Act Now! Quick--add urgency to your marketing, and watch your sales take off.
By Gwen Moran Edited by Frances Dodds
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Better stay up late to buy from e-tailer Woot. The site posts onlyone item per day. When the limited supply is gone, you're outof luck until a new item is posted at midnight.
"If someone is looking at something, a 24-hour period ismore than enough time to consider whether or not to buy it,"says Matt Rutledge, 33, founder and CEO of the Carrollton, Texas,company, which features everything from electronics to toys toaccessories. The limited availability and discounted prices makemost of these items impulse buys, he says.
Limited-time offers are essential marketing strategies forretailers, says Bill Glazer, founder of BGSMarketing.com, a Towson,Maryland-based marketing system for retailers.
Glazer says that setting a specific time frame for an offer ormaking it available only to a certain number of customers adds asense of urgency. Limited-time price promotions andgift-with-purchase offers, which can be tied to a holiday or aspecial event, are usually most successful, he says.
"You can also limit your promotion to a [certain] number ofhours," Glazer adds. "We've seen department stores do[early-morning] 'door-busters.' These very short promotionscan get people lining up at the store before it opens. Thatmomentum carries on through the rest of the day."
GwenMoran is a writer and consultant specializing inmarketing.
