Do you want to learn about FOMO marketing and how you can use it to boost revenue?
Marketers have been leveraging FOMO for a long time to alter consumer behavior and achieve their desired results. Yet there is little to no knowledge about fear of missing out marketing or how to use it to increase eCommerce sales.
But there’s nothing to worry about because in this FOMO marketing guide, we will explain what FOMO means, what FOMO marketing is, and why it is so effective.
In the end, we will share FOMO marketing strategies and FOMO marketing examples so you can apply FOMO tactics in your marketing campaigns and enjoy the results yourself!
Here’s a table of contents for easy navigation:
- What is FOMO?
- What is FOMO Marketing?
- Why Use FOMO Marketing?
- FOMO Marketing Strategies
- Best FOMO Marketing Examples
What is FOMO?
“FOMO” stands for the fear of missing out, a psychological trigger humans can’t help responding to.
According to a study published in Computers in Human Behavior, FOMO is
“a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.”
It is a psychological phenomenon characterized by the fear or anxiety of being left out of exciting or rewarding experiences. It stems from the innate desire to participate in social activities, events, or opportunities others enjoy.
Now let’s read about fear of missing out marketing.
What is FOMO Marketing?
FOMO marketing capitalizes on people’s fear of missing out to drive consumer engagement, urgency, and action. It typically includes messaging that triggers your target audience’s innate fear of missing out to make them more likely to convert.
By creating a sense of exclusivity, scarcity, and time-limited opportunities, FOMO marketing taps into the emotional response triggered by the potential loss of a valuable experience.
This marketing technique has proven highly effective because it captures attention, creates a sense of urgency, and compels consumers to take immediate action.
Why Use FOMO Marketing?
Let’s look at some FOMO statistics, as that’ll help you understand why FOMO marketing campaigns are so effective, especially with certain demographics.
A lot of data suggests that FOMO is most prevalent among millennials. Around 69% of millennials experience the phenomenon, and according to Strategy Online, 60% of millennials make impulsive purchases because of FOMO. In other words, they’ll buy something just because they feel they might miss out.
However, it’s not just millennials who suffer from FOMO. According to other data, more than half of people using social networks suffer from FOMO.
With more than 3 billion active social media users worldwide, according to We are Social, that’s a huge potential audience.
The bottom line: FOMO marketing is essential, no matter what age group or location you’re targeting.
FOMO Marketing Strategies
Let’s learn how to create FOMO in marketing by looking at the following FOMO marketing strategies.
Limited-Time Offers and Flash Sales
By offering time-limited discounts, promotions, or deals, businesses create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate purchase decisions.
Recommended Reading: 23 Stunning Sales Promotion Examples To Crush Your Sales
Exclusive Access and VIP Memberships
Providing exclusive access to special events, products, or content for loyal customers or members builds a sense of exclusivity and fosters customer loyalty.
Recommended Reading: What is a Membership Website? (7 Examples of Successful Membership Websites)
User-Generated Content and Social Proof
Showcasing real customer experiences and testimonials through user-generated content creates social proof and increases trust, thereby fueling FOMO.
Recommended Reading: 30+ Proven Ways to Use Social Proof to Increase Your Conversions (Updated)
Recommended Reading: 18 Best Social Proof Software Tools to Boost Sales
Influencer Partnerships and Collaborations
Collaborating with influencers or industry experts to promote products or events can amplify FOMO by leveraging their authority and reach.
Recommended Reading: Win Big at Influencer Marketing: An Ultimate Guide for Beginners
Best FOMO Marketing Examples
Now that we have gone through the FOMO meaning, FOMO marketing meaning, and strategies, it’s time to look at some FOMO marketing examples to see FOMO in action.
1. Show That People Are Buying
Some of the most effective FOMO marketing techniques trigger the feeling without even making a sales pitch.
These days, it’s not unusual to see live information on sales when you visit a website, as in this FOMO marketing example from SeedProd:
This shows a recent purchaser’s first name and location, so it’s clear it’s a real person. If visitors to your site know other people are buying, they’ll also want to buy.
SeedProd is using TrustPulse social proof notifications to create these popups.
