From a biological perspective, fear is a natural expression of basic survival instincts.

From a marketing point of view, it is the second-best seller of goods after desire.

What makes the two emotions different is the urgency of reaction. While we can usually think our wants through and put them aside for a while, fear demands an immediate response. This mechanism has been within us for thousands of years, and the only thing that has changed are the triggers activating it, which are mostly socio-economical, rather than existential nowadays.

This led to the emergence of a sub-fear emotion called FOMO, which stands for Fear Of Missing Out.

While the feeling is not entirely new to homo sapiens, our vulnerability to it has skyrocketed over the past decade with the advent of constant online presence. It’s easier to feel like you’re missing out when you see what everyone else is doing 24/7. That opens up a lot of opportunities for marketers.

In fact, almost anyone can apply FOMO in their marketing strategy or specific campaigns, you just need to know the basics. There are several key triggers turning the consumers’ fight-or-flight mode on that we are going to explore in this article.

URGENCY

Urgency is one of the main factors to operate with when building a promo campaign around FOMO. Few would argue that in today’s world time really is money, and this is what the idea actually comes down to: creating a need for immediate action from the user.

This is achieved through both visual and text content on ads by emphasizing strict offer timetables, adding an animated countdown timer, or simply heading your message with any of the time-pressing CTAs like “HURRY!” or “only today”- preferably highlighted, bold or capitalized to make sure it’s the first thing to catch the reader’s eye.

It has been proven that an atmosphere of urgency prompts a faster response, so this is the perfect tool to fuel conversions if your current numbers are low.

Here’s a good example of a landing page using urgency to incentivize consumers:

EXCLUSIVITY

Another powerful trigger to activate a potential customer’s decision-making side is exclusivity. Everyone loves the idea of something being one-of-a-kind and hate the idea of missing out on something that seems like it was designed specifically for them.

So, using a “Special Deal” marker on a creative or a “You have been chosen to…” word combination in ad copy can do real wonders to your funnel’s CR. Make sure to carefully choose the wording in order not to mislead the users.

Here’s an example of the two mentioned approaches applied at once:

ADVANTAGE

One more powerful way to activate fear of missing out is by offering a real benefit, discount or any other advantage to the consumer.

A penny saved is a penny earned, and most of us couldn’t resist a chance to put some kind of fancy item in their pocket for a symbolic price, or get for free something they’d otherwise have to pay for.

Losing something you haven’t gained yet is twice as unpleasant, that’s why landing pages like the example below have been showing results for a while now:

SOCIAL REFERENCE

Some of our fears actually stem from desires. Specifically, the desire to follow our role models, copy the people we admire to adopt the qualities we’d love to see in ourselves. This effectively adds another type of FOMO trigger into a marketer’s arsenal.

While resembling (and even overlapping with) influencer marketing, it doesn’t necessarily use the influencer’s authority, rather referring to the commonality between the influencer and the user, the feeling that one can relate.

This approach is popular with Nutra campaigns, as the causes that bring users to the vertical are socially-rooted in the first place.

Here’s what it usually looks like:

These are the four main triggers activating the users’ FOMO receptors, and now you know how to use each of them. Apply this knowledge in practice, and get ready to shake the FOMO when choosing where to spend the campaign profits!