[HN Gopher] Sales happen when buyers fear missing out
___________________________________________________________________
Sales happen when buyers fear missing out
Author : etrvic
Score : 156 points
Date : 2024-06-15 06:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tidyfirst.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tidyfirst.substack.com)
| Quinzel wrote:
| This is just the scarcity principle and nothing new.
| jmacd wrote:
| I've always thought of scarcity and FOMO as different things,
| at least from a product marketing standpoint.
|
| Scarcity: There isn't much of this thing, so I need to compete
| to get it. I will prioritize it more highly. There is a scale
| of desire for this thing. If I believe I need it in the future
| rather than now, I may defer.
|
| FOMO: 0 or 1. I am going to miss out on this. Is it important
| to me? If it is, I will prioritize all my resources to get it
| now. If I believe I need it in the future, I will act now.
| andenacitelli wrote:
| Totally agree. Maybe if OP phrased it as "Urgency" instead of
| "Scarcity", I would have agreed. But these are two distinct
| concepts that just happen to cause similar outcomes. Almost
| similar to a concept of an "incorrect" or "false" abstraction
| in SWE land.
| Quinzel wrote:
| I think urgency and scarcity are different sides to the
| same coin.
| EGreg wrote:
| I can tell you that most of the time, buyers don't fear missing
| out. Most buyers have a lot of options, and also busy lives.
|
| Here are things that can _actually_ make buyers buy:
| 1. Social Proof / Testimonials 2. Friends / Peer Pressure
| 3. Free Trial + Structure, eg courses 4. Access to social
| capital (eg celebs) 5. Matchmaking to what they need (eg
| dating) 6. Time and Data Entry Investment (quizzes,
| meetings) 7. Relationships and access to Community
|
| Now, there _are_ a form of micro-FOMO called Impulse Buy and
| Group Deals. But they are organically motivated by 1 ( _social
| proof_ of timely notifications) 2 (group deal coming together
| because of _friends_ acting) and 6 (having invested time in the
| search, now they will either shit or get off the pot, cause their
| friends are _going_ to that thing).
|
| I've spent 12 years building community software that automates
| all this, and now started adding AI to it.
|
| People underestimate the role of GROUP PSYCHOLOGY in affecting
| what people do. That is why I have nearly gone broke (having
| never taken VC) building open source community software that is
| far more healthy and responsible. Here is the societal issues it
| solves:
|
| https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
| jschveibinz wrote:
| Thanks for the info!
| derefr wrote:
| Okay, but if a person has already decided that they "want" a
| particular product (probably due to the other effects you
| describe), to the point that they have gone to an e-commerce
| website and added the product to their shopping cart -- but
| they haven't decided to _buy_ it _at that moment_ , i.e.
| haven't checked that cart out yet, even though they've come
| back to the site several times since then to check on both
| ongoing sales, and the status of that cart... then what aspect
| of consumer psychology make them ultimately decide at some
| point to check out the cart with the item in it? And
| alternately, what is it that makes them ultimately decide to
| abandon the cart / remove the item from the cart?
|
| FOMO _is_ a good explanation for this, I think. Personally,
| there 'll be times when the only reason I'm buying something
| _now_ -- rather than postponing the purchase indefinitely -- is
| that if I _don 't_, it's going to be out-of-stock for who-
| knows-how-long. My opportunity to _choose_ to buy it is going
| to be taken away, and I literally fear missing out on the
| ability to make the purchase. (See Amazon 's "only N left" note
| under some items.)
|
| Also, sometimes, the item _will_ suddenly go out-of-stock
| without any clear date for resupply -- leaving me sad that I
| "dallied" on my choice to buy it and so _did_ "miss out." If
| such an item comes back _in_ stock, I 'll usually immediately
| buy it, because I now realize I was taking its continued
| availability for granted, but no longer can -- and so "need" to
| get it before it goes out-of-stock again.
| EGreg wrote:
| There is a form of FOMO that can work when taught to...
|
| Put expiration timers on ads!
|
| Like an elevator ad.
|
| People pay more attention when they know the ad will be gone
| soon, so they better click.