Be sure to check out our guides on the best WooCommerce plugins and best Shopify apps for more useful tools like this.
Related ContentHow to Use a Recent Sales Popup to Boost Your Revenue
2. Display Best Selling or Top Rated Items
When website visitors are able to see what your best-selling or top-rated products are, it will give them a healthy dose of FOMO too. After all, when you see a cool product that other people are buying, you’ll want it for yourself.
So, be sure to display the best-selling or top-rated items prominently on your website. Here’s how the cosmetics company ColorPop does it:
You can easily display your best-selling or top-rated products in the same way with SeedProd.
SeedProd is the best drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress, and it comes with custom WooCommerce blocks. You can choose from a standard products grid, best-selling products, top-rated products, sale products, and more. Simply drag the product block and drop it onto your page.
You can even create a custom WooCommerce checkout page with a showcase of best-selling products. This is a great way to increase your average order value.
3. Highlight Missed Opportunities in Your Messaging
One site that’s great at using these FOMO tactics is Booking.com, which has multiple examples of FOMO on every page. In this tip, we’re focusing on ramping up FOMO by showing that visitors have actually missed out on a great deal.
Booking.com shows this with messaging showing when the property you’re looking at is sold out in big red letters:
As we move forward, you will see more FOMO marketing examples from Booking.com.
4. Show Stock Levels
Scarcity is a big component of FOMO marketing because if something’s about to run out, there’s a huge incentive to get it now. There are many ways to highlight scarcity.
For example, if you’re running an online store, you can show stock levels, as Amazon does:
Or, if you’re in the travel business, you could show the number of spaces left, as Booking.com does:
And you can ramp up the FOMO advertising with “while stocks last” messaging, that suggests that your product or service is about to run out or disappear:
For more inspiration, check out our article on scarcity examples.
5. Make Your Visitors Watch the Clock
When thinking about how to create FOMO, you can also look into urgency in marketing. It’s another tactic that triggers loss aversion, a fancy term for FOMO. If your visitors think they’ll miss out by running out of time, they’re more likely to reach for their virtual wallets and commit to a purchase.
You can do this by showing a countdown timer or even with messaging about when deals end, like in this FOMO marketing example on Amazon:
Or by offering different discount levels on different days, like the Chemical Guys:
Or by creating a countdown popup like this one:
Read How to Create Urgency in Marketing for more help implementing this tactic.
6. Stir Their Competitive Spirit
Not only do we not like missing out, but we hate the thought that others might get something great before we do. That’s why good FOMO marketing campaigns play on this feeling to inspire action. Here are a couple of examples.
Booking.com shows how many people are viewing a property. The underlying message is that if you don’t move fast, you’ll end up missing out:
Or you could show the number of people who’ve already taken a deal, as Amazon does:
If you’re in the software business, you could even show the number of users. Software companies often use FOMO with beta trials, where accepting limited numbers makes those few spaces seem very desirable.
7. Offer a One-Shot Deal With Exit-Intent®
OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent Technology® is a great way to deliver FOMO marketing campaigns. This powerful feature detects when people are about to leave your site and triggers a campaign just before they do.
It’s proven to work:
- Rich Page used exit-intent to boost conversions by 316%
- Ryan Robinson engineered a 500% increase in subscribers with exit-intent
- Podcast Insights combined exit-intent with our onsite retargeting feature to get a 1099% boost in conversions
To use exit-intent for FOMO marketing, follow our instructions for creating your first campaign, and create your discount offer. Enable exit-intent in the display rules section of the OptinMonster campaign builder:
Enable an additional display rule to specify which visitors should see the campaign. For example, you can show the campaign only to visitors on certain pages with page-level targeting.
8. Limit Free Shipping
Did you know that around 90% of shoppers list free shipping as their prime incentive for buying online? That’s one reason why FOMO marketing campaigns that limit free shipping can be really effective.
C’mon, we’ve all bought something extra on Amazon to get free delivery, haven’t we? If people feel they’ll miss out on free shipping by not making a purchase, they’ll likely make it, especially if the additional expenditure is relatively small.
