How to Make Hunger Marketing Work

With the increasingly mature China’s consumer market and stronger consumer purchasing power, brands and companies are looking for new marketing methods to get more profits and increase market share. More and more manufacturers and sellers begin to test a new way of marketing named “hunger marketing”, which has proved to be a great success in many marketing cases.

Hunger marketing, a promotional strategy that focuses on people’s desire to get something others may want as well. It raised people’s attention for new products with limited supplies, making buyers think it is not so easy to get the product.

Hunger marketing has already been used by many businesses, such as property developers, smartphone makers and high-grade liquor sellers. A good example is Xiaomi, a famous smartphone company in the world, which has been known for their hunger marketing strategy. Apple also uses this strategy by selling its phones through an invite-only system when it is first launched in the market. Only those with invitations were allowed to purchase the newly launched phones. The key of hunger marketing is to limit the supply and to create the scarcity of the products, thus adding more brand value. Below are some tips about how to run hunger marketing.

1.    Drive People into Emotional Decisions

A hunger marketing campaign need to dive into the emotional side of the customers and drive them to make emotional decisions without careful thinking when purchasing goods. Again in the Apple case, consumers enjoy the social status enhanced by Apple’s marketing strategy that only the invited customers could have the latest devices.

2.    Campaign and Media

Driving customers' desires to buy the products is the key of hunger marketing. Therefore, promotional campaigns have been an essential part of an enterprise's marketing. Each media has its own advantages in promoting products. The most commonly used promotional channels include hard and soft ads, television advertising, radio, newspapers, magazines, celebrity endorsements, auto shows, guidance from professionals, etc. The marketers need to choose the proper media portfolio for their products to be known by the public.

3.    Closely Monitor the Trend of the Market

According to the research, consumers' purchasing desires are partially affected by the trend of the market, and sometimes it may result in customers' emotional decisions - spending more money without rationality. Therefore, it's important to keep a close monitoring of the market trend and competitors' news in order to be responsive of the new demand. Do remember that you are selling the benefits of the products or services rather than the products or services themselves.