by: AskPat 186 Episode Transcript
Pat: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 186 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Seriously, thank you so much for taking a little bit of time today to spend with me. I'm excited about today's episode and spending time with you.
Cool, now let's get to today's question from Brad.
Brad: Greetings, Pat, from the southern tip of Africa. My name is Brad. I'm from Johannesburg in South Africa. Just like you, I'm a runner. I podcast and blog over at LowCarbRunning.com. Pat, first of all, thanks for everything that you do. You're absolutely amazing. I've learned so much from you in the last year or so, and just really fired up by what the future holds and everything we've got in the pipeline, and how things are growing.
Pat, one thing that I'm battling to wrap my head around at the moment, is we're in the process of launching our first online information product. It's an eight week course to get people running on fat as opposed to carbohydrate. I'm struggling with the online product to get that scarcity involved. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, where you limit numbers or limit the period of time. But for an online product, it's really difficult because there is really no limit to that product. How could I go about creating that sense of urgency? Look forward to hearing what you've got to say. Thanks again for everything. Cheers.
Pat: Hey Brad, thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it, and especially appreciate all the kind words you said. I mean, whenever anybody comes on the show and you know, they ask their question and they drop those you know, words of thanks. I mean, I can't help but smile every single time. Thank you so much for that, Brad. Definitely going to deliver for you and for everybody else out there listening right now.
Let's talk about info products. Yes, you are absolutely right. It's difficult to create a scarcity mindset for an info product because you can't say like, “Oh, there's only 100 available,” because it's an info product. Right? It's an electronic. You can duplicate it as many times as you want. You could do it a million times if you want. That's sort of the beauty of doing this online business and doing things like software and info products and courses, you know memberships, because you can have an unlimited amount of people purchase that product. There's no warehouse to store things, there's no shipping involved necessarily. You know, it is our advantage. It is to our advantage to have info products and software and things like that that can give us an income, but without having to actually put in that work to actually deliver those things and actually you know, we can scale in that way. But creating that scarcity mindset when selling, which is often one of the things that gets people to buy more than anything, it can be very difficult.
The first rule is just, you know, never lie. I come to these sites every once in a while where it's obvious it's an info product. I mean they say, “Get access to this ebook,” or whatever, but then they're like, “There's only 100 available,” right? They even go as far as to have like a counter, like a fake counter. You can tell it's fake because when you refresh the page, it like starts over again but it's like, “95 left, 93 left, 89 left, better get it now,” right? It's like kind of what you see on QVC when they're selling products and there's only so many left. But you know, there's probably only that many left for those physical products, but not for information products. If you were to lie and do that, it's obvious that you're just not doing it the right way. Whenever dishonesty enters the selling process, I mean that's how you know you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
I'm really glad you're asking this question, Brad. There's a lot of actually great ways to induce or include a scarcity mindset when it comes to information products. It's not necessarily about the product itself, but there's a lot of other things that go beyond that. The only thing I would say though is there is a way to create scarcity and limit your info product. Even though it's information, it's electronic, you could duplicate it like I just mentioned. You can limit it. If you think about it like a beta version, where you are limiting not how many you can sell, but how many people you want to get it initially, that creates that scarcity mindset.
Because, for example, I did this with the Smart Podcast Player, which is obviously an electronic product. It's a piece of software, but I did a beta launch where I limited it to 250 people. I actually had to turn people down. But that created a scarcity mindset. When people saw, “Wow, we're only taking 250 people,” people were quick to jump to become one of the first buyers. Now, what's the reasoning behind that? How do you explain that? Well you say, “You know what? This is our first product. We want to make sure that it's perfect before we release it to the wild.” You might use other forms of copy that that. But you know what I'm saying.
You want to limit it so you can work closely with an initial set of people if you're doing a course or a membership, you might call them your charter members. Limit it to X number of charter members to create that scarcity mindset, but that will also benefit you because you can work closely with those people. They will poke holes in your product. What I mean is, they will tell you what's wrong and what can be improved and you want to do that with a small group of people so that your product can become even better when you then, like I said, release it to the wild or open it up for good. That's the process I'm in right now with the Smart Podcast Player at SmartPodcastPlayer.com. You could do the same thing. Even if it's an information product. Now you said it's an eight week course. I know a lot of people who have done something amazing when they're creating these courses that go week after week where you know, week one you learn something, you implement it, and that sort of involves week two and week three. Which I imagine in the fitness space, and the diet space, kind of works that way.