Let your customers know how much more they have to spend to get free shipping, or simply place a banner at the top of your page, showing the threshold for obtaining that benefit. You can easily do this with one of OptinMonster’s floating bar campaigns.
Pro TipDid you know you can use the same floating bar campaigns to create custom alerts for your customers? Learn why you to create a website alert banner to keep your customers well-informed.
9. Be Explicit about FOMO
You don’t have to hide the fact that you’re using FOMO marketing. You can come right out and say it, as Rue La La does in this campaign:
You don’t have to hide the fact that you’re using FOMO marketing. You can come right out and say it, as Rue La La does in this FOMO marketing example:
10. Let Your Content Expire
As a business, a lot of your content marketing strategy is about creating content that’ll stick around so you can use it to build authority, get inbound links, improve your search ranking, and win customers.
But there’s another way to pique visitors’ interest by using a FOMO marketing tactic: expiring content. Expiring content mixes urgency, scarcity, and exclusivity to ramp up that FOMO vibe.
Snapchat is the ultimate example of expiring content. One of the reasons Snapchat is so successful, and why teenagers can never leave their phones, is because if you don’t see the content while it’s there, you’ll lose your chance forever.
And here’s a thought: those early Snapchat users (the site launched in 2011) will soon be in their 20s, and they’ve grown up with this FOMO mindset.
Software companies use this same principle when they’re about to change their pricing plans, giving users an option to lock in the old price before it’s too late. Here’s an example from Iconica:
11. Use a Content Upgrade
While we’re on the subject of content, an opt-in content upgrade is a great FOMO marketing technique. That’s because gating content means there’s scarcity in our minds at least, and scarcity triggers FOMO.
You can use OptinMonster to gate content with our Content Lock feature to make visitors want your content upgrades.
OptinMonster customers have used content upgrades to boost conversions by 150% and increase customer retention by 72%.
To implement this, use your blog posts as content upgrades or try one of these ideas.
12. Trigger FOMO with Images
People respond to visuals, so when creating FOMO marketing campaigns, it’s essential to get the images right. An excellent FOMO marketing example comes from Express, which offers a rewards program.
As Stephan Brady points out, along with the “don’t miss out” messaging, the background image suggests that opting in will ensure you have a great time, which means you’re missing the party if you don’t opt-in.
To find the right images for your FOMO marketing campaigns, check out our guide to finding free images online.
13. Make Your Offer Exclusive
There’s nothing to trigger FOMO like exclusivity. As human beings, we love the thought of getting our hands on an opportunity very few people have. Don’t believe us? Check out any airport boarding gate and see how happy the people with priority access are.
Or think about how many people have signed up for Amazon Prime (more than 100 million!) to get deals other Amazon shoppers can’t get.
While those are great FOMO marketing examples, you can also use exclusivity by creating a limited-edition product or service. In the example below, Heinz combines this with time-based scarcity to make a compelling FOMO marketing offer:
14. Show Social Proof
Social proof is a highly effective marketing tactic, and not just for FOMO marketing campaigns. That’s because, besides the FOMO factor, social proof ties into our need to be part of a group.
If other people like us are sharing, engaging, or buying, we want to do it too, so we’ll feel a sense of belonging and won’t miss out.
The best way to leverage the power of social proof is by using TrustPulse. TrustPulse is a social proof software that can instantly increase site conversion rate by up to 15% by showing off real-time, verified customer activity right on your page in a little popup bubble:
TrustPulse also lets you show “On Fire” notifications that are great for leveraging FOMO on landing pages and checkouts:
Get Started for FREEYou can get started with TrustPulse for free!
You can also use social proof by showing the number of customer reviews a product has:
Or by showing huge numbers of people you’ve helped, as we do on our own site:
To use social proof as a FOMO marketing tactic, check out these social proof tips and examples.
15. Promote Experiences
Another way to use FOMO tactics is to let your users help. Using user-generated content (UGC) lets visitors and potential customers vicariously share in the experience of using your products and services, so they want to do it too. After all, real proof from real people is going to be much more compelling than any of your FOMO advertising campaigns.
Here’s an example of UGC from Wayfair, under the #wayfairathome social media hashtag:
And instead of leaving all of your UGC on social media, you can seamlessly integrate it into your website using a plugin like Smash Balloon.
