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The following excerpt is from Dan S. Kennedy’s book No B.S. Direct Marketing. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound
Hesitation and procrastination are among the most common of all human behaviors.
If you’re a mail-order catalog shopper, you have — more than once — browsed, folded down corners of pages from which you intended to buy items, set the catalogs aside, and never placed the orders.
This happens with every marketing media. People watching a TV infomercial almost buy but put it off. A shopper enters the mall, sees an outfit she likes but tells herself she’ll stop and look at it on her way out. By the time she’s walked the mall, had lunch, bought other items and is headed back to the end of the mall she entered at, she’s focused on getting to her car and getting home. The dress spotted on arrival is left behind.
The hidden cost and failure in all advertising and marketing is with the Almost-Persuaded. They were tempted to respond. They nearly responded. They got right up to the edge of response, but then set it aside to take care of later or to mull over or to Google the next time they were at their computer. When they get to that edge, we must reach across and pull them past it. There must be good reason for them not to stop short or delay or ponder. There must be urgency.
At Disney World parks’ closing times, they need to get everybody out quickly, so they can clean, freshen up, restock and be ready to re-open on time the next morning. If they offered transportation from the parks to the hotels, resorts and parking lots until everyone was accommodated, people would loiter until the crowd thinned. But there are posted and announced times for the last bus and the last boat. Thus, there is urgency. (Further, they switch from gentle to up-tempo music, dim lights first in the back sections of the park and have cast members with flashlights waving people along toward the exits.) They undoubtedly empty a park faster by at least an hour than if they created no urgency and let everybody meander out at their own pace.
Direct marketing can often contextually provide opportunity to create urgency of immediate response. This can be done with limited supply, limit per household or buyer, the countdown…
