FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in Marketing vs. Respect For Your Audience

Have you ever gotten an email from a marketer that says there are just two spots left in the program? Apply now, join now, sign up now. There's two spots left. And when I get those emails, I know, I mean, all of us know that we like. There's not only two people who are getting the email, right? There are thousands of people getting the email. So it makes me wonder if there are only two spots left in the program and I am one of thousands of people who could sign up, how does it make. Let's say there are a thousand people, then if there's two people who join, then how do the other 998 people feel who weren't able to join? And what does the marketer think that they should feel? Well, let me answer the question for you. You should feel left out if you don't join the program, and you should therefore feel bad that you don't get the benefit of the program because the program has probably been hyped up. Oh, this is the most amazing thing. It'll change your life, it'll change your business, it'll change your health, it'll change your relationships, whatever it is. And you have to join because otherwise you'll be left out. Do you want to be left out? Of course none of us want to be left out. But that is one of the core, most common things that happen in marketing today is they use the fear of missing out, otherwise known as fomo, F O M O, Scarcity limitation fear, you know, of missing out. And it works. That's why marketers keep doing it if I scare you into signing up, because otherwise you'll be left out, of course, you'll more likely sign up. We are human beings. We have evolved as to be tribal creatures. We don't want to be excluded or isolated. None of us do. So marketers use the fear of missing out to get to you. Now my question is, is that required? Do you need to use the fear of missing out to sell things? No, you don't. Okay. This is the problem is that if you've learned from these marketers, you think, well, that's. You have to do that, otherwise people don't buy. Not true. Look at my marketing. People are buying from me left and right. Well, hopefully I don't use a fear of missing out. Okay, please let me know if you feel the fear of missing out sometimes on my things. I know I have online courses that actually have a start date because I teach them live. But you can buy them digital. Did you know you could buy my online Courses anytime you want. I don't say, you better sign up now, otherwise you're going to miss out on. No, I just say it starts tomorrow. If you're interested in taking part, great. If not, I think, you know, that you can buy it later. Maybe some of you don't realize that, but you can buy it anytime you want. There's no. There's no rush. There's no, you know, so. But that's what most marketers do, is they make you feel the fear, act out of fear. And when marketers are doing this, and by marketers, I mean you and me, are you trying to build your business? Well, you are a marketer, okay? That's what I mean by marketer is us in our mode of expanding our business, selling services or products. So you are a marketer. You're one of the marketers I'm talking about. Now, hopefully you're doing it in a. In a kinder way, in a way that's uplifting humanity instead of pulling humanity down into more and more fear and scarcity and limitation. So the next time you see somebody say two spots left and they're emailing, you know, they're not asking you personally, but they're emailing their whole list. I hope you will either reply to them and ask them, hey, you know, it'd be great if you didn't use scarcity and limitation to market your services. You don't have to. If your services and products are something that I want and you explain them to me properly, show me why it might be beneficial for me, then I'll get it at my own time. And yes, if there is an actual start date to something, let me know what the start date is. But please don't motivate me out of fear to do something, because that's not required. Okay? Motivate me out of love, not out of fear. And by love, I don't mean hype it up and like, oh, my God, I'm drooling. And I can't help but buy this thing because it's the best thing in the whole world. I have to get this. No, that. Not out of love. Out of love for my own growth, right? Out of love for my own transformation. And maybe out of love for you, because I really enjoy your presence and I would like to take part in this program to hang out with you and to benefit from the transformation that you provide. But not out of fear. Okay? And if they don't reply or they disagree, then maybe you should leave their email list unsubscribe. Because do you want to support a business that only sees the possibility of motivating their audience out of fear? Right. So that's pretty much the entire message today. Actually, I wanted to share with you, but let me see. I have. I. Oh, another thing is. It's okay. I wanted to also share this idea, this analogy of popping corn popcorn. Okay. You're microwaving popcorn or just doesn't matter how you're cooking popcorn. You know, how popcorn, you know, kind of starts out very. A lot of popping happens, you know, and it's very exciting. And then towards the end of. Most of the kernels have been popped. At the end, you still get like a few pops here and there. Right. The question is, how long do you keep the fire going? Because if you keep the fire going, you'll be able to pop one or two more, but you'll possibly burn 20 or 30 kernels of corn. Is it worth it? And that's what the marketers are doing, is they're like, we're gonna keep the fire going. We're gonna send you a lot of promotional emails because we might just get one or two more sales out of this. And I don't. We don't care about you, the audience. We care