|
| The only thing is that clicks don't necessarily convert to
| results. So this is far better to be done for CPM ads and
| display ads that rotate.
|
| Which platforms still offer CPM?
|
| PS: combine with limited classes "filling up" during the ad
| so the FOMO is legit at least
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think FOMO and the first two items in your list may be the
| same thing.
|
| People fear missing out on the latest thing that everyone else
| is doing.
| EGreg wrote:
| The main point is YOU aren't the one scaring them with this
| "fear". It is organic elements coming from their social
| circle.
|
| Testimonials and Social Proof doesnt need to instill any
| fear. They instill comfort. The opportunity can be available
| indefinitely.
|
| Peer pressure on the other hand instills discomfort, that
| would resolve with making a small purchase, but again it is
| coming from the friends.
|
| This is examples of NETWORK EFFECTS. They also help with
| lock-in. Keep this in mind: people continue to pay for
| something when
|
| 1) They have a problem
|
| 2) Your product can solve it
|
| 3) Every week, it costs less to pay for your product
| (automatically) than solving the problem themselves (eg
| forking your software)
| gcanyon wrote:
| I can directly contradict this from my time managing the
| booking (last step) page on agoda.com. One of the first things
| I tried was putting a countdown timer on the page: "we are
| holding this booking for you for five minutes. After that we'll
| release it back into inventory" That produced an immediate ~1%
| jump in bookings.
| EGreg wrote:
| Okay, I stand corrected. Your measurements showed an entire
| 1% effect!
| gcanyon wrote:
| No other experiment in the year before or after did close
| to as well. So yeah, a whole 1%. :-)
| cwillu wrote:
| Presumably that was an increase like "conversions on carts
| older than 5 minutes went from 5% to 6%", not "5% to 5.05%"?
| punnerud wrote:
| Most sales, especially within IT, is about trust.
|
| Scaring a customer into buying with "fear of missing out" and you
| risk push them even longer away.
| kurthr wrote:
| They key with many of these manipulative sales techniques is
| that they are on rare purchases for which the buyer has little
| knowledge. Most people don't buy homes, cars, mattresses, with
| any regularity so whatever badwill you generate will be
| irrelevant 10-20 years down the line and likely born by a
| different seller.
|
| Like healthcare, it's hard to treat individual private buyers
| as an efficient market. Housing has become more like NFTs and
| memestonks (It can only go up!)... which is true until it isn't
| and everything goes down. Supporting prices through leverage
| and regulatory control is now so ingrained that it's hard to do
| price discovery. (edit: strangely, like memecoins you can
| actually overbuild a lot of housing like in China and keep
| prices going up for up to a decade out of sheer buyer momentum)
| jameshart wrote:
| Business customers are extremely conservative. They are _fine_
| with missing out. They have fear of getting in, not fear of
| missing out.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >Most sales, especially within IT, is about trust.
|
| Our CIO ordered us to switch away from VMware when Broadcom
| made changes to the licenses. We are a mid-sized company with
| 1500+ employees. If I remember correctly, Broadcom anticipated
| some customers would switch away, but they could still profit
| more from their larger customers.
|
| My friend works at a bank. They switched from Azure to Google
| Cloud because Microsoft's prices "didn't make sense" to them.
|
| trust is a key in IT.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Another anecdote to this:
|
| Where I work currently they won't move off AWS because the
| relationship is really good and the support has been good (so
| I've been told) and they have had the relationship for quite
| some time so even though we could get better pricing with GCP
| or switching some things to more specialized yet reliable
| vendors we default to AWS for almost everything because the
| relationship is seen as solid and trustworthy with history to
| back it up
|
| Doesn't mean we don't get quotes from other providers in
| negotiations at contract renewal time and use frameworks /
| technologies that allow us to switch vendors pretty easily if
| we needed and I know there is an upper limit here. However
| it's also one of those "we pay a little more for peace of
| mind and familiarity" things, so it's with some (relatively
| marginal) higher cost
| neuronic wrote:
| Hmm, I worked for a large e-commerce company and they basically
| faked the red hot "Only 5 items left!" warnings to drive sales
| with technical mumbo jumbo in the small print.
