Exclusivity in Marketing Campaigns; How It All Works.

As a marketer, especially in this digital age, one of the core emotions you must maximise to arrive at your marketing goal is ‘exclusivity’. Creating products that are exclusive to your customers increase the longing for your product. A typical example of this was when a clothing brand for men ran a campaign where they gave a massive discount on their suits for bridegrooms and their groomsmen. The entire campaign was packaged to depict that if they buy suits from the brand within the month on February which is the month of love (valentine), they’ll get up to 50% discount. This brand smartly applied exclusivity in marketing their products and it actually worked. According to the owner of the business, he said bridegrooms whose wedding ceremony was scheduled to hold in the second half of the year rushed to buy their suits while the offer was ongoing.

Exclusivity in marketing applies the advantage of scarcity to attract prospects to a product or brand. This is done by making prospects believe they’ll miss out on an interesting opportunity if they fail to indicate their interest within a specified timeframe. Bearing in mind the phycology principle of supply and demand, the rarer an opportunity, content, or product is, the more valuable it is. If you make your customers feel like there’s something exclusive they’ll miss out on, they are more likely to patronise you. That is how the ‘Fear Of Missing Out’ (FOMO) principle works.

Why Should You Include Exclusivity in Marketing Your Product/Service?

This isn’t a tough one to answer. Imagine telling people that if they pay for your subscription-based SaaS product for a minimum of 1 year at a stretch, they will be entitled to after-service support, free business consultancy, and a dedicated customer service agent. It is only rational for your prospects to begin to compare your proposed value with that of your competitors. Without further ado, they’ll patronise you just because of the exclusive value they expect you to deliver.

A major benefit of including exclusivity in marketing campaigns for your business is that it gives customers a high sense of belonging. When you put out an exclusive offer, it is only expected that they will be getting more attention than the rest of your customers or the general public. Looking at this from another perspective, an exclusive campaign makes customers feel like they belong to a higher economic class. This not only boosts their confidence but also makes them feel more important than the rest of your customers.

Here’s How You Can Implement This Concept.

We have already highlighted one or two practical examples within this article and the items listed in this section are worth giving a try.

Clearly Spell Out Your Value

Each time a customer sees your ads or other marketing messages, they see money leaving their pocket. For their minds to acknowledge that patronising you is a rational decision, your product/service, and the proposed value must be able to do the job of convincing and persuading them. Ensure you clearly identify all that a customer will get from your brand. Communicate this early enough in the buyer journey.

Your Offer Must be Unique 

Hope you always remember that your competitors exist for the same reason you do. To offer value and make money in return (well, some don’t necessarily care about offering value; we believe you aren’t one of those). The uniqueness of your exclusive campaign must stand you out of the crowd. You should package your offer in a way that customers can’t get it from their favourite brands. Converting them will go a long way in increasing your client-base and being able to retain them will impact your cash flow and sustainability. It works in circles.

Give a Deadline

With many of the products we have launched for our clients, we have come to the conclusion that people love to wait till the end of a thing draws near before indicating their interest. Setting a deadline creates a sense of urgency and increases their fear of missing out on the proposed value. Giving a deadline portrays exclusivity in your marketing campaign because it shows that only a few people will be able to meet such a deadline so not everyone can take advantage of the opportunity. 

Create a Waiting List

This works perfectly when you want to launch a new product/service. Creating a waiting list is an effective way of making people anticipate your new product. With the rate at which people indicate their interest to get your product at its launch, you can decipher if your new product is what your customers actually want. In addition, you can use this waiting list for remarketing purposes in future. 

Portray a Sense of Scarcity 

If you understand the laws of supply and demand then you’ll know that scarcity has a large role to play here. When an item is high in demand but low in supply, so many people will do anything possible to acquire such an item. This simply means that when a highly-demanded item is scarce, it hypes people up about being among the first to get it. This is one method big companies like Apple and Samsung make good use of. They make people preorder for their newest products before it becomes available for all in the market.

The Need to Qualify for the Offer

Just like in our example at the introduction of this article, bridegrooms were the target of the exclusive marketing campaign. And if you weren’t a bridegroom-to-be, you won’t qualify to enjoy the 50% discount. You can run this marketing campaign in a way that only a certain group of your target audience will qualify to participate.

Just before we go, marketing campaigns indicating exclusivity has a way of promoting how much value customers can get from your brand. And the fear of missing out ultimately causes them to patronise you. We strongly recommend that digital marketers should try including some form of exclusivity in marketing their brands and product offering.