10 Best Ways to Use FOMO to Boost Sales for Your eCommerce Store

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Whether it’s a brand new online venture or a long-standing e-commerce store, you have certain goals to achieve that are imperative to the success of your business.

One of them is to engage more visitors and drive your online sales.

However, certain triggers can help you boost your online sales. FOMO is a form of marketing that can help you acquire more customers and retain them while also ensuring their trust and loyalty.

What is FOMO, and how can it help your eCommerce venture drive conversions? Read on to find out.


FOMO And eCommerce – What’s The Connection?

FOMO or the Fear Of Missing Out refers to a psychological trigger that’s usually difficult to resist. It is a feeling of regret caused by the loss of a great opportunity or an amazing deal.

It also explains why some people try to catch every opportunity so they can avoid regretting missing out on it later.

As more social platforms continue to pop up, and more people try to live an insta-worthy lifestyle, the effects of FOMO have multiplied significantly.
According to PEW research, three-quarters of Facebook users open their account on a daily basis, giving businesses a reason to devise a well-rounded strategy for social media marketing.

Using the tools for Facebook ads to augment promotional campaigns is a surefire way to remind your fans and followers that you can help enhance their lives.

The anxiety and fear associated with missing out are crucial drivers for social media engagement as FOMO induces people to explore and try out new opportunities.

So, what does this mean for an eCommerce website?
You can benefit from this Psychological behavior of humans in numerous ways. Besides, you can also boost brand awareness, recognition, improve the customer journey, and ultimately, drive conversions.

Your eCommerce business can effectively leverage FOMO marketing techniques to boost sales, but how?
When visitors realize that others are purchasing your products, it entices them to buy from you because they don’t want to regret thinking about it later.

7 Best Ways To Use FOMO To Boost Sales For Your eCommerce Store

This psychological anchor can help your eCommerce business drive sales and conversions. In fact, 60% of the customers buy products because of the FOMO effect, typically within 24 hours of seeing them. And that’s great news for your business.

While there are various customer acquisition tools out there, there’s no magic bullet that can help you generate sales – it’s easier said than done.
You’ll find that with a FOMO-powered marketing campaign, customers will willingly jump on the bandwagon so that they don’t miss out on an amazing deal or a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity.

Here are the 10 best ways to use FOMO to boost sales for your eCommerce store.

1. Limited Time Offer Does Wonders

Time is a crucial factor that can help you trigger FOMO in your target audience. Naturally, if a deal lasts indefinitely, it will certainly not prompt the audience to take action. After all, if a product is available 24/7, possibly for the rest of their lives, why would they rush to buy it?

Therefore, restricting the time of a giveaway or an offer helps you establish a sense of urgency in your visitors. When you offer a discount or introduce a deal, you can set a time limit for those. In short, provide better incentives for customers’ early decisions.

Once your consumers recognize that they can reap the benefits if they act out fast, this can induce them to make an instant purchase.

For instance, you can launch an offer with a limited time discount where the amount of value reduces with each passing day. This will compel people to rush their buying decision so that they can avail the maximum discount rate.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Macy’s

For example, Macy creates a compelling copy that uses “lowest prices of the season” and “hurry — ends tonight!” to alert the consumers about the sale. Customers can enjoy these greatly discounted prices but within 24 hours.

2. Display Sales Activity In Real-Time

Showing real-time sales activity to your audience is one of the simple yet powerful ways to incite FOMO. When a user visits your website and sees that other people have been buying your products, it will entice them to get those products for themselves.

You can display the real-time actions of other users to tell website visitors that people buy your products frequently. These sales notifications help the purchase decision easier as it communicates to them what people are buying and encourages them to head to the checkout and buy your product.

The FOMO plugins and other tools can integrate with your ecommerce platform and help you implement and monitor the real-time customer activities on your website.

Additionally, you can use some of the best chatbot apps for your website to ensure your recipients are getting timely responses, and ultimately, reduces customer churn.

You can also adopt the best practices for live chat to assure that the website traffic gets adequate customer support and care.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Booking.com

The above example of Booking.com also demonstrates this technique. Their website mentions the number of times a certain hotel has been reserved in the last few hours to persuade visitors to take action.

3. Leverage User-Generated Content

Leveraging user-generated content is yet another way to use FOMO marketing in order to entice your potential customers to want your offerings. Showing something tried and tested to your possible audience is an effective way to trigger FOMO.

