Giving your customers deadlines is a must to get them to take action. Letting customers buy whenever they want often leads to lower sales. As humans, we’re good at delaying taking the actions we need to take—even if they stand to benefit us.
But while using deadlines is a savvy marketing tactic, too often marketers use fake deadlines. As in, “you have to purchase by X date”…but then the customer doesn’t purchase and there’s no consequence. They can still actually purchase.
Using fake deadlines in your evergreen funnel are likely causing major damage to your brand then they are benefiting your sales. Here’s why.
What Is a Countdown Timer?
A countdown timer shows how many days, hours, and/or minutes a user has to take an action. You may see these within emails, landing pages, sales pages, and more. The idea is, within your evergreen funnel, every user has their own personalized deadline. This urgency is designed to increase conversions by getting users to take action because they can’t just buy whenever they want.
Our team is a fan of Deadline Funnel, but it’s just one of many options, like ClickFunnels.
The issue isn’t the countdown timer itself. It’s how marketers are using countdown timers that becomes extremely problematic.
Are Countdown Timers Effective?
Countdown timers are effective…if you’re setting a real deadline.
A lot of course or program creators will use fake deadlines. For example:
- Every time you visit a page, the countdown clock has the same amount of time on it or
- The page stays live and available even after the countdown has ended or
- The price is supposed to go up after a certain time but the page doesn’t reflect that
When you do that, when you set a fake deadline, it erodes trust with potential clients. Potential clients are then trained: they don’t have to pay attention to deadlines and that the business owner doesn’t mean it.
It’s a disingenuous tactic and starts the relationship on a bad foot, not to mention establishes a crummy precedent for the company.
Create Trust With Your Customers
If you want to use deadline funnels to create urgency, that’s great. But you need to use real deadlines. Not some fake deadline that your customers can see right through.
This, of course, may mean you need to change up your countdown marketing strategy.
Your Turn!
Are countdown timers effective in your marketing? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below!
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