your other marketing.
Also, you need to analyze what your competitors are doing with their own offers so you can find your edge and untapped opportunities worth exploring. As well as how ready your target audience is for your limited time offer, and whether you should change how it’s structured or not.
Content Preparation
You need a complete marketing funnel to promote your limited-time offer, so you hit your revenue goals before supplies run out. That means:
- Email sequences — by the way, this bundle has every email template you’d need to sell your limited time offer
- Social media content — is there anything else you’ll be posting around this time that you need to work around your promotion schedule?
- Website updates — your website copy needs to be up-to-date when selling your limited time offer, so make sure you prep your FAQs, optimize for search engines, and update your contact information
- Sales page development — most limited time offers have their own dedicated pages to wax on about the product, so you need enough time to write a conversion-focused sales page
Promotion Strategies
Email Marketing
You’ll need teaser emails getting people amped up for your product, launch announcement(s), a reminder sequence and last chance messages so people don’t miss out on your limited time offer, and all variations of sales emails in-between.
Grab the Top to Bottom Funnel Sales Email Template Bundle to get your email marketing covered>>>
Social Media
You’ll need platform-specific content that will engage and compel your audience, content for your Instagram story, live sessions to interact with your community and answer questions, and countdown posts for the launch and last days of limited time offer.
Website Updates
Not only is updating your website on the regular good for SEO, but it’s a necessity when selling a product with an expiry date. Prep your website with banner announcements for your limited time offer, pop-ups as they scroll and go to other webpages, landing page(s), and countdown timers for when your limited time offer is about to expire.
Creating Real Urgency
Authentic Limitations
Again, creating false urgency is sceevy and can go against FTC regulations. So if you’re going to create real urgency, you should have
- Limited spots
- Genuine deadlines
- Special bonuses
- Early bird pricing
Social Proof
A great way of convincing people they should act now is by having the proof speak for you! Whether that’s with:
- Customer testimonials
- Purchase updates showing how many people are buying your limited time offer
- Live engagement like chat-bot pop-ups and UGC from customers
- FOMO elements to get theme to feel the sting of not taking immediate action
Common Mistakes
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating — creating fake scarcity is SO SCEEVY. Don’t do it! Also, overwhelming your audience with how often you share content — people WILL unfollow or unsubscribe, so don’t inundate them. Having poor timing with when you say certain messages and use different elements can also neuter your success, as well as having mixed messaging that doesn’t focus on one thing.
Best Practices
You want to have clear communication so everyone knows how awesome your limited time offer is and the benefit of it. Plus, consistent messaging — no one should have questions about why this product is the best thing for them. Emphasizing the value of this limited time offer will also help you compel immediate action, and pair strongly with authentic urgency.
Post-Promotion
After you’re done promoting limited time offer, what next? You’ll want to analyze your results to see if your efforts helped you reach your goals. Look at any customer feedback on your product and marketing, to see what you can improve the next time and plan for future launches. And you can nurture your followers, subscribers, and community members by thanking them for buying your product, telling them who else grabbed it, what people are saying about it, and any success stories.
Next Steps
- Research your competitors, the market, where your audience is at, and beta test your offer. My Market Research Master Pack is an invaluable resource that help simplify and clarify the market research process and make it more fun!
- Prep for launch — Reveal Studio Co. has a great product to help you with this, called The Digital Sellers Copy Kit
- Grab the Top to Bottom Funnel Sales Email Template Bundle to get your email marketing covered>>>
