What is FOMO and why is it good for business?

If you want people queuing up to become your clients, buy your products or to attend your events. Then a good solid FOMO Marketing strategy is the way to do it. Let me explain.

What is FOMO?

FOMO means the Fear Of Missing Out. It’s about mayking people keen to buy from you, whether that means working one to one with you, coming to your event, or buying your online course.

It’s a positive feeling where someone sees you as the expert that you are. They see people talking about your product or service. They hear about the success that person has had thanks to investing in you, or the enjoyment they got from buying from you, and they want that for themselves. They know that buying from you is going to help them get to where they want to be. FOMO is about sharing the enjoyment and value that you bring to people’s lives.

I’m going to walk you through how to create that ‘I’ve got to be part of this’ feeling so that you can grow your business.

To build FOMO you need a community

Generating FOMO does not happen overnight. You need to build towards it, and you can’t create FOMO if you don’t have a community. If you don’t have a community yet, you need to start building one. To do this, follow my 5 steps to FOMO:

Branding + Community

Relationship building

Authority + BTS

Notoriety + PR

Direct Communication

Can you see how the first letter of each of these 5 steps spell BRAND? That is because everything, and I mean EVERYTHING begins with your brand. These 5 steps are not linear. Marketing is a non-stop activity. For example, you can be doing activities which build your notoriety at the same time as ones which build brand awareness.

1.  Branding + Community

No-one is following your career or your business journey from the start on Social Media. Some people will have only heard about you today. Others will find you in six months. Everything you do online is raising awareness about your brand with new people.

Make use of your pinned post on Twitter, your Featured list on LinkedIn, or your Instagram highlights. All of these help to build a case for who you are as a brand.

You bio, Your LinkedIn profile. The way you communicate online, at the Zoom meeting? When you meet face to face? How do you represent yourself and your brand? One of the fun facts I learned when working with the Google Digital Garage project, was that we have 7 seconds to impresse somebody when they look at you from your desktop. That is reduced to 4 seconds on your smartphone. What does your brand say about you in 4-7 seconds? Branding is the first port of call to start building a community around you. Build on your brand, and follow the next few steps in order to build on your brand and community.

2.  How to build relationships online

Building relationships online is a similar process as when you’re networking face to face except that it’s much more powerful because you can create content for the lurkers. These are the people who are seeing your posts, but they are not liking, commenting or interacting with your posts. You don’t see them, but they see you. This is why we shouldn't worry about the number of fans and followers we have because you probably have more fans than you know!

You’re not only having a conversation with the person you are talking with online, you are also having a conversation with people who are tuning in and listening.

We need to continue to create good content and information, helping tips and advice, for those lurkers, and this helps to strengthen our brand and community.

Building relationships is not just about posting on the socials. Building relationships is also about reading other people's posts and interacting with them. Commenting on them. Sharing them. Helping others where possible. Be a nice human being online. There are many of us who might've read a post and then swiped up to read the next thing. Why not add a comment to thank them? This is what I mean when I talk about creating content for the lurkers. Whilst others are reading the post and spotting your lovely comment underneath that, the lurkers will start to form an opinion of your brand. Let's make that opinion an positive one.

3.  Build Authority + BTS

Sharing helpful content enables you to build authority. You are showing that you are an expert in your field. You are a leader. This all helps to you to build your brand and build relationships with others as people start to interact with you.

You can do this through Instagram Stories, LinkedIn Stories, LinkedIn articles and posts, Facebook posts, tweets and sharing links to your YouTube interviews. This helps you get discovered. People are searching using hashtags, including on Facebook, so that’s a great way for new people to come across you, which links back to brand awareness.

BTS? No, I don't mean the K-Pop sensation??, but what I do mean is Behind-the-Scenes. We're all nosey. We all like to see what others are doing. Whilst the lurkers are in the curious phase of finding out who you are, give them a reason to lurk. Showcase your authority by sharing great content, but also show sneaky peak insights into your working day.

As people are getting to know who you are and what you do, showing the inner workings of your day really helps people to get to know you. Unlike Jim Carey's character in the 1990's film, The Truman Show (who didn't know he was being recorded), WE have the power to decide what goes out onto Social Media. We can let people into our world so that they can see beyond our logo. Showcase the human side to your business. Get people to know who you are. Invite people to ask you questions about what you do.

Authority also links with prospecting. As you are building relationships with people and building trust as an authority, you can introduce your offers when you think the time is right. You’re letting people know you have a product or service for them when the time is right for them.

Showcase your authority by answering questions and don't be afraid to show the behind-the-scenes stuff in the lead up to your product launch, service launch, challenge, online course or event.

4.  Notoriety + PR

Building your authority means you can confidently say you are an expert in your field. You will become known for what you do. Then you can pitch to traditional media and get featured on TV, on radio, in newspapers and magazines.

In addition to that, you create your own PR. You can be your own PR agency by shouting from the rooftops about who you are. One of my favourite quotes is by Muhammad Ali, who said: “It isn’t bragging if you can back it up.” We’ve got to stop being British about it and just shout from the rooftops about how good we are.

If we don't shout about how good we are, how will the lurkers and prospects know? If you've had a written testimonial from past clients, talk about it. If you've gained a 5* review, talk about it. If you've received an email, a text, a voice message. Whatever the medium, if a client loves what you do, and they told you, create a Social Media post and talk about it.

5.  Direct Communication

D is for Direct Communications. This is where you take those online relationships and make them more personal. Timing is everything but if you notice the same people are liking your posts, and you haven’t spoken to them, then maybe thank them and have a look at their stuff and see what they do. If they look like they are the right match for you, then maybe jump into their DMs and say, ‘I wonder if we can have a catch up on a Zoom call’ and then take it from there.

Following these five steps will enable you to build your audience, market your business, and start to generate FOMO amongst your growing community. This means that when you have something you want people to get excited about, like an event, or a launch, you already have an engaged community who are interested in you and what you do.

Going back to the original question of what is FOMO and why it's good for business? When you follow these steps. When you start to build your brand, grow your community, showcase your authority, be your own PR agency, your lurkers and community will grow with you. They'll get excited with you. They'll want to cheer from the sidelines with pom poms with you, and when they get buzzed and excited, when the time is right for them, they might approach you and enquire about your product, service, course, webinar or event.

Ready to create FOMO but have some further questions?

To find out more about how I can help you create FOMO for your conference, networking event, or launch, book a call with me. I look forward to helping you to generate FOMO for your next event!

Words beautifully put together by Rachel Extance