Uh-Oh, FOMO Marketing Is Back
I'm so sick of these douchebags.
** Dear friend, this is my push back against the race to the bottom. This is my argument to resist using FOMO in your marketing. Yes, it feels like everyone does it, and it’s so damn eye catching, right? Yeah, well, so is the girl with the ultralow-cut top. Now, while I have nothing against a revealing clothing choice (there’s a time and place for everything, including bringing out the big guns…), when it comes to our business, we must choose our attention-getters wisely. Just like displaying the most cleavage in the room, FOMO marketing will, without doubt, attract attention. And in like, unfortunately, most attention will be the unwanted kind. Take from the following what you will…
Lifestyle FOMO Marketing Is Back
It’s been a while since I’ve seen these douchebags in my feed.
But a few weeks ago, I started seeing them bloody everywhere.
For the men, we have FOMO in the form of some good ol’ alpha-success-porn, spruking who-knows-what coaching or self-improvement program:
…Bro with a bunch of pretty girls, exaggerated excited facial expression, with a big bold headline about how he’s cracked the code…
…Bruh puffing a cigar, boasting how much money was made this month while he’s been on vacation sippin’ gin and juice…
…Dude on a boat fishing with the boys with flashing captions about how much his 1-person business has turned over just this week…
Oh, don’t worry, ladies, the “you-go-gurl” rah-rah is back in full swing too. The “I’m just sharing how my life is, it’s not my fault that it’s stabbing your insecurities and twisting the knife until you’re forced to click” ads are showing up everywhere:
…Feet and tanned legs poking up from behind a laptop, poolside, anti-hustle culture quote visible on the screen…
…Long hair blowing in the breeze while eyes closed, ‘grateful for this life’, and you too can have it with my new program…
…Overwater villa pool shot (ahem, Maldives) with caption “just 3 months ago I was cubicle bound, all that changed when I found this simple system”…
The bullshittery is layered thick.
And as subtle as food poisoning.
Oh look! A FOMO ad with comments… What do people have to say, I wonder…
Next time you see one of these FOMO ads cross your feed, take a look through the comments.
I bet a box of craft beer that it’s full of fresh blood, newbies, the ignorant, the hopeful. Poor souls who don’t understand they’re being played.
No serious person is buying into this shit, folks.
Fool me once, sure.
But the only way you’ll get me again is because I slipped in the oozing snake oil and couldn’t get away fast enough.
When you sell using FOMO, you tell your followers what you really think of them.
You tell them they’re chumps.
They’re gullible.
They’re wallets with faces whose currency needs to be extracted.
But it’s not just that you don’t care about them…
When you sell using FOMO, ideal clients scatter.
Ideal clients are measured, aware of their challenges, prepared to work, and are ready to pay in full… now.
But, appealing to people’s sense of ‘missing out’ attracts desperate people. People who aren’t prepared for the task at hand. This means (assuming they buy) you end up with a client list of complainers and time-wasters.
Plus, they’ll often drag out your payments, quit before they’ve paid up, or worse, ask for a refund.
A business full of these types of clients will make you question everything.
But it’s not just the kind of people you attract…
When you sell using FOMO, you become a caricature.
And the longer you do it, the more of a caricature you become, and the harder it becomes to connect with people.
See, we spend an extraordinary amount of time and money chasing real, authentic experiences and connections.
When you attempt to leverage FOMO, you might get a bump in attention, but at what personal cost?
But it’s not just your image that’s misrepresented and damaged…
When you sell using FOMO, you become the opposite of trustworthy.
You only care about money, right?
Don’t you care that you’re making people feel bad about themselves, in the effort to squeeze money from their pathetic (your words, not mine) pockets?
Because that’s what it looks like.
That’s what it IS like.
And if this goes on too long, your whole experience of life will shift, change, and be redefined. Intelligent people will back away from your orbit. People with the ability to chip away your rough personality edges will disappear from your days, your weeks… until all that’s left are 2-dementional transactional relationships.
Because it’s not just your genuineness that’s questioned…
When you sell using FOMO, you become the kind of person who lies about reality, drifting further and further away from the kind of person other people want to be around.
I don’t know about you, but as time rolls on, I want to be surrounded by a higher percentage of better-quality people.
Good people enrich my experience of life.
But to know I manipulated people’s FOMO so I could make a buck?
Come on.
Grow a pair.
Get smarter.
Become better.
Earn your ideal customers because of an attention-capturing value proposition, not because you made them feel bad about their current position in life.
Sorry.
Where I’m from, that’s called being an asshole.
Use The Calculator
The How Many Clients Calculator shows how many clients you could enrol with your current audience without any outreach. It’s free and takes less than a minute.
Resources
My goal is to help you get clients without doing stupid shit.
If you’re new, start HERE.
Educate yourself for free with my foundational YouTube series HERE.
If your lead magnet isn’t generating clients, watch this HERE.
I run the Growth Accelerator a few times a year. Every time, people get clients. It’s inexpensive and will light a rocket under your business. Hop on the waitlist HERE for free.
Finally, if you want private help, learn about inbound lead flow HERE.
Thanks for reading
Yeah, we’re in the Maldives for my partner’s work.
Each year, we spend time here. You have no idea how many marketing peers tell me whenever I’m here that “you should be posting and sharing and FOMO’ing everyone”… “social loves that stuff…”
But if you’ve read this far, you know my thoughts on this :)
So yeah, that’s where the idea came for this week’s newsletter issue. Oh, and I needed a picture for the thumbnail, and figured this pic was a nice tongue-in-cheek option.
Cheers,
Pat
PS: If you enjoyed reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack too.
I admit I was a victim to this FOMO marketing when I first started entrepreneurship. I bought into the whole "9-5 is bad" thing, which I may be grateful for, which jumpstarted everything...
And finally being on the other side, after learning a thing or two about how tough it can be to find success, but also how rewarding it can be, you can't help but look back on that FOMO marketing and wonder how you were targeted. Lol.
Sometimes it's so tempting to bust it out. I'm currently at the beach right now with aquamarine water too, lol. This article snapped me back from the brink. :)