What you can do is you can actually not make it an info product at first, but have it become a live course that you do with a limited number of people, a set number of people. For example, twenty. Twenty might be a good number, and you work closely with those people week in and week out to poke holes into your education, into your workbooks, into the pdf files you hand out, into the homework, into the coursework. They will help determine what was missing so you could include that later, and you can have them pay for that spot as well. I mean that's like concierge service. They're going to feel like special people. There's probably people in your audience already if you've built it that would be willing to pay for that special access to get involved with you on that eight week course if you haven't created it already, or you can have people go through to become a beta sort of test group.
I mean I think that's the cool thing with this eight week course that you're doing and sort of how you can sort of word it or structure it. Say, “Hey, we created this info product. The first set of users are going to be available. We're going to work with 100 people. 100 people,” or whatever number you want. “You're going to take this eight week course. It's an info product, but we're only going to work with 100 people because we want to have direct access and contact with you along the way.” And then round two starts on whenever, right? You don't have to mention round two is coming. But, you know, if you limit it to 100 and you structure it in that fashion, I can imagine that a lot of people will want to get in on that with that early chance.
Now there's a lot of other scarcity items you could do with info products. Another one has to do with pricing. You can combine this with what we just said, if you want to get in this early beta group or these first round of users or first set of case studies for this diet. You know, 100 people, you get in at the lowest price, right? It's the early bird pricing, or the charter member pricing. We've seen that all the time. But you can limit that. You can say, “The price will go up the next time. During this first round you better get it now because this is the cheapest it's going to be.” A lot of people do this for other things like they say, “Okay, here's the new product. It's going to be at this special price for the next 24 hours. After 24 hours, the price is going to go up.” Or after however many days. You know, something where there's a foreseeable future.
Really what that comes down to is there's going to be a pain there if people miss out on that opportunity. That's really what the scarcity mindset is all about, that pain that happens when they don't act on it. If you say, “Okay. Here's this discount price. You know it's a product you need. Here's all the solutions that it's going to provide for you for the pains and problem and needs and issues that you have. You can get it at the early price, but tomorrow at this time the price will go up and you'll miss out on this opportunity to get it at the lowest price ever.” That's another scarcity mindset that you can inject with your info product, specifically. Pricing is another strategy.
Another strategy you could use to include a scarcity mindset with your info products is by creating bonuses and limited bonuses. Specifically, for example, the first 100 customers get this and everybody else after that does not. It could be additional content, it could be additional sort of bonus videos for example, or an extra course for example, or interviews with experts that are in and around this particular subject or market of yours. You could also give people special access. This is something that John Lee Dumas and I recently did. I did a promotion for Smart Podcast Player. I opened up another beta group specifically for his crew over at PodcastersParadise.com. We said, “Hey, the first 25 people who purchase will get on a webinar with me and John and we'll have a chat for an hour. You can ask any questions you'd like.” That, when we said that, like boom, like right away. The customers came. You could do things like that, you know, bonuses, things that would give people something extra for acting sooner. And also having that cut-off time is really important. Cut-off time or cut-off number, again, another way to inject scarcity into your info product. Not specifically with the info product, unless, like I said, you do that sort of beta group method. But things in addition to the info product, the price and the bonuses that might go along with it.
Brad, I hope that answers your question. Everybody out there, if you have a product, how are you including a scarcity? You might even if you already have products, think about the upcoming holidays. You know, it's October right now for those of you who listen to this as they come out. You know, Thanksgiving is coming up, Black Friday, right? Christmas is around the corner as well. There might be opportunities for you with your products both digital and physical to create scarcity mindsets around these holidays that are coming up. Think about how you might do that.
Thanks so much, Brad. I appreciate your question and an AskPat t-shirt will be headed your way for sure. You'll get an email from my executive assistant very soon to set you up with that. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, head on over to AskPat.com.
Thanks so much, and as always I love to end with a quote. Today's quote is from one of my favorite characters in the world, Yoda. It's one you've probably heard of before, but it's also one that is very important to remember. “Do or do not, there is no try.” Cheers, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.