about our own sales. We're using you for our profits. So we're going to keep the fire going, keep the promotions going, get a few more sales, even though it's alienating or annoying a bunch of people in our audience. Don't be like that, because you don't have to be like that. The reality is, if your offer is a good fit for your audience, it's like popcorn pop up. A lot of things happen. And if not a lot of corn is popping, you're just burning a lot of corn. You might pop a few. So it's really about the offer and the fit with the audience. It's not about how hard you push them to buy. Does that make sense? So don't burn your corn. Just pop up. Pop, pop, pop. And then when it gets down to very low, stop your promotions. Because they've seen it enough. I mean, the only exception, like I said, is if you actually have a program starting. Hey, like, I just sent an email today, starts tomorrow. My course on book creation. If you don't haven't signed up, you might want to, you know, but hopefully you know that you can buy the recordings later. You don't have to sign up. So out of love and out of awareness. Yes. Your audience needs to be aware of what you're offering that's part of your problem. Some of you are like, well, you don't tell your audience once a month. Have you told your audience this month that your services are available? Okay, if not, they just think that you like to post things on Facebook. That's all they think you do all day. You like to post, you like to write articles and you like to post videos on Facebook. That's all you do. No, you also sell something. You sell services, you sell products. Well, when was the last time they found out about that? Once a month is a nice rhythm. So please do that once a month. But you don't have to do it like, you know, three times a week, like some marketers do it. Right? So, and the last thing is, when I post the article to this video later, I will give you some more details on how I launch things. But basically, I send two to three emails. That's it. To launch any particular course. Two to three. I mean, most marketers send two to three every week for weeks on end to sell something. I sell, I send two to three, period. One email to announce that it's available and then one email at the end when the course is starting, and then maybe one email in the middle. If it's selling really well. And I want to make sure that people who haven't heard about it hear about it. But if after the first email, if after the first promotion, something isn't selling, it's a pretty good sign that it's not a good fit for the audience, the offer is not the right fit for the audience, or you don't have a large enough audience. You need to focus on audience building some more. That could be. Or it could be that you haven't done enough fan interviews or you haven't understand your. You don't understand your audience well enough to know what to create for them. So it's not about forcing it down their throats, it's about testing it. If it pops very naturally, then it's a good offer. If it doesn't pop very naturally, maybe you send one more email, maybe you send one more promotion on social media. But that's it. That's it. It's something that's meant to be. That's a good a welcome to your audience. An offer that is well loved will have its own life. Have its own life. It doesn't have to be pushed. So I hope this is helpful and as always, I'm open to your questions and comments. And remember, we don't have to send those emails. Two spots left. What about the other 800 people who can't sign up, they should feel bad. Well, if you make them feel bad, that's the feeling they have. And actually, I'll say one more thing. Part of the reason marketers make you feel bad, oh, you better sign up. Two spots left. Even though if there's only two spots left and 800 people getting the email, or a thousand or 80,000 getting the email, the reason why they want to make you feel bad is because they want to control you. Do you want to be controlled by marketers? If you don't want to be controlled, be very aware of when they are making you feel bad. They're making you feel scarce. They're making you feel afraid that if you don't sign up, then you will miss out. They're making you doubt yourself about what you what, your own, your own decision process. You better sign up now. So I'm going to, you know, give you all these amazing bonuses. Marketers are trying to control you. Do you want to be controlled? Well, hopefully yes. You want to be controlled by your own free will and by your own higher self. That's what you want to be controlled by. Not by someone else's manipulation of you, which happens every single day. Look at your emails, look at your newsletters right now. They are trying to control you. They are trying to manipulate you. If you feel any negativity, okay, like if you feel either any negativity, scarcity, fear of missing out, that's a big sign. And also if you feel like drooling, like, if you feel like, oh my God, this thing is like the best thing since sliced bread, you should be very careful also, because that is almost certainly not true. They are using hype, right? How many of a hundred buyers of this thing, how many fulfill the promise of the sales page of the sales email? Two. Five out of a hundred. If they're lucky, maybe 10 to 15 out of 100. Well, what about the 80, 85 others who bought the program who didn't get the experience that's being sold in the sales email? This is why I try not to use Hype, my latest course. For example, you may notice I sell it by saying, hey, come and learn how I do my own books, not join this program so that you will be able to write a best seller in. You know, all this BS that's being happening in your inbox right now from a lot from most of the businesses out there, right? So be aware, be conscious of