How to Empower Your MSP Marketing by Leveraging FOMO

FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out, can be a powerful motivator to accelerate the decision-making process. This is no less true when it comes to business decisions. As a result, you might be able to use FOMO to your advantage in your MSP’s marketing… so long as you do so responsibly.

Before we dive into the marketing strategy side of things, let’s briefly examine the science behind FOMO.

Why Do We Feel FOMO?

Believe it or not, FOMO has been the subject of its fair share of academic research. Defined in 2013 as the “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent,” there have been multiple examinations of the phenomenon and the impact it can have on the human mind.

We’ll spare you the deep dive into these studies and instead focus on the primary takeaways of FOMO that have been identified.

Basically, the idea is that people tend to feel losses, be affected by them, twice as much as they do for any victories they experience. Naturally, we want to avoid these losses—including any missed experiences—and tend to dwell on those we do experience. It’s just how our brains work.

Exacerbating this, the excess of choices we now have access to makes it all the more challenging to make a choice without some level of regret. Whether we prioritize an obligation over an opportunity or see someone enjoying such an opportunity on social media, FOMO can strike anyone at any time, from anywhere.

Scarcity and FOMO Go Hand-in-Hand

As you might imagine, FOMO is strongly tied to scarcity. After all, if there’s a chance that something could be missed out on, there’s some limit in play that effectively sets a cap on that something. This means that in order for FOMO to exist, something can’t be around forever. We’ll touch back on this concept in a moment, but it’s an important condition to keep in mind.

FOMO Can Really Benefit Your Marketing

To apply the concept of FOMO to your marketing, the message you share needs to communicate that missing an opportunity—specifically, the one you are presenting them with—is something that they will ultimately regret. 

Let’s go into a few ways that you could do just that:

Set a Deadline or Other Limitation

Remember how we said that FOMO requires something to be inherently limited or temporary? This is where that concept becomes important for you to remember.

The entire concept of FOMO hinges on the idea that someone else is going to enjoy something (in this case, the benefits of improved business) that you will not, exclusively because of your inaction. It’s this scarcity that gives FOMO its influence in the first place, and as a result, offering something ad infinitum immediately takes the teeth out of FOMO.

In order to induce FOMO in your audience, you need to make sure the pressure is on for them to act. 

Providing something with a limited availability, whether it’s a special offer for a discounted service bundle or a small-audience webinar, automatically sets off the FOMO trigger and makes your target that much more likely to do what you want them to do, if only to avoid regret later. 

Pile on the Social Proof and User-Generated Content 

The other critical aspect of FOMO is rooted in jealousy—the idea that not only are you not getting something, but that someone else is. Therefore, if you plan to use FOMO as a marketing tool, you need to provide evidence that other people are benefiting from your services.

We’ve covered a variety of ways that this evidence can be shaped before, specifically by using testimonials and case studies.

Use All Your Marketing Channels

If your audience is to feel FOMO, they need to see that there’s something they could potentially miss out on. Therefore, offering things exclusively on certain channels (while promoting this fact on your others) is a great way to increase the engagement and sheer size of your active audience in certain places.

For instance, let’s say that your business’ Facebook has a massive following, at least when compared to your company’s Instagram account. Putting up an offer on Instagram (while publicizing it on your other channels, like Facebook) is a great way to use FOMO to increase your reach. After all, many of your audience members in this example will likely follow your Instagram account so that they don’t miss another opportunity.

This also demonstrates that FOMO can be useful for more than just pushing a conversion, too. Depending on how you use it, FOMO can help accelerate a variety of your business’ priorities.

Write Copy to Your Advantage

Finally, you need to communicate with your audience in order to really emphasize the “MO” part of FOMO. Getting a little creative with your copy can both communicate how limited your offer is while simultaneously making it sound more tantalizing for your targets to look into.

Sure, phrases like “limited time offer” and “don’t wait” can be effective, but their popularity can also lead to your message being buried in all the other messages using the same terms. Don’t be afraid to more specifically refer to the limitations of your marketing initiative in your messaging to make it stand out more.

For example, instead of “limited time offer” being your subject line or heading, be more specific. Set a numerical limit or identify the specific time that’s left before your offer expires to really crank up the FOMO you can generate.

It also helps to try and use similar terminology to what your target audience would use if they were implying some limitations. By speaking their language, you can more effectively communicate your offer and just how limited it is.

When Marketing with FOMO, Ethics are Important

The Fear Of Missing Out can be extremely effective as a marketing tool, but only if your audience actually will miss out on something through their inaction. Misused FOMO is synonymous with manipulation, which is a really effective means of alienating your audience.

So, if you plan to use FOMO marketing, make sure it is exclusively when your audience will actually be rewarded for their action. Give them something good for acting in the moment, and they’ll be all the more likely to engage with you again when the stakes aren’t quite as high.

In other words, FOMO marketing relies on the value you have to offer, and less so on the limitations surrounding it. By focusing on providing high-value insights and services, your audience will grow more loyal because they’ll learn that your offers are not to be missed.

We Can Help Your Plan and/or Fulfill Your Marketing Strategy

We offer a variety of marketing services that can share any message you want with your MSP audience, demonstrating your value to them and helping to inspire FOMO with just about everything we put out. To learn more about how we can help you boost your marketing to your business’ advantage, give us a call at 888-546-4384 today!