Impulse buying happens every day. Every time we go to buy groceries and make a purchase that was not on our list, we become impulse buyers. We behave in this way because of our emotions and feelings, which, it is not a secret, play an important role in marketing. Marketers use many impulse factors on landing pages, which we know they are the most important stage in a funnel, in order to trigger those emotions that will make the customer take the final decision of purchasing.
Decision fatigue usually makes the job of impulse factors on landing pages easier, but there are some of them that are often used for their effectiveness in pretty much all contexts. We are going to list the five most popular and explain how and why they work.
Fear of loss
People would rather keep something they already have, than get something they desire. This is the reason why it is important to highlight the benefits of what you are selling on your landing page: you have to communicate to your potential customers what they are missing and what they are losing if they decide not to buy.
If you search fear of loss on the web, you will often find a sentence that says it is greater than the need for gain, which is another impulse factor widely used in marketing in the past, but now it can be considered outdated and ineffective.
Urgency
Sense of urgency can be triggered with a good copywriting or graphic elements such as a countdown to the end of the offer. Limits in time are the most common way to communicate the necessity of taking immediate action.
Many funnels just do not convert because there is no sense of urgency, so people think longer and judge harder, putting a wall of objections between them and the product, and when this wall gets too thick, it can’t be broken down anymore, and the conversion simply won’t happen. Triggering urgency will avoid all the overthinking and make buyers act out of impulse.
Scarcity
Many people consider scarcity a particular kind of urgency, which is partly true, but if we had to be accurate, scarcity comes from a different bias: the more something is running out, the more people want it.
This means that when you write on your landing page that your product is running out for any reason, like limited edition products or high demand, its perceived value increases. Scarcity can be faked on purpose, which makes it one of the most powerful impulse factors on landing pages. Scarcity has the power to eliminate procrastination.
Greed
The urge of saving money makes people greedy, and it is something we can use on landing pages as well as traditional marketing means, like shop windows and advertising on magazines and newspapers. The greed factor can be easily triggered by proposing a discounted price: basically, you have to convince people the price they are paying is lower than the real value of your product. Everyone wants to have more for less, it is a natural instinct.
Jones’ effect
Have you ever heard the saying keep up with the Joneses? It is referred to someone who compares their family with their neighbours and thinks about them as an indicator of their own social class. Basically, if you fail to keep up with the Joneses, you are inferior. At the same time, it means people will do whatever others are already doing.
Including a social proof like testimonials or big numbers (e.g.: 10,000 people already bought this!) on your landing page, you will trigger the Jones’ effect, i.e. their desire to keep up with the others.
Other impulse factors
There are dozens of impulse factors and cognitive biases that can be used on landing pages, but it is hard to master all of them. If you are building your first landing page, we recommend you learn these main five ones before focusing on all the others.
Ethics first
Before we end this post, just a short clarification: there are a lot of impulse factors and psychological triggers a marketer can use to raise their conversion rate, but good marketers only use them in good faith. We do not recommend writing misleading or deceptive copy.
You want your customers to feel happy, not cheated.