|
| Did not seem to negatively impact their sales after all...
| probably same mechanics on Booking.com etc. with hotel rooms.
| punnerud wrote:
| That is not within IT, and more into commerce. Booking.com
| already have the trust, and the customers can be scared with
| the FOMO
| Puts wrote:
| Whenever I negotiate prices with SaaS companies they give you a
| price and then they say this offer is valid x weeks - and
| "after that we cant guarantee the price". And I always reply
| the same thing, "I'm in no hurry - let's see what the price is
| next time. If it differs greatly then I can not trust you, and
| it's better to find out now than in two years when we are
| locked in to your product."
| GordonS wrote:
| There isn't necessarily any malice intended; nobody is going
| to give you a price and honour it _forever_. Any quotes I do
| in my micro-ISV are valid for 1 month - not because I 'm
| likely to change the price, but simply because I have no
| control over things like currency exchange rates and energy
| prices.
|
| But, I certainly don't use it to pressure the customer.
| dahart wrote:
| > If it differs greatly then I can not trust you
|
| This is probably a bad assumption. A change in the offer
| price does not reflect on their trustworthiness. You're also
| tricking yourself because someone wanting to lock you in down
| the road and raise the price won't do it up front, they'll do
| it later.
|
| An offer price can change due to market conditions. The
| statement that price can't be guaranteed is an optimistic
| speculation that sales or costs might jump, so you can buy
| now before their business increases and prices rise due to
| higher costs or demand. You can legitimately benefit if you
| buy before prices go up. You certainly can gamble that prices
| won't go up, but if they do and you waited, it doesn't mean
| the other party can't be trusted, it means you lost the bet.
|
| If you wait and get a higher price, that could even be a sign
| that the company is more trustworthy than if the offer
| doesn't change. But of course there's no guarantee. And
| ultimately there is no guarantee that when you buy a service
| on a limited time contract that you won't have prices jump
| later when you're 'locked in'. It would be quite silly to not
| expect the renewal price later to rise for a variety of
| reasons, and you should have contingencies in place and be
| willing, able, and ready to switch providers.
| Puts wrote:
| I think the context here is when you signed up for a trial
| and you have a sales person emailing you every single day,
| and by the end of the week they start using the "I can only
| guarantee this price" bullshit. It's just an aggressive
| sales person trying to pressure you.
|
| I don't know what companies you are working in, but if the
| service is deemed valuable enough really nobody cares about
| money as long as it's in the ballpark of what similar
| services costs. And When it comes to time, yes all projects
| starts with "we gonna start using this this week" but we
| also know it takes a year to roll out even the most basic
| tool in a medium sized organization so a couple of weeks
| here and there doesn't really make a difference either.
|
| All that matters is if the tool seems to solve your
| problems - and the price is not significantly different
| from the competitors and having a sales person bugging you
| every single day telling you you need to make the decision
| now because otherwise who knows what might happen to the
| price - honestly they can just go ** themselves. I make the
| decision when I'm ready, and if they are deciding to
| significantly jack up the price in between that period they
| are just making themself less trustworthy.
| dahart wrote:
| That's all fair. Sales people are pretty well known for
| skeezy tactics, some of the same stuff author was
| referring to with 'ads eww', they have an earned
| reputation that the nice sales people have to overcome. I
| guess one upside to this is untrustworthy sales people
| don't necessarily reflect on the trustworthiness of the
| business they work for. The only way to really know if
| you'll get jacked once locked in is to buy and see what
| happens, or have a longer term contract.
|
| To your point perhaps, one thing large organizations
| value above most things is predictable cost. They
| actually don't want usage based pricing because it's
| unpredictable and could spike, even if the usage based
| cost is significantly lower on average.
|
| I tried marketing usage based pricing to companies for
| too long before realizing that it was a disincentive
| working against me and that price didn't matter much.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I'm seeing house prices around me skyrocket in last couple on
| months - houses selling almost immediately at well above asking
| price (e.g. 200K above in multiple cases), and this despite
| already high prices and horrible affordability.
|
| I can only attribute this to FOMO.
| dmoy wrote:
| You may also be able to attribute it to a lack of supply, in
| that specific case
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or speculators and flippers, perhaps even foreign capital,
| buying up all available supply, because houses are financial
| instruments, not places to live.
