Imagine its Friday night and you have the option to go out for a drink with your friends in the local pub, stay at home to watch some Netflix or you can go party hard in the club.
Do you really worry about missing something or is it rather the fear you have of making the wrong choice? I mean, you could wind up going to the club and wishing you were at home or at the pub. There is always a ‘what if’ part to a choice, and we will not know if it was the right choice until we’ve chosen.
Our irrational FOMO is basically the stress that comes with making a decision. So how can we make sure that consumers experience as little FOMO as possible?
The paradox of choice according to Barry Schwartz
According to Barry Schwartz, consumers have too many choices which leads to stress about making the right choice. We worry about the many options we have, and we get frustrated about it. Mr Schwartz sums it up accordingly:
- The more options you have, the harder it is to decide and to decide well
- The more options you have, the less happy you will be, no matter what you decide on
- Good enough is the best, become a satisfier
When we give consumers more options, they will also have higher expectations about those options. This will produce less satisfaction with results even when they are good results.
How do we fix the stress of choice?
It doesn’t matter what kind of product you have, you will always make sure consumers have as much options as possible. But is that the right approach? Wouldn’t it be better to make sure consumers have the right choice instead of having many options?
When you make sure consumers find the right product it will help them enormously. Add filters to your website, give them the options to make the right choice. Yes, I just said that giving consumers too many options is a bad thing, but you still need to give them a little freedom. Creating the illusion of choice while you, as a business, know what your consumers are really looking for. Make it easy for consumers to find a product quickly and effectively.
Your website is your mothership, lead consumers in an efficient way through a well-thought-out path.
But your website is not everything, consumers have so many tools to find the right product for their needs. So also think of tools like Google Ads or social advertising. Deliver the right path to follow and your consumers will find the way.
Consumers will compare products, that is what we all do, we compare, we want to know that out of the options we have we are choosing the right one so be top of mind!
Remarketing is an interesting way to make sure you are top of mind. Convince consumers of the right choice, not through mediocre advertising but by providing them with the right reasons of why your brand is the right choice. When you use remarketing tags make sure they are useful, not just a photo of the product and the price, no! Make consumers realize why they should choose you out of your competitors.
Know what information specific consumer needs to be convinced, so do research on your consumers, get to know them. They are not just a bunch of numbers your social media analytics deliver, but actual people. Do deep-rooted research, get to know them like you would get to know the person you are in love with.
Getting to know your customers is a big part of removing their fear of making the wrong choice. All marketers want is for people to be happy with their product, that’s why we have customer service. Even after a sale we want consumers to be content.
If we start by removing the stress of making the right choice, we will have more happy customers who will be less likely to complain.
#FOMO is real, so do not ignore it, embrace it and erase it.
Passion flows through my veins for digital communications, and that's what I aspire to do in life. Enrich the world with exciting content that tells the stories of people doing their thing while doing their job.
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