One of the cleanest ways I’ve used urgency was during Black Friday at SHREDZ.
We didn’t just throw up a lazy “20% off ends tonight” banner. Everyone does that. Customers smell it from a mile away.
We paired the limited-time offer with influencer-specific funnels. So if someone followed Joey Swoll, they didn’t land on a generic SHREDZ page. They landed on a page that felt connected to Joey, with his stack, his messaging, and a thank-you flow that felt personal. That made the offer feel relevant, not random. The Black Friday push helped us close out that year near $100K in revenue, after finally cracking the influencer/community model.
The urgency came from three things:
The first was real timing. Black Friday is already a natural buying window. You don’t have to manufacture pressure when the market already understands the clock is ticking.
The second was specificity. We weren’t saying, “Buy now or else.” We were saying, “This stack, from this person you follow, at this moment, is available right now.” That feels like access, not pressure.
The third was momentum. Our influencers were getting real-time sale alerts — what we called “booms.” Every sale created energy inside the network. They weren’t begging people to buy. They were excited because the campaign was moving, and that energy transferred to the audience.
The line is simple: urgency works when it helps people make a decision they already wanted to make. It gets pushy when you’re trying to scare someone into buying something they don’t actually want.
Real urgency is a deadline.
Fake urgency is manipulation with a countdown timer.
