Did you know that FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is a powerful motivator for customer behavior? Organizations today should find ways to leverage the power of FOMO with their customers.

I was surprised to learn how much of an addiction social media was for some people and how it linked up with feelings of FOMO. You might be as surprised by these statistics from 2021 as I was:

51% of people visit or log into their social media more now than two years before
27% of people wake up and check their social media accounts
45% of users said they couldn't wait for more than 12 hours to check their social media accounts
20% of users can't waste time for more than an hour without checking their feeds
69% of people think if they don’t check Facebook and other platforms that they will miss important events

In this episode, we explore what FOMO is and how it affects what we do and why. We also talk about a couple of practical (and ethical) ways you can leverage its power to increase the profits for your bottom line.

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

Regret, even the anticipation of regret, is a huge part of FOMO. These feelings are associated with Loss Aversion, which describes how we hate losing things more than we enjoy gaining things. If we feel like we missed out, we are losing out on the chance to be a part of something—and we really don’t like that feeling.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

03:58 Ryan defines FOMO and explains how social media and FOMO go hand in hand these days.
10:56 We connect FOMO with other emotions, like regret, and feeling included, or excluded as the case may be, and explain how avoiding these emotions can be powerful motivator.
14:33 We connect the idea that FOMO is part of some marketing team’s goal for an experience; they want FOMO to occur with their followers for things like celebrity
21:02 Colin shares some more stats about the emotions tied to FOMO and how they are on the destructive side.
24:40 We share three practical things you can do for your customers that use the power of FOMO (in a good way) for your experiences and to the benefit of your customers.