how you are being manipulated in your feelings as you read emails, as you look at videos, as you look at sales pages, as you consider a program or an offering, how, what are, what emotions are they bringing you through? And realize that if it is either negative or if it's drooling, like this is the best thing ever, you are being manipulated and they are overcompensating for their desperation and their fear. They're overcompensating. And so it's like everybody's losing. Everybody is losing. They are losing because they are using, they are feed, they're basically, they're letting their hungry ghost, their inner hungry ghost take over. Please Google hungry ghost, okay? This is a real thing. It's a spiritual phenomenon. And most of most people, most of us, when we have the hungry ghost within us, don't even realize that's what's taking over at the moment. But so much of marketing is hungry ghost driven, okay? And then they're turning you into a hungry ghost by having you feel the fear of missing out or the drooling, the hype, you know that this is the best thing in the world. So let's take the middle way, you know, let's kind of come to a balance. Let's come to a groundedness of emotions and a free will and make decisions from the higher self. Make decisions in a calm way, not in a oh my God, I gotta sign up now kind of way. So as a consumer, as a buyer, as someone who spends money, you have the power to either vote for those kinds of marketing, you give them money because you're desperate and you're like, well, I have to. This is the best thing ever. You've just, you're feeding your hungry ghosts and you're feeding theirs as well. You don't have to. You have an alternative. Please, please know that you have an alternative. They are not the only program. They are not the only product. There are so many out there. Ask me, ask me what other programs are out there, okay? And I will let you know and I will help you out to find the right program, to find the right coach, to find the right product or service to help you, to move you forward in your life, health, wealth, relationships, whatever it is you're trying to grow, okay? There are healthier alternatives that actually fulfill the promise because they don't use hyped up promises. So I hope this is helpful and thanks for those who were able to join me here. Captain and Yule and Michelle and Jean, thank you so much. And Jean just wrote a comment here about how she's about to write an email to her previous. Oh, and if you only have a few spots left, I should say, and I'm gonna say a lot more in the article that I post later about this, but yeah, sometimes I do have a few spots left, but I don't send the email out to everybody because like I said, two spots left, five spots, 10 spots. It's going out to 100 or 500, 5,000 people. How do other people feel? They just feel bad, that's all. So don't do that. Instead, send it specifically. I send it if I have two spots left. Gene, you will hear about it. You'll, you know, Michelle Yule, Captain, you guys will hear about it. You know, like, I will send it very specifically to a few people, you know, you know, respectfully, yes, maybe there are two spots left. And I will, I will, I will send it out to five people, okay, who are basically, look at the thing that you are selling. What's one level below that? Send it to the people specifically a few people who bought that level. So if you're bought, you were selling one to one, send the two spots left to five of, specifically five of the people who bought your group program. You're selling a group program. Send, you know, five spots left. Send it to specifically to 7 to 10 of the people who bought your do it yourself product. Your, you know, your standalone product. You're selling a standalone product. You would like to sell 10 more. Send, you know, maybe that at that point sent me a standalone product. There's no 10 spots left. That's ridiculous. You can sell a thousand. So send it out to your whole list. But when there really are a few spots left, send it out to the level below. In terms of your ladder of offerings, send it to the level below. But specifically, if two spots left. Hey, Gene, please let me know by Monday. Please let me know by tomorrow. I'm inviting you first before I invite some others. So please let me know as soon as possible by tomorrow if at all possible. If you want one of the two spots. And of course, I'm only going to send it to people that I think honestly might, I feel are ready for it and might actually want to do it. Does that make sense? So don't send it out to your list, send it out just to specific people. Now if you are out of time, let's say, and you, you have to send it out to your list, then do it this way. There are only five spots left of the workshop. If you would like to join us for this instance, please sign up here. If you can't join us or the spots are filled. There will be the next one in January or something like that. Let them know. So you can choose either to come to the one that starts tomorrow, it starts next week, or come to the one in January. It's very generous. And you might be afraid. Of course, there's your fear. Your hungry ghost is saying, but wait, but George, George, they're gonna just say, I'm the one in January. No, the people who actually want help now will say, good, it's starting tomorrow. Good, it's starting next week. Good, I'm so glad I don't have to wait till January. I don't have to wait till next month. See, so many of us are under the impression that we have to create scarcity because otherwise people won't do anything. People will just do something the next time. But if you let people know what the rhythm is, you give it up to them, you leave it up to the universe, you leave it up to their free will. We need to practice giving others the opportunity