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| You misunderstand cause and effect. They have become
| financial instruments _because_ there is insufficient
| supply for the demand.
|
| Unfortunately others with that level of economic ignorance
| tend to advocate for policies that fail to fix this and
| either 1) pick a few lucky winners and fuck everyone else
| over like rent control or 2) make things even more
| expensive by subsidizing house purchases or creating risk
| like the 2008 mortgages.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| If it was just supply (low) vs demand, then people logically
| would have bought earlier before prices went up.
|
| This seems like panic buying (FOMO) - people buying because
| prices are rising and they don't want to risk them to get
| worse, or maybe they see it as a perverse sign of value (like
| people buying momentum stocks).
| snowfield wrote:
| People pay for newsletters?
| kbuck wrote:
| I'm especially curious about which ones are earning "life-
| changing" money for their authors. I couldn't find an easy way
| to list Substack newsletters by subscriber count, though. (By
| revenue would be even better.)
| pryelluw wrote:
| Newsletters have been a very lucrative business for a very long
| time. The successful ones tend to be about business strategies
| and case studies. People will pay for actionable business
| information that they can copy, apply, and profit.
|
| Most digital newsletters are merely collections of online
| content or writings from one person doing things that don't
| have an earning potential for readers. That's why they don't
| tend to make any money.
| pphysch wrote:
| There's a lot of truth to this. Within social media e-commerce
| there is the idea of "merch drops" which dial up the FOMO to the
| max.
| namaria wrote:
| Ugh everything is "dropped" now. This one really gets under my
| skin.
| cwillu wrote:
| New peeve dropped!
| namaria wrote:
| wow funny
| agumonkey wrote:
| How much of behavioral economics is about pulling emotional
| levers anyway ?
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Most sales are completely for no necessary utility now -- often
| not even convenience even.
|
| You need to create psychological need to get the buyer into an
| unnecessary product or service because frankly they are already
| over served.
|
| This is mostly a sign of our economy being built on post-need.
| It's sad because somehow we still heap suffering on ourselves as
| we run ragged to come up with faster ways to inject digital
| heroine into our kids veins.
| gist wrote:
| My advice (as an older person) is to 'stop reading and start
| doing'. You will and can learn and get a feel for business by
| actual transactions with people and in particular directly with
| them. Where you can observe reactions (ie facial expressions) and
| by asking questions or offering information/answers. Especially
| helpful (again from personal and lucrative experience) is when
| you can observe reactions from some kind of interaction. (In this
| order: in person, by phone, by email, by text). Each has it's
| advantages and disadvantages (ie 'in person' less interaction
| (travel time etc.) but more info gleaned.
|
| This is quite different than traditional 'manage by numbers' or
| 'do surveys'.
| pron wrote:
| Collectibles are entirely based on that. In fact, I'd say they're
| _defined_ by it -- if there 's little chance of missing out on
| something, then that thing isn't a collectible. How big of a role
| this plays (and sustainably so) in other kinds of goods is less
| clear, although discount sales are exactly about creating this
| kind of fear -- or, conversely, rare opportunity -- and they do
| work. Regularly scheduled sales, on the other hand, work more by
| creating a price differentiation, where people to whom a product
| is worth less than the regular retail price can choose to wait.
| forgotacc240419 wrote:
| Yep, I've cumulatively spent thousands on weird gadgets that have
| minimal use the second they appeared on eBay slightly cheap, I
| still haven't gotten around to upgrading from my 2015 MacBook
| though...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| So a trick that works, but your product still have to provide
| some value, try a newsletter that doesn't have any content and
| try a Fomo tactic
| dahart wrote:
| > Sales don't happen when benefits exceed price. I did not know
| this.
