Social media marketing has several reasons for being highly effective in being able to showcase your content to massive viewership. Certainly, this is one of the crucial parts, but it is not the whole picture. Let us see about FOMO Marketing. 

When it comes to successful marketing and social media campaigns, psychology plays a huge part and FOMO plays the biggest role in impacting the customer’s mind to increase the reach of your marketing efforts. 

“Only 2 left! Click on the order but to grab your deal!”

What do you feel when you read the above phrase? If you feel the urgency of the deal and end up thinking you might miss out on something valuable? 

This is what FOMO marketing is all about. Let’s explore about FOMO marketing and its tactics to drive more sales in detail in this blog post

A brief on FOMO Marketing

FOMO – Fear of Missing Out is a psychological reaction of humans. FOMO marketing is an excellent strategy to make your customers eager to buy. People start worrying that time is running out on a great deal. In other cases, when your friends are taking part in the video challenge and you do not have any idea on it, then you naturally feel anxious about being left behind and it pushes people to act. 

Experts suggest that this feeling is often related to elements like negative emotions and stress that motivate readers to act upon. 

FOMO is most prevalent among millennials. Here are some of the FOMO statistics that will help you to understand why FOMO marketing campaigns are proven to be effective, especially with certain demographics. 

– Over 69% of Millennials come across this phenomenon. 

– Over 60% of Millennials make purchases as a reaction of the FOMO

In simple terms, customers will make the purchase just because they might feel they miss out on the deal. 

How Does FOMO Work?

FOMO is generally triggered when we watch the whole community doing the same action. Later, we feel the pressure of doing the same action to fit along with the crowd. You could have commonly seen challenges that go viral on WhatsApp and Facebook, indeed the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is one of the amazing examples of FOMO marketing ever. 

In other words, FOMO can be highly triggered when people want to partake in limited deals such as Friday sales or festive time discounts. Customers are indirectly pressured to make the sales as they are not sure about the next sales because people want to take action before it gets delayed or to miss out on the sales. 

FOMO Marketing Tactics

Create Scarcity and Urgency

Creating product scarcity and urgency is one of the smart tactics for marketers to trigger FOMO. In simple terms, product scarcity and urgency go hand in hand. For instance, if there are only ten tickets available or only 3 items are in stock, there is a limited supply, when your customers read or hear the phrase “Only 3 left before we are sold out” they feel the urgency and may make the deal in FOMO, chances of them acting quickly is high in this scenario. 

Create value over experience than product

Customers value experiences more than products, this is why product launch events or promotion programs are quite popular. The basic psychology principle behind this is nobody wants to miss out on the popular things happening. This is one of the reasons why you could see customers lined up for the launch of the iPhone every year. People are excited about the new products and they do not want to miss out on the trending events. 

Utilize Exclusivity

Basically, people like to be part of exclusive groups. Making customers part of exclusive groups can fetch more loyal customers by triggering the FOMO. Scarcity and exclusivity also work hand in hand, so triggering the thought that something exclusive is available will make people more interested in exploring. 

Some brands like Sephora and Black Market have a loyalty reward program, the more people spend in a calendar year the more rewards they get. For instance, if a customer spends $500 in a year, then he can be qualified for a yearlong discount of 5% on all his purchases. In case, if a user spends $1000 then they are eligible for a gift card and 10% discounts on future purchases. 

Apply Peer Pressure

Peer pressure is another effective way to trigger FOMO by showing how other people are doing. By showing how other users are downloading, playing, or purchasing, marketers create pressure on the user to be part of the club. 

When Gmail launched their new mail service they used these great tactics to increase the anticipation among the users. They sent our limited invites to users, though people knew there would be enough invites, everybody was excited to try it out early just to brag that “ I just tried the new Gmail inbox”

The same strategy had been used when you visit the eCommerce website or ticketing site and notice live alerts like “6 users have availed this service in the last 9 hours” or “5000 sold in last 25 hours”. It is all way of applying peer pressure. 

Quote an Influencer, Celebrity or Authority

When a celebrity or an influencer talks about your product or service, their quotes about your product can take your brand to the next level giving it a significant boost through your FOMO marketing campaign. You don’t need a high-level celebrity to talk about your brand, some popular social media influencers can do this job great. They can dominate the tasks across the social media platform. A report states that Instagram is the most effective social media platform for getting across your brand product message to massive users. 

Takeaway       

When it comes to marketing, fear can be a powerful motivating factor, especially when you create a common fear among your target audience to create your market. Effective use of the very prevalent FOMO in your marketing strategies can support you to bring new users and extend your profit lines, especially it works great when you implement it with Scarcity, Urgency, and Exclusivity.