You can do that by adding legitimate user-focused content on your website. Encourage your customers to share their brand-related experience. You can also showcase real customer’s stories, pictures, and videos with your product to make your audience want the product as well.

Along the same lines, real customer videos of using your product aspire the audience to live that life. This lays a foundation for a powerful FOMO marketing tactic. In fact, 84% of buyers confide in online reviews when it comes to online purchases.

User-generated content, in a way, also acts as social proof and vouches for your brand’s and its products’ authenticity. It entices the customers to share your products and service-related content and interact with your brand, which develops a sense of FOMO in your followers.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Wayfair

For example, FOMO marketing technique used by Wayfair encourages its customers to share real images of their products using the hashtag, #wayfairathome. This helps them promote their offerings to their followers. People have made over 50K posts with this hashtag. It’s a strong strategy that helps boost loyalty, awareness and captivates new customer’s attention.

4. Highlight Missed Opportunities

When you showcase the great opportunities that people have missed, their FOMO rises even more. This FOMO marketing tactic intends to persuade people to buy a product by making them realize that they lost the earlier opportunity because they didn’t act out fast.

For this reason, overlooked opportunities create FOMO and anxiety for other options. It convinces people to make a purchase and pushes them over the edge, especially if they needed to buy that specific product in the first place that they missed.

Mention about all the great deals and products that are sold out to your website visitors to make them realize what they have missed out on. Let them see upfront the products that are out of stock.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Booking.com

Booking.com ‘s example also excels in this form of FOMO marketing. When you search hotels for reservations on Booking.com, it also lists the fully booked hotels with a clear-cut message in prominent letters that says, “You missed it!” This triggers FOMO in the audience even for the hotels that are available for reservation at the moment.

5. Display Low Stock Levels

Nothing triggers FOMO better than scarcity. Naturally, nobody wants to miss out on a great product just because it’s running out of stock. So, if you have limited items in stock, make sure your customers know about it. It will urge them to take action instantly.

However, it is imperative to display the stock levels strategically that convinces the visitors of the product scarcity. Don’t be too generic about a product like, “Only a few left”. Instead, share the specific inventory levels that will actually push the audience to act quickly.

Your website visitors aren’t imprudent, they would want you to be clear on the stock levels as to how many items are left to elicit an instant action.

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FOMO eCommerce Example: Amazon

Amazon does a great job when it comes to displaying scarcity of a product. It precisely shows the stock levels as “Only 16 left in stock – order soon” and entices the visitors to order soon, or they’ll miss out on something good.

6. Offer Exclusive Products

Both limited quantity and limited-time products can create a sense of urgency among the audience. But limited-quantity items become more desirable as buyers can’t get them once products are sold out.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Heinz

In the example above, Heinz created a compelling FOMO deal by combining its product with time-based scarcity.
We, as human beings, love exclusivity. It drives FOMO like anything when we don’t want to miss on the opportunity very few people can have.

Think about Amazon Prime and the fact that over 100 million people have subscribed for their service just to reap the additional deals and benefits that other Amazon shoppers can’t avail.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Amazon

Amazon Prime Day sales deals play on customer’s FOMO. In 2019, it ran the annual day deals only for 48 hours. It made sure that the customers turn to the Amazon store to satisfy their needs by availing discounts.

Interestingly enough, the retail giant offered the biggest discounts as it helped them sell 100 million products. After all, buyers don’t want to miss out on such deals.

While Amazon is one of the great FOMO marketing examples, you too can leverage exclusivity by introducing limited-edition products or services.

7. Provide Social Proof

At first, it can be challenging to get people to trust your brand. Unless they find your brand credible, it isn’t easy to persuade them to make a purchase. Giving social proof can help you develop the audience’s trust in your brand.

However, you need to be tactical about when to give your audience this slight boost. In many cases, the best time to do this is when a visitor is about to buy something. You can share customer reviews and testimonials, which can build and augment their trust in the brand.

The testimonials and reviews of satisfied customers can create FOMO that they’ll miss out on a great product if they don’t act out fast.

While all kinds of testimonials have an impact on consumer’s behavior, good reviews can make them feel left out while other people are purchasing a product, this will incline them to purchase.

FOMO eCommerce Example: TrustPulse

Your customer’s FOMO will be even more triggered if you make use of social proof notifications by leveraging applications like TrustPulse. This app displays the name and location of the person who lets your potential buyers know that a real customer/person gives the review.