|
| Obviously the title and opening sentence aren't meant to be taken
| literally or absolutely despite being phrased that way, since the
| author had sales before discovering FOMO as a strategy, and also
| since these statements aren't true for all products. I can buy
| that FOMO helps sell a newsletter subscription where it's hard to
| communicate value in the first place, and people are used to
| newsletters being free. FOMO isn't what drives McDonald's or
| gasoline or breakfast cereal though. Most things I purchase
| aren't based on FOMO, but maybe a few optional things are here
| and there.
|
| I found the "ads eww" comment to be funny when what the author
| has discovered is an advertising technique, and one of the very
| techniques that earns and engenders the 'eww'. Manipulating
| people works, but people don't like knowing they're being
| manipulated, especially if claims about missing out or about
| scarcity are inauthentic.
| bbor wrote:
| Well put! I don't see anything in there that's a rejoinder to
| "ads ew" necessarily, tho; if there's some actual scarcity then
| telling people about it is not advertising (marketing!) at all,
| but rather the job of an index, a search engine, a catalog, a
| govt PSA, etc.
|
| I don't think there's a single argument for advertising other
| than "manipulation can make individuals rich, and what's good
| for the rich is good for society". Which isn't a very popular
| one to say out loud these days, especially in "woke"
| advertising giants like Google and LinkedIn...
| csomar wrote:
| > "ads eww"
|
| I thought this was about Ads that AdBlocker was made for. I
| don't think they'll have turn a good ROI for a substack
| audience though.
| schneems wrote:
| I sold a book (https://howtoopensource.dev/) and did a *very*
| soft launch which performed so poorly I spent the next
| 6-9months building out full blown launch strategy.
|
| FOMO is used a lot as the term du-jour but it goes deeper than
| that: a sense of urgency. We relate FOMO to urgency because a
| lot of FOMO happens around events (missing a concert or
| conference, for example) but to me the key isn't the fear, it's
| the urgency.
|
| For my eventual launch I read a book aptly titled "Launch"
| which talks at length about building a sense of urgency,
| turning the sale into an event, and generating excitement. I
| offered a limited time, exclusive incentive with a hard
| deadline and it worked very well. That hits the fear and the
| urgency.
|
| From Kent:
|
| > How can I communicate what the company is missing out on
|
| While framed as FOMO, to me it's good old value-proposition
| marketing. The book I linked above recommends focusing on a
| customer "transformation" story. Try to get potential customers
| to imagine what life would be like if ONLY they had your
| product. From this lens the FOMO is fear of missing out on
| being your best/better self.
|
| This part of my launch was really difficult. I wanted to talk
| about what the book teaches, how it stacks up against other
| books, why my petagogy is useful. It didn't seem like my book
| would "turn a coder into a contributor" (by itself). But that's
| exactly the outcome I wanted, and it's the outcome my customers
| wanted. So, that's how I sold it.
| dahart wrote:
| > While framed as FOMO, to me it's good old value-
| propositioned marketing.
|
| Right! Exactly, the value _proposition_ is stating what you
| think the value is to the consumer, and when it aligns with
| what they really value then sales occur. The author made a
| clear distinction saying, "I naively assumed that people
| transacted when value exceeded price. I blindly pursued
| adding more value to this newsletter." He's talking about
| value from his own perspective rather than value from the
| customer's perspective, like you did with listing the
| subjects and teaching methods in your book.
|
| I've made the same mistake trying to add what I think is
| valuable and talk about what I think is valuable, and have it
| lead to low sales, so I know from experience that good
| marketing is necessary and that good marketing can be
| difficult for engineers to learn, and that building it does
| not mean that they will come and buy it. Part of what I'm
| saying is you have to really understand the eww of
| advertising, why it's there, where it comes from, and how to
| use it properly, and you have to be careful and figure out
| what the difference is between showing someone the value and
| lying to them, because sometimes the line is very gray and/or
| very thin.
| fsckboy wrote:
| ahh, from scanning down the comments, HN's Tenth Rule of Gold
| Spun into Green:
|
| _Any sufficiently complicated HN business analysis contains an
| ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of
| half of the first year of an MBA_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule
| BLanen wrote:
| This is a bad article only meant to market the book. Almost 0
| information in this, actually impressive.
| trollied wrote:
| Indeed. The blog is certainly not worth paying for. Grifter.
