How To Design Persuasive Facebook Chat Bots: Marketing Through Scarcity

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Below is a transcript of the Chatbot Marketing Training Course by Customers.ai and Isaac Rudansky, of Adventure Media. Get the full course here and become a messenger marketing master. Ready to execute? Build a free chatbot using Customers.ai today.

Simply put the scarcity rule states that we assign value to things based on how rare they are, based on how hard they are to get, and how likely we are to potentially miss out on the opportunity to get them and to have them.

Something in short supply or something that might not be around for much longer is therefore more covered and more desired and considered more valuable. It’s a very very important principal of persuasion and without going into lots of different studies and the research that has been done around this concept, you could trust me and you could trust the research that this is something which is very powerful and very true and works very well. People are motivated tremendously by the fear of losing something more so they are than the gains of getting something.

This is important to know because this is gonna help you phrase and word your messages around scarcity. In a study that was done, people were much more likely to agree to pay for home insulation when the marketing messages were phrased around what they’re going to lose by having insufficient insulation more than they were– they’re less willing to actually go and insulate their home when the marketing messages were phrased in a positive way by what they had to gain by getting the proper insulation. Remember that concept when it comes to phrasing your own marketing messages and creating scarcity in sense of urgency throughout your bot.

Scarcity is a widespread tactic that’s used by almost every successful brand especially e-commerce companies. You see Amazon and other e-commerce brands always show only a few items left or a specific number of items left, limited time promotions, and those are the two ways that scarcity usually takes form in the form of limited quantities.

There is only a few left of something making the person feel that if they don’t act quickly, we’re not gonna have any more left for you to have. It could also be used successfully in the form of a promotion that has a deadline. We may not necessarily be conveying that there is a limited quantity of this item, but we are conveying that this special promotion or this sale or this special feature will only be available for a certain amount of time. When you can combine both of those together, you have something very very powerful.

Scarcity is much more powerful and it works much better when it can be contrasted to recent abundance. As opposed to just conveying that this was always scarce.

So you wanna say we had– which is why Amazon doesn’t just say there is only 10 left, it shows a slider, it shows a long bar and a tiny little sliver of yellow or green that indicates this is how much amount of the total at the left. This is done on purpose. This is done because they know that when you contrast scarcity with prior abundance, it’s a much more powerful and potent motivational factor.

Just to take this one step further, this is especially true. When the scarcity is a result of social demand as opposed to there are being some mistakes with inventory or quantities or something like that.

For example, when an e-commerce bran conveys that not only we have limited quantities remaining, but the limited quantities used to be a lot of quantity, and the reason why there is limited quantity that remains is because people like you have bought it, wow, you’ve combined three different persuasion techniques over there, and that’s how you’re gonna be successful with marketing, and you could create Chatbots that convey these things extremely powerfully and extremely eloquently and extremely effectively.

Just take a look at this quick example. I wrote this Chatbot as an example for using scarcity by design.

It says, hey Isaac, Jake here from the oxygen store. Just a friendly reminder that there are annual sales that is ending tomorrow morning. There you have scarcity in the form of a deadline. The sale is over tomorrow morning.

We have a handful of portable oxygen concentrators left at up to 70% of retail. That’s the second component of scarcity where, not only we have a deadline on this promotion, there is only a few items that remain at the sale price.

Since the sale has been runing for two weeks, our supply is limited. This is the contrast principal. There was an abundance of time that the sale was running, and now it’s almost done.

The abundance contrast doesn’t only have to be with regard to quantity of product left, it can also be with regards to how long the sale has been running, so we have three different key components here.
Here is the fourth. 325 other athletes gearing up for the 2019 ski season have purchased new units on sale during the past week.

Now, we’re using this concept of social proof where people like you because obviously, we would be now targeting athletes. If we can and we have enough data, we’d be targeting skiers.

People like you have been buying over the last week, and the fourth concept is that the reason for the scarcity is social demand.

We didn’t just make a mistake or we don’t just have to get rid of them because they are bad units or they’re defects or they’re scratched indent.

The reason why they’re scarce now and they used to be abundant is because people like you have been buying them. It’s a very very powerful message. You see that a message like this has so much thought and so much analysis that goes into it.

Here is a link to our remaining inventory. There is a link to the final sale.

If this was gonna really defleshed out as a full bot, we would start off a question, we would use some other principals, but here is a very powerfully concise message of scarcity and urgency that brings in three four of really solid persuasive concepts and messages like this will work because I’ve seen messages like this work for our clients over and over and over again. Just a couple of different ideas here in the bullet points. Promote limited quantities of popular items. You can send messenger bots out before and during the sale promotion, so you could gear people up through messenger bots and Chat Blasts before the promotion and then have a drip campaign running throughout the course of the promotion.

Another thing to reiterate. Be concrete and be objective. Use actual numbers, use dates, urgency is created when the urgency is concrete and objective. Don’t just say our promotion is ending soon. If you look at my message that we say that the promotion is ending tomorrow morning.

235 other athletes bought from us in the past week. Be concrete, be objective, it just works much better. Create offers with deadlines. A lot of brands sometimes forget about that part. They just talk about there is only a few left. The chance of missing a deal is very very powerful. It’s just as powerful as the chance of missing out once these quantities are gone.

Again very important, anchor that sense of urgency social demand like I wrote in this message over here on the right. When the potential prospect realizes or perceives that the reason why things are scarce now, the reason why quantity is limited is because other people like me are buying them, it’s much more powerful and much more effective.

Then contrast with prior abundance, just a couple of different examples. One example. We 900 pairs of headphones in stock, and now we’re down to our last 35 contrasting with abundance.

We had 50 seats reserved for this seminar and we now we have only three spots left, contrast with abundance.

This has been going on for three weeks, and now we’re on our final day contrast with abundance.

So these are just different ways that you could use scarcity in your buy design, and I want you now before the next lecture to take a pen of paper or type it out, put together three four five six, scarcity should come easy. Whether you are a service business, if you’re in the e-commerce, I admit it’s easier, but it’s not impossible to do in a service business.

It could be with even registration, webinar seats, limited number of promotional coupons you’re offering for pressure washing decks whatever it may be.

If you’re creative enough, I guarantee you, you could come up with really good effective ways to include a sense of urgency and create and manufacture a sense of urgency in your Chatbot messages using these principles of scarcity contrasting with abundance and most importantly, the reason for the scarcity should be due to social demand.

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