How To Create Real Scarcity With Wordpress Sales Pages, with Scarcity Samurai

Today’s plug-in was one that, when I found it… I was excited. This was something I was wanting to do on this blog, but thought I would need to manually code it. But, alas… there was no need.

ByDavid Risley Posted on
6 Comments

 

This is Day 14 of the 30 Days, 30 Killer Wordpress Plug-ins Series.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you likely know that urgency and scarcity are powerful strategies for marketing. People hate missing out on things.

But, always better than simply telling them about a deadline… is actually SHOWING them there is a deadline with a visible countdown timer.

Thing is, you also need to be honest in your marketing. If you’re going to have a deadline, you need to stand behind it. And, unless you want to set some kind of alarm and ensure you’re sitting at your computer when the clock ticks to zero… you’ll probably want some kind of auto-expiration that can enforce the deadline whether you’re there or not.

That’s what Scarcity Samurai can do. I am using this plug-in and I recommend it (although there is a “but” here, talked about below)

First, there are different kinds of campaigns it can do:

scarcity-samurai

There are two main kinds of scarcity it can do:

  1. Fixed date, where there is a set deadline and everything expires at that deadline.
  2. Evergreen, where the expiration is based on the moment the reader first visits the page.

So, for example, you could have a time-limited special offer placed inside your email autoresponder. Obviously, your subscribers will all receive that email at different times, so a fixed deadline wouldn’t work. Using an evergreen deadline, the clock will start ticking for each individual user the moment they  click on the link and visit the blog. You could, for instance, give them a 3 day window to take action and after 3 days, it will expire. The plug-in will actually enforce it, too, so you won’t look like a dweeb if the user visits the deadline page after the page expired.

Each campaign is set up using a wizard – and it is very easy to figure out. However, the wizard simply sets up settings on each individual page which you specify as part of your campaign. You can also control all those settings on any given page, using a new settings box:

scarcity-samurai2

And, all of this is to display a nice big banner on the page with a countdown timer. You basically can’t ignore it.

Scarcity-Samurai-banner-editor

My Recommendation (With A “But”)

If you are engaged in any kind of online marketing using Wordpress, I definitely think Scarcity Samurai is one of those plug-ins you should have in your arsenal. One thing I can pretty much guarantee you is that it WILL pay for itself many times over – likely quickly. Scarcity is one of those things you should employ in some way with pretty much every marketing campaign you do.

There are other options out there for countdown timers, but Scarcity Samurai is one of the cleanest I’ve ever used. It works and it works well.

Now… there is a “but” on this. And, I’m just going to say it like it is here…

Scarcity Samurai was created by the same people who built Market Samurai. These guys have been around for a long time and they make good, solid software. However, lately, I think they’ve gotten a little too “in bed” with some of the Warrior Forum style internet marketers. What do I mean by that?

If you visit the offer page for Scarcity Samurai and watch their video, it will probably strike you as overblown BS. And honestly… it is. It hits the “press a button and make money” crowd, which I believe is quite misleading. And they use the words “secret” and “shocking” alot.  I just think their video hits every negative stereotype of the internet marketing niche that I’ve ever seen.

So, to be clear…. I do NOT condone their sales video and I think it is pretty much bullcrap. As a person who has been marketing for years, I was literally laughing out loud at some of the stuff they were saying in that video.

All that said… I looked past the video and I bought the plug-in anyway. And it is indeed solid. It is a good product.

So, I’d recommend you look past the video. Watch it for entertainment purposes if you want. 😉

Check out Scarcity Samurai.

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6 Comments

  1. David, thanks so much for this article. I saw it after I had the exact same “BUT…” impression of Scarcity Samurai, leading me down a rabbit hole with a competitor who is not nearly as clean.

    I’d initially dismissed SS because of all the hype and craziness (!!) on their sales page. Then I took the risk to buy anyway because it looks solid, and so far it seems to be. Yay!

    It would be awesome if they’d just talk like regular respectable people to other regular respectable people, so they don’t risk losing so many of us who are not the delusional (imaginary, I hope!) people they’re talking to. 🙂

    1. Maybe one day they will come across this post. 🙂 I guess when you surround yourself with IMers all day, you think you have to be all hypey to make a sale.

  2. Hey dude, nice review. Do you use it with Ontraport? I just got Ontraport, and would want to use SS with that, with Ontraport’s PURL landing page URLs. Is that doable?

    Also, i segment my list to move subscribers who are clicking email links along faster through my funnel. Will scarcity samurai still work for this ( I heard the evergreen deadline is based on when they opted into my list, but if they move thru my email sequence at different speeds, will ss still work? If you can set it to start by when they click an email link or better still- receive a certain email that would be good).

  3. Pretty sweet. I can see that Evergreen option bringing in a lot of sales. I’ll have a perfect use for that in a couple of months.

    Question about that – How does it handle URLs? Can it use the same URL for all users, then the page will expire based on a cookie? I’d need to set this up in an auto responder sequence. I assume it does. Just wondering how it handles the page expiration.

    BTW. I love the new look dude. Nice and clean.

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