With Smash Balloon’s Instagram Feed Pro, you can easily embed an Instagram hashtag feed anywhere on your site to showcase UGC.
It’s super simple to set up and you can completely customize your feed. You can choose from different layouts, design the feed to match your brand, hide or show likes and comments, highlight specific posts, and more.
Check out this guide on how to add an Instagram hashtag feed to WordPress for more details.
16. Offer Rewards for Early Decisions
Giving a freebie is a good way to attract customers. However, you can make it even more effective by limiting that freebie. Offline, you see this tactic when stores offer a gift or special discount to the first 100 customers, and that usually makes hundreds of people line up.
Online, you can follow the example of Huawei, and offer a gift for the first 100 purchasers:
17. Boost FOMO Marketing with Email
Email marketing remains a great way to reach your customers. Our email marketing statistics roundup shows around 90% of people use it. So it’s an excellent tool for FOMO marketing campaigns.
You can effectively use email marketing with any other FOMO marketing examples we’ve listed. For example, you can send emails to:
- Let subscribers know about exclusive deals or rewards
- Tell them when items they’ve saved are about to run out
- Remind them about items in their shopping cart with cart abandonment messages
You can also combine FOMO email messaging with onsite retargeting to offer subscribers who follow a link a special deal via a popup marketing campaign.
Here’s how you can enable onsite behavioral retargeting with OptinMonster.
Recommended Reading: How to Grow Your Email List: 23 Proven and Simple Ways
That’s it! Now you can use these easy-to-implement FOMO marketing examples to get more FOMO sales from visitors and customers. Next, see how to boost sales on Shopify, and to increase average order value with upselling examples.
And follow us on YouTube,Facebook, and Twitter for more marketing tips and tricks and in-depth guides.
FOMO Marketing FAQs
1. What is FOMO in marketing?
FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, in marketing refers to a strategy designed to evoke anxiety in consumers that others are enjoying experiences or possessing products that they are not, potentially leading to a feeling of missing out. This tactic encourages consumers to make quicker decisions to purchase, subscribe, or engage with a product or service to avoid the feeling of being left out.
2. How to create FOMO in marketing?
To create FOMO in marketing, you can:
- Limited Time Offers: Promote products or services as time-sensitive to create urgency.
- Exclusive Content or Products: Offer special editions or early access to products for a select group of customers.
- Social Proof: Use testimonials, user reviews, and social media shares to show how others are benefiting from your offerings.
- Countdown Timers: Include these in your promotions to remind customers of dwindling time to act.
- Highlight Popularity: Show how popular an item is, indicating high demand and potential sell-out risk.
3. How to use FOMO in marketing?
To effectively use FOMO in marketing:
- Segment Your Audience: Tailor your messages to different segments to make them more personal and relevant.
- Leverage Social Media: Use platforms where your audience is active to share user-generated content, testimonials, and live events.
- Email Campaigns: Send targeted emails highlighting limited offers, exclusive deals, and last chances.
- Remarketing: Remind visitors who left your site without purchasing about what they’re potentially missing out on.
4. Is FOMO marketing ethical?
FOMO marketing, or Fear of Missing Out marketing walks a fine line ethically. When used responsibly, it can be a powerful and legitimate marketing strategy. However, it becomes unethical if it deliberately misleads consumers, creates unnecessary anxiety, or exploits vulnerable individuals. Marketers need to ensure their FOMO tactics are truthful and not manipulative, maintaining transparency and integrity in their campaigns.
What does FOMO stand for in business?
In business, FOMO stands for “Fear of Missing Out.” It refers to the strategy of leveraging consumers’ fears of missing out on benefits, experiences, or products that others have. This concept is used to drive decisions and actions like purchases, subscriptions, and participation in events.
5. What is FOMO in retail?
In retail, FOMO is used to drive immediate sales by creating a sense of urgency and scarcity around products. Retailers may implement FOMO through flash sales, limited-edition products, or exclusive offers that are only available for a short period. This strategy helps to increase foot traffic in stores or clicks online by encouraging consumers to act quickly to avoid missing out.
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