| moffkalast wrote:
| In a sense they're right then though. FOMO is the only way
| sales happen _for grifters_ who have no value to sell in the
| first place lol.
| ultrasaurus wrote:
| You need 3 things to make a sale:
|
| 1. Why anything? 2. Why this? 3. Why now?
|
| Sure FOMO is one of your tools, but I suspect it's overused.
| Consider the classic "This price won't be around for long!" move
| alone.
| sd9 wrote:
| Isn't that FOMO?
| Zenzero wrote:
| This may work B2C. For B2B you're going to lose respect by
| playing this game.
| solatic wrote:
| FOMO is a great strategy when you are trying to sell to customers
| who will buy your product exactly once and then move on.
| Examples: collector's editions of video games, sales ahead of
| gift-giving holidays, tourist traps in "I am here for the one and
| only time I will ever be here in my life" destinations,
| enterprise sales to Fortune 500 companies where the buyer will
| get promoted by the next sales cycle. You emotionally manipulate
| the buyer to make the sale, the buyer regrets buying it within a
| day or two, and it doesn't matter because they will never talk to
| you again anyway.
|
| FOMO is a horrible strategy when you expect to develop a long-
| term relationship with your customers. Self-respecting people
| won't stand for it. They will either switch to a competitor out
| of spite, or blow aside your transparent sales tactic and keep
| pressuring you downward on price during negotiations.
| 4death4 wrote:
| I disagree. For instance, let's say I'm an auto manufacturer
| and I need some parts made. If I don't get those parts, I have
| to stall my assembly line and lose a lot of money. If I find
| someone who can supply the parts in a short time frame, then I
| will definitely fear missing out by declining the sellers
| offer. If I capitulate and the seller delivers reliably, then I
| am going to gladly return for their services because they can
| ensure my business stays running.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| That's a good example but I think you're describing another
| market condition called a captive market, not FOMO. In FOMO,
| buyers have no real risk in not buying, it's artifice and
| theatrics that drive a sale. Your example is a market in
| which mission critical assets are sold by few and those few
| control all aspects of the sale. In your scenario, you're
| less a mark for a salesman and more of a hostage.
| 4death4 wrote:
| It's not a captive market. It's a market where the buyer
| has a need and if they don't have that need met, then the
| buyer will suffer. That's FOMO, and that's when sales
| happen. If the buyer can sit on their laurels without any
| negative repercussions, then they're not going to pull the
| trigger until their situation changes.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| You'll get bid, but not from the best suppliers. The goods
| will read "and if this works out, there will be more business
| for you in the future" as a red flag. If they're good,
| they'll be busy. They don't need to grovel for one-off work.
| Those who will bid on FOMO work are likely not as busy. Or
| are used to FOMO work (and not for good reasons).
|
| Yes FOMO in your example can motivate. The problem is, not
| the types you want an LTR with.
| golergka wrote:
| Counter point: game sales on steam. I'm their costumer for
| almost 20 years now, and fall for it all the time. But given
| how much entertainment I get from money spent, I remain a happy
| customer.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The trick is to make it look like an amazing opportunity, not
| something to fear about. The FOMO will be here, but hidden
| below enthusiasm, and the person will feel like they are
| actually lucky to have the opportunity.
| csallen wrote:
| As much as I'm sure many HN types would love for this to be
| true, it's not actually true, and it's important not to get
| carried away thinking "I prefer X" means "The world prefers X."
|
| The vast majority of people are perfectly okay with FOMO as a
| sales tactic. This includes self-respecting, loyal, repeat
| customers of quality brands. Conversely, very few people are
| spiteful enough to go through the trouble of switching to a
| competitor purely out of disdain for FOMO being used as a sales
| tactic.
|
| A couple examples:
|
| - The New York Times has 10 million paying subscribers for
| online content. A tremendous number. Many of their sales pages
| feature countdown timers and phrases like "Time is running out"
| and "Offer won't last."
