Modern businesses have continuously used promotions throughout history to attract more customers and generate a buzz within the community. Today, there are countless promotions run by companies from a wide range of different industries. Many consumers often wonder why these promotions are often limited in their timeframe and expire so quickly. There are many reasons as to why promotions are specially engineered to be short-lasting.
Promotions tend to expire quickly because the company running the offer is looking to create a sense of urgency. Psychology and market research has shown that potential customers are much more likely to buy a product or subscribe to a service if they are put into a position of urgency. Urgency is created through tactics as presenting an offer for a limited time. These promotions are only available for a limited time, and missing out on such an offer could mean paying a price that is much higher than what is currently asked during the promotion.
For many consumers, the sense of urgency that is created through the dread of having to pay a higher price in the future is enough for them to make a purchase or start a subscription. The concern of paying more in the future is deliberately evoked through the limited nature of company promotions. By having promotions expire quickly, a company will succeed in causing a large number of potential customers to feel as though they may miss out on a great deal if they don’t act soon.
Another reason why promotions expire so quickly is low stock. Certain industries, such as the fashion industry, tend to have too much stock of an item at the end of industry cycles. These items usually lose value very quickly, thus, a company is incentivized to quickly sell the stock as swiftly as possible. A useful way for a company to sell off a huge range of products in a short amount of time is to run a promotion with high levels of marketing. For example, it’s quite common for fashion retailers to have promotional sales at the end of each season at drastically reduced prices.
Regardless of the sense of urgency, businesses that want to offload items in the shortest amount of time also make heavy use of promotions. The reasoning behind such promotions running in a limited timeframe is to facilitate the desire to sell the items quickly. The promotions often expire quickly as it is a financial liability for the business to retain stock of the items being targeted by the promotion for an extended period.
One more reason why promotions expire so quick is that many promotions are financially unsustainable. Lots of new businesses like to use heavily marketed promotions for their products and services at greatly reduced prices. Sometimes, they may even offer their products or services for free for a limited time. The idea behind such a tactic is to create as much buzz as possible and to gain large amounts of exposure to potential customers. By offering their products or services for a heavy discount or for free, they hope that these individuals will go on to become full-paying customers in the future and refer friends and family along the way. The only problem is that such a tactic is financially unsustainable.
Many promotions run by new companies seeking new customers are run at a loss. As mentioned, the business takes a loss in the short term through the promotion, hoping it will ultimately be reversed as more customers are attracted once the promotion expires. Many start-up tech companies follow this kind of strategy. Hence, the financially unsustainable aspect of certain promotions is perhaps the simplest explanation of why certain promotions expire so soon. In a sentence, the business simply wouldn’t be able to exist if they provided the promotional offer for an extended period.
Understanding why promotions expire so quickly provides insights into how companies implement marketing and lead generation strategies. Promotions are not limited in timeframe by chance. On the contrary, there are lots of great reasons presented as to why a business will purposely make their promotional offers short-lasting. Next time you see a limited offer, you can rest easy understanding why the offer is limited in the first place.
