“This offer will be taken down on Monday August 17.”
That was the threatening notice at the top of the video sales letter.
But it was already well into September. Some technical glitch made it so the page didn’t update to show the date of the upcoming deadline.
As you probably know, deadlines work. Bob Cialdini told us about urgency, but marketers knew about it for decades before.
Thing is, most deadlines are fabricated. Some are more fabricated than others — like the VSL I mentioned above.
I’m not sermonizing that you should only use “real” deadlines and real urgency. But sometimes it’s easy to do so, and it doesn’t require any tech wizardry.
For example, I once wrote a VSL for a kidney disease info product. Kidney disease is chronic, meaning it lasts a long time, and only gets worse.
So at the end of the VSL, I didn’t tell the reader this offer might soon disappear because powerful interests will force the FDA’s hand. Instead, I simply said the following:
But I want you to make this decision now.
You see, kidney disease is much easier to treat the earlier you start to do it.
It’s easier to treat in stage 2 than in stage 3, and it’s MUCH easier to treat in stage 4 than in stage 5.
Look, the information I’m sharing in [product name] will probably be mainstream advice 10 or 20 years in the future.
But you can’t wait for that.
Every day and every week counts, and the sooner you get going, the better your results will be and the better you will feel in the long run.
That’s why I offer this money-back guarantee, because I want you to give this a shot as soon as possible without any risk to you.
I’ve used this same urgency appeal successfully for other health offers, too.
And I think you can try the same argument — the longer you wait to fix this problem, the harder it will get, so why not take up this risk-free offer now — in any aware market. You might not make as many sales as with a fake deadline play… but the quality of the customers will probably be much better.
But here’s some real urgency:
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