These pop-up notifications usually appear at the bottom of the display screen and show the visitors that people are ordering from you, which inclines them to buy their desired product from you.

8. Boost FOMO with Email Marketing

Email marketing campaigns remain unbeatable when it comes to reaching your customers. Where around 90% of the customers leverage emails, it’s a great technique to boost FOMO marketing.

Furthermore, email marketing is one of the most cost effective marketing techniques you can use.

According to the Digital Marketing Association, email marketing can create a 4300% ROI when businesses successfully utilize proven email marketing services such as ConvertKit or Automizy with advanced features and integrations.

Email marketing, coupled with any other FOMO marketing technique, can be an effective way to reach out your intended audience and induce them to take action. For instance, you can send out emails to:

  • Let your subscribers know about exclusive rewards or deals
  • Alert them about the limited quantity of their saved items
  • Remind them about the items in they added in their shopping cart along with cart abandonment discounts or messages
  • Send follow up emails with an appealing offer

Furthermore, you can leverage subject line tester tools to come up with an email subject line that interests the recipient and make them take action.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Neil Patel

For example, Wayfair sends out an email to its subscribers on the Independence Day with a subject line, “July 4th Blowout | Up to 70% OFF starts NOW”. This creates a sense of urgency in the readers and also triggers FOMO while pushing them to avail the sale offer.

Not sure how to use email marketing to drive sales?

Book a free call to learn how Wishpond can help you to create, automate and generate sales with our all-in-one email marketing tool.

9. Partner With A Celebrity Or An Influencer

Customers tend to trust the judgements of influencers, bloggers, celebrities, or YouTubers who they follow.

You can partner or collaborate with the right influencers and use their authority to trigger FOMO marketing campaigns.
You can put this technique in place by building influencer relationships with the appropriate ones that compliment your products.

For instance, if you sell baby products, you can collaborate with moms on social channels and review your product’s marketing campaign.

That way, you can boost your customers’ FOMO. A recent influencer survey considers Instagram as the most effective platform to get across your brand’s message.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Mage Plaza

For example, American Express created an Amex Ambassador promotional campaign that gained more than 3.7 million engagements/year. They had influencers who experienced the luxurious Amex lifestyle coupled with their credit card features, which prompted the FOMO effect on their followers.

10. Leverage An Exit-Intent Pop-up

Exit-intent pop-ups are another great way to incite FOMO, giving your website visitors a one-time opportunity to enjoy a discount and save money.

Exit-intent pop-ups usually appear when the visitor is about to close the window or browser tab.

Your websites can activate exit intent pop up on your checkout or pricing page combined with a countdown which adds an urgency factor to the offer. This makes the customer think that they are about to lose an opportunity, so they act fast.

Furthermore, it is best to use these pop-ups with the products that can be an impulsive purchase for the customers.

FOMO eCommerce Example: Sleeknote

Here is an example Helm, a Danish brand, it uses an exit-intent campaign to entice the visitors to subscribe for their mailing list.

Here’s another one that offers the visitors an opportunity to win their favourite bag.

If a customer were about to churn, this exit-intent pop up presents them with a chance to avail 10% off on their first order. So ideally, it can turn customer attrition to customer conversion, which can boost your sales.

With most of the eCommerce software on the market, you have plenty of integrations available to integrate these tactics with your store.

Wrapping Up

The bottom line is FOMO marketing tactics if executed properly, can go a long way for eCommerce business. The main idea is to address the customers’ pain points, create a situation that triggers FOMO and prompt them to take action.

Naturally, there is no definite approach that can be perfect for your business. You’ll have to experiment and find what works best for you. The right strategy should target the right audience at the right time with the right offer.

Alongside FOMO, it is also imperative to pay attention to your website and continually make efforts to enhance its performance. Use the best tools to enhance its quality, design, and usability.

So, offer different opportunities to different people. While your email subscribers get excited about a discount offer, your Instagram followers can expect an entirely different thing.

The rise of social channels has heightened the use of FOMO marketing techniques. If you aim to benefit from FOMO for your ecommerce business, it can significantly help you generate sales.

Author’s Bio

Will Cannon is the founder of UpLead and Signaturely. He believes in the importance of customer profiling, lead generation, customer acquisition and retention. Email marketing and customer relationship management are personal interests of his, as he has seen firsthand how these tactics can have a profound impact on business revenue.

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