🧑‍🔬 How To Create Irresistible FOMO

🧪 The Bandwagon Effect

How this differs from Social Proof:

Social Proof is based on the principle that people look to others to determine what is normal, correct, or desirable in a situation. The Bandwagon Effect is more about conforming to what is popular; whereas Social Proof is about taking the correct action. Social Proof leverages credibility and The Bandwagon Effect leverages the fear of missing out (FOMO).

🤳 How Bloom Uses The Bandwagon Effect

Bloom’s paid social acquisition strategy could be simplified into two steps:

1) Use TikTok influencers to gain mass appeal and brand awareness

2) Leverage that mass appeal in advertising to show the popularity of the product

Like this:

Notice how all of these ads highlight how popular Bloom is?

That wouldn’t be possible without first developing a comprehensive influencer program. In fact, their Fractional CMO has said they scaled their influencer program from 30 to 450 creators per month!

Note: Bloom has raised $90 million. Working with 450 creators per month is very expensive but that doesn’t mean you can’t do that on a much smaller scale.

🧠 How You Can Use The Bandwagon Effect

The key to the Bandwagon Effect is highlighting how many people have used your product and creating a sense of FOMO by not using the product.

Make it seem like your product is the “cool thing” and by not buying it, you’re missing out on all these great benefits that so many people are seeing.

You can do so by:

• Collaborating with influencers in your niche

• Sharing customer testimonials, reviews, and positive comments

• Showcasing stats - number of 5-star reviews, number of users, etc.

• On Meta, run engagement ads and then use the same ads (using Post IDs), once they have a lot of engagement on them, to drive conversions (reply to this email if you have questions on how to do this)

Here are some hooks using the Bandwagon Effect:

• “Here’s why [large number] of [customer avatar] have used [product] to [achieve desirable outcome]”

  • E.g., “Here’s why 100,000 women have use Bloom to cure their gut health:”

• “Ready to join the [large number] of [customer avatar] [achieving desirable outcome]?”

  • E.g., “Ready to join the 100,000 women using Bloom to cure their gut health?”

• “I wanted to try the [product category] I’ve seen [customer avatar slang] using all over [place where customer avatar hangs out] to [achieve desirable outcome]”

  • E.g., “I wanted to try the greens I’ve seen fitness girlies using all over my TikTok feed to fix their gut health”

  • Note: This is great for a UGC video and the “[place where customer avatar hangs out]” should change based on your specific customer (for example, a B2B product may use LinkedIn instead of TikTok, a product aimed at parents may use “all the parents at daycare”, etc.)

And if you don’t have that many customers yet, there are still a number of different tactics you can use to leverage the Bandwagon Effect and create a sense of FOMO:

1. Run Video View ads on some of your organic social media posts to drive up views. Then use the number of views in your ad. For example, Bloom could say: “Meet The Greens Powder That Went Viral” or “See Why This Greens Powder Got 7,000,000 Views!”

2. Use generalizations. For example, “Meet The Greens That All The #GymTok Girlies Are Raving About”

3. Make one positive review feel bigger through contrast. For example, on an ad showing a testimonial (let’s say the testimonial is by someone named Jade), you could add the headline: “Jade cured her gut issues with Bloom. Will you?”

Remember: the goal is to create this nagging feeling of missing out if they don’t buy your product.

Some Links You May Find Interesting:

• How To Inspire And Win Customers: In case you missed last week’s edition of Psychology of Ads.

• TikTok Trends Digest: TikTok’s new monthly series on how to produce “thumb-stopping content”

• The Best Ad Format To Use If You Don’t Sell a Physical Product: I mostly work with non-physical products and can attest to this ad format working quite well.

Books I’m Reading:

• $100M Leads: Just finished the chapters on paid ads - gave me some interesting ideas on how to frame some ads I’m working on.

  Almost done the book - any recommendations on what I should read next?