|
| - Pretty much any clothing brand. For example, rare Nike shoe
| drops. People are willing to spend hundreds of dollars, wake up
| at ridiculous hours, and stand in line for hours, for FOMO-
| driven clothing sales. And far from driving people away from
| the brand, doing this _increases_ people 's loyalty to the
| brand, because FOMO works on social proof.
| huijzer wrote:
| I'm not sure. There is certainly a group of people that is
| okay with it, but I'm not sure how big it is in percentages.
| Sometimes I suspect these strategies might make numbers go up
| in the short term but you end up in a spiral of less caring
| customers gives less meaningful connection gives less caring
| customers until your brand name is nonexistent. Like some big
| company who is finding some kind of average bland customers,
| but leave the door wide open for incumbents who provide
| better quality for a similar price.
| i2shar wrote:
| There could be both.
|
| I very much identify with the self respecting type your
| parent describes and try my best to 'punish' sellers who try
| silly FOMO tactics, by demoting them into oblivion in my
| books. However, I am still prone to some FOMO with _proven_ ,
| _trusted_ brands.
|
| Anecdote: Several years ago I happened to try out a certain
| brand of shoes and loved the quality and style and have ever
| since only bought that brand and have even introduced friends
| and family members to it. However, I still wait for their
| deals to show up before picking up a pair and am vulnerable
| to their "time running out" campaigns. I click "Buy", assured
| that at least I won't be stuck with a substandard product.
|
| I like to think that if I ever build a product, I would focus
| on quality and attract the kind of customer I myself am and
| would never stoop to the lowly FOMO tactics, even for assured
| short term gains.
| stavros wrote:
| Isn't any seasonal sale FOMO-based, in that sense?
| csallen wrote:
| Yes.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Salers playing on FOMO doesn't mean it works though.
|
| You have the same situation with time limited sales on Amazon
| for instance. It should be rising your FOMO to the roof, but
| as a consumer you know there will be another sale in 2 month,
| or really it could be any day, and if you were to miss this
| sale on an item you wanted, you'd just wait for the next
| sale.
|
| On the other side, Nike shoes actually disappear from the
| line up. There's models that were functionally different that
| I regret not stock-piling when they were still in production.
| And they were not marketed as exclusives or limited, they
| just got discontinued. It's not FOMO, it's actual time
| scarcity.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _FOMO is a horrible strategy when you expect to develop a
| long-term relationship with your customers. Self-respecting
| people won 't stand for it._
|
| I've signed up for museum memberships because of a specific
| event that required it, or because I got a call reminding me of
| losing some benefit or announcing some made-up deadline for a
| matching contribution. I have long-term relationship with them.
| But I really don't care enough to act without a nudge.
|
| > _will either switch to a competitor out of spite_
|
| This doesn't sound like a personality that will remain with
| power or wealth for a long time. Controlled spite can be
| effective, reputationally. Random spite never is.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > FOMO is a horrible strategy when you expect to develop a
| long-term relationship with your customers
|
| Based on my experience with Kickstarters (especially board game
| Kickstarters), as long as you actually deliver the product that
| you said you're going to, there's no negative consequences to
| using FOMO.
| etrvic wrote:
| I don't really understand how the HN rating system works. I
| submitted this article 1 day ago, and it got completely ignored.
| Now I open the front page and see it there. If anyone can tell me
| how did this happened, I would really much appreciate it.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| I hope you don't get an answer. I'd rather people not know how
| to game the algorithm.
| arnorhs wrote:
| This sales strategy has been the basis of a lot of successful
| companies. Groupon comes to mind
| verve23 wrote:
| Nice to see Cartman get some credit here. (ref: cartmanland 2001)
| bilsbie wrote:
| I instantly lose trust for the sales person if they bring up any
| kind of time pressure.
| SMAAART wrote:
| I did my MBA dissertation on value vs price, and nowhere in my 79
| pages I mentioned FOMO.
|
| But that was a very long time ago, I think OP has a point.
| kinj28 wrote:
| Fomo is also a great way to make some one act or move the case
| forward.
|
| In context to enterprise sales: most large enterprise deals need
| multiple stakeholders to sign off. Fomo helps your champion
| create the urgency needed to conclude the sale.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-16 23:00 UTC)