to exercise their free will. And you know what, if they just keep delaying and procrastinating and there's never sign up because they always think, I'll sign up for the next one. It's not your fault, and it's not even your responsibility to make them, to force them to sign up with all kinds of scarcity and hype tactics, which is what the marketers teach us to do. Right? You see what I mean? So, and surrender, that's the ultimate spiritual exercise. And I think business is really just a stage for spiritual exercise. Okay, I'm sharing my personal beliefs here, and some of you don't believe that, but that's it. You know, we, we will always be taken care of. Do you believe that you're going to be taken care of? That is the essential question that allows you to step out of scarcity and into abundance and into generosity and into true sustainability for your business, for your audience. Building, for your brand. Building is. Do you believe you will be taken care of? No matter what? You can't see when the next client is coming around. Do you believe you'll be taken care of? Oh, you need to return to that belief of yours, however you return, how do you return to your belief of abundance? Do you have a practice? Do you meditate? Do you journal? Do you dance? Do you go talk to a friend? Do you go to church? Do you listen to music? Spiritually inspiring music? How do you return to the feeling of abundance and the feeling of understanding that, yes, I will, no matter what happens, I will be taken care of. Do you believe that that is the essential question and no other marketer, marketing teacher is probably not no other. I hope more business teachers and marketing teachers are suggesting that question first. You know that's the essential question before you decide what kind of marketing tactics you're going to use. Do you believe that you're going to be okay no matter what? And do you believe that doing the right thing is always the right thing because you're going to be taken care of? So why not do the right thing? Oh, I don't know when the next five people are going to come to my workshop. It's okay. You do your work of announcing it in a very kind way, in a non scarcity way and let the universe take care of the rest. You know, let people make their own decision. And guess what? If people aren't signing up, it's not them and it's not you. It's the offer. You haven't made the offer interesting enough. That's the work that you also need to do. Besides the abundance work inside the work of can you. Can I make this offer more interesting Sounding not hype, but is it. Is it really what people want? Is it really what people want? If people want something and you offer it, all you need to do is whisper. You don't even need to say what the deadline is. Hey, I've got this thing now. Exactly what you're looking. Oh my God. That's exactly what I'm looking for. And if you believe you can fulfill the promises and you're not using hype, gosh, that's it. So anyway, that's all I want to say for today. Thanks for your comments and questions. So thanks Alexandra Alexander for joining and Molly as well. And Molly wrote so that I just opened a membership site for $10 with founding members. The only FOMO I'm using is the. The cost will go up to $27 once I have a few months of content established. It feels more comfortable to charge less while I'm getting started. Give everyone opportunity to get in on a great deal. Molly, that's a great point. You know, I don't think that's. I don't. Yeah, you can, you can, you can frame it as fomo, which I hope you don't. Or you can frame it as. I'm thanking the founding members. As a founding member, I want to give you a gift of being able to join the program at $10 a month, which is an amazing deal. And Molly, you may want to consider increasing that price point. Maybe Maybe not, but yeah. So instead of like, oh, it's going to go up to 27 before you know it, or buy this time, just say, hey, if you want to be, be a founding member, that's great. If not, then please join us at, you know, $27 a month. 30. Don't. The other thing I'll say is you don't. You don't have to use psychological pricing. 27, just use 30. Okay, look up psychological pricing. That's another way of manipulating and controlling people, which we don't need to do. We don't need to do it. You'll get a few more sales with psychological pricing, but it also creates skepticism and yeah, some off feeling of offness. 27. 47, 97. Those are off. This feels off. Why? Oh, it's because they're trying to manipulate you. Did you know that the 27s, 47s, 45. 95. Whatever. Weird number. Now I make my numbers even. $60. $45. Now the fives are more acceptable. 95 is questionable because. Tell me 100. The reason why it's the 27s. 47s is because they're short circuiting your decision making process about budgeting. Because 97. Oh, sounds beautiful. Amazing. Oh, no, no, it's 100. Oh, yeah, 100. I can kind of ease more easily, instinctualize that for my budget. Do I have $100 in my budget? Okay, right. 997. Effing ridiculous. Let's stop that. I should make another whole video on that, right? It is a manipulation, plain and simple. A lot of you don't realize that. And so, so a lot of you are parroting, parroting the manipulation that's happening. So no need for that, right? No need for that. So, Molly, thanks for asking your question. And yeah, just gift people. It's amazing. $10 founding membership. You know it's amazing, right? It's great. All right, everybody, have a great rest of your day. And remember, you are taken care of always. And this path of building an authentic business is a long term path. Keep doing the right thing. Keep on offering something that feels so good to you and keep on getting to know your audience so you can know what to offer that they would want. Blessings be well.