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Using FOMO to your advantage in digital marketing

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In the digital world we live in, people are increasingly sharing their personal experiences across social media platforms. Photos, check-ins and hashtags documenting life events such as holidays, nights out and new purchases are taking over people’s timelines, triggering FOMO—an individual's fear of missing out.

FOMO can be a huge advantage to brands, particularly those in the hospitality or retail sectors. The best part about it is you can sit back and let your customers become advocates for you! All it takes is a little encouragement, some high quality images, a sense of urgency and a few exclusive offers.

Encourage others to document their experience

Research has shown that FOMO tactics are much more effective when a recommendation comes from a friend or family member rather than a salesperson. Encouraging customers to document their experience on social media is great way to get people to publicly commend your establishment or product, to evoke that fear of missing out from their followers.

There are several ways of going about this. You could set up a unique hashtag, such as Sheffield horror film festival, Celluloid Screams,  use of #screams17 at its most recent annual event. The more people using this hashtag, the more likely the event will be noticed on social media and people will want to join in with the online conversation themselves.

Online check-ins are another great way of getting your event or establishment noticed. Every check-in someone logs on Facebook will be seen by all of their friends and followers. The more check-ins you have, the more desirable your establishment will seem and people won’t want to miss out on the hype! You could encourage people to check-in by offering incentives such as a free drink if a customer shows you the proof on their phone.

Draw people in with high quality images

Sometimes an experience is just too good to put into words. When this is the case, a high quality image can do the trick far better. Food, scenery and attractive products dominate the majority of visual content on social media, so if you’re in the hospitality business it’s essential you encourage people to document their experience with photos. Followers who see their friends posting images of the great experience they had at your establishment are likely to want to experience it for themselves. These people will then visit and take their own images to document the experience… and so the FOMO cycle continues.

Investing in good quality imagery, such as having a professional photographer taking photos of an event you’re hosting is an excellent way of drawing people in—these photos can be uploaded into an online album in which users can tag themselves, showing off what a good time they had to their followers. Again, the more you’re able to visually demonstrate how good a time people are having because of what you’re selling, the more likely people are going to be drawn in by their FOMO.

Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity

Another useful digital marketing technique is creating a sense of urgency around what you’re selling. If people think they don’t have much time to deliberate over a purchase decision, they’ll be drawn in by the fear that they’ll miss out if they don’t act immediately.

A sense of urgency can be created by sending out online notifications of flash sales and limited edition products. By creating an offer that only people who act on it in a short period of time can claim, everyone will want to be among those select few who were in the right place at the right time.

There’s plenty of digital marketing techniques to draw people in through fear of missing out. Go ahead and try them and see how effective they are for you.

If you need any further advice on how to execute your marketing plan, keep up-to-date with our blog.

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