This morning, my Whatsapp feed went crazy! There had been a delivery of toilet paper to the local supermarket. It was just as well at the time I was on Amazon, choosing between the Seventh generation for over $3000 a roll or the Cottonelle which was better priced at $47. However, I would’ve had to wait for 3 weeks before I could go to the toilet.
So I raced to the supermarket and when I got there, I could see that others had got in before me. My heart pounded as I walked towards aisle 7. Would there be any toilet paper left? And to my pleasant surprise it turns out that I got the last packet of toilet paper. Now this begs the question – Why has there been so much interest in toilet paper? And the answer is simple: FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out. So then I asked how we can create this sense of FOMO (also known as scarcity) in other products that are sold by other businesses? And so it is timely for us to look at some examples of how other well-known brands create FOMO.
We are going to start off with QANTAS.
So if we look at the screen above, you can see on the QANTAS website when you go to book that they tell you when a particular flight is sold out and they tell you when other flights have prices about to go up. And that creates a sense of urgency. And so people are more likely to book quickly because they don’t want to miss out on the options that they have available.
Now let’s look at what booking.com does.
As you can see on the screen above, there are 3 different properties. One of them, the Kings Cross property is sold out already. The DD Hotel has only one room left. So you know that you need to get in fast. And Meriton, while it doesn’t tell you how many rooms are left, it does say that it is the best seller and it does say that it sold 5 rooms very recently. So you look at these and once again and you think, ‘Gee, I better get in quick before all of these rooms sell out’. So that sense of urgency is there again.
One thing I find really interesting is that the DD Hotel has this great opportunity to demonstrate that they’ve only got one room available and to create some FOMO of their own and yet they failed to do so on their website, as you can see on the screen below:
Another option that some businesses use is a count-down timer so that you know that you have to make your purchase within a certain time, otherwise you will miss out. Or at least you will miss out on a discount.
So hopefully there are some good tips there for you that you might be able to apply in your business to create some more urgency and get your customers to buy your product at the price that you are offering and to buy it right here and right now.
Who would ever have thought that we would learn so much from toilet paper!
If you would like to see this post in a video format, then please watch below:
