Social Proof and Scarcity are two of the most powerful elements that can be used in marketing.

Especially on the internet, they can be used extremely effectively and you can even change from one to the other fairly quickly.

If you really want to know the meat about them then you should read almost anything by Robert Cialdini. However, my definitions in this context are:

Scarcity – encouraging people to buy because if they don’t then they will miss out as there are only a limited number.

Social Proof - other people are doing something so you should be also.

If you are selling (almost) anything online either as an affiliate or as a product owner then you should think how you can inject these two elements into your marketing.

Here are some examples:

Scarcity:

- only 47 left
- going up at midnight tonight
- special bonus for the next 30 customers

Social Proof:

- we have already sold 2,000 copies
- here is what our previous customers say
- successful marketers buy our product

The way that I like to think of social proof is:

“This is what the cool kids are doing…”

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A word of warning though…
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Both Social Proof and Scarcity are easy ways to increse your sales as they strongly encourage people to take action. I have no doubt that if you used effectively you will see revenue going up by 2 or 3 times (I do).

However, always be honest otherwise you WILL be found out. And apart from that, not being honest is bad for your karma and ultimately your bottom line.

With digital products, it is sometimes harder to manufacture scarcity for example. You need to have a pretty good ‘reason why’ that you are only going to sell 300 of a product. Unlike physical goods, stock is usually unlimited.

Here are a few ways that I have used effectively in the past to get over this:

1. On a PLR or a resell rights product you can have a very good reason for limiting sales. That is to lower the competition for the people that do buy. One thing to be aware of here though, is that you don’t want to set yourself a limit of less than you are likely to sell in the first week.

2. Rather than use the scarcity ploy on the product itself, use it on the bonus for the product. Eg. I want to reward fast-movers and therefore they will also get as a bonus x,y and z.

3. Increase the value of your product by explaining that the techniques within it are so powerful that you don’t want too many people to use them otherwise it will decrease the effectiveness.

If you are confident enough of your market then you can just use the ‘because’ option.

eg. I am limiting the number of copies because I want to…

This is pretty much what Frank Kern and some of the other big boys do and it works for them even on high-ticket items.

I have been thinking a lot about these two factors because of the latest PLR package that I released. I limited the number of sales to just 75 for exactly the reason given above and the customers who have purchased so far really appreciate the lesser competition.

Although I will probably sell less copies than I usually do (generally between 100 and 150), they are selling far faster and take much less marketing efforts on my side.

So, I win because I have to do less work.

My customers win because they are purchasing a quality resell package and have 50% of the competition that they usuall would.

To see my latest package and how I am using scarcity effectively, go to:

http://www.killerlinknetwork.com/indexspecial.asp

(There’s also a discount there for you.)

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer