Deadlines Drive Decisions

Wherever you are on the political spectrum, and whatever your thoughts on Boris, one thing is clear:

Discussions about Brexit and the prospect of getting a deal with the EU are clearly ramping up!

And here’s why:

The PM has repeatedly promised that he will take the UK out of the European Union by 31st October.

And as a result, as time ticks on, there’s a flurry of activity that there simply wouldn’t be if the deadline were in 6 or 12 months’ time.

(That’s where we’ll leave the politics, as I know most of us are sick to the back teeth of it.)

The fact of the matter is that in life, deadlines drive decisions.

Whether it’s moving house in time to get the children into the right school catchment area, hot-footing it to the shops before they shut, or ordering a pint at the pub when the bell goes, the reality is that most of us are familiar with the way that deadlines can force us to take action we would have otherwise taken much slower, or not taken at all.

In the word of kitchen sales, it’s no different.

Right now, there’ll be a pool of people who have - to varying degrees - expressed an interest in buying a kitchen from you.

But they’re yet to take action because they’ve got no urgency to do so.

So, as a kitchen retailer, your job is to inject that urgency into the buying process.

Whether it’s a bonus item or quote that expires on a specific date, or an ‘order now to be sure of pre-Christmas installation’, adding a deadline into your marketing will drive more activity, and therefore more decisions.

And if you know what you want your deadline to revolve around, but you don’t know how to bring it to life, here are a few ideas:

1.     Send emails reminding your prospects of the deadline email marketing remains an under-utilised way to communicate with your prospects and broader audience. And when you’ve got a deadline, it’s a great way to get your message across.  You can even add the featured deadline into all your company email signatures for a while.

2.     Show Remarketing ads to website visitors and social page users – Remarketing to people who’ve expressed an interest and reminding them of the deadline is a great way to inject urgency into the low-hanging fruit in your audience.

3.     A banner across your website pages – if you’ve got a limited time offer or a deadline for delivery, get it on your website.  That way, anyone who visits your site will be well aware of it, and that'll help to drive behaviour.

People are motivated more by fear of loss, than desire for gain. Or, as the more contemporary version goes, FOMO – Fear of Missing Out.

Either way, it’s a real thing, from which you can leverage more success.

And as always, if you need help with any of this, you know where we are…