FOMO Strategies to Explode Your eCommerce Sales

Are you struggling with your online sales?

Are your conversion rates lacklustre despite you seeing loads of web traffic on your product pages?

If you answered with a “yes,” then you’re in the right place.

In this guide, we’ll cover several tried and tested eCommerce marketing strategies that seasoned entrepreneurs and marketers are using to grow their eCommerce sales.

What’s more, all the tactics we’ll dive into have one overarching theme — the fear of missing out (FOMO).

Considering how FOMO has helped countless eCommerce companies shoot their sales through the roof, you are bound to see meaningful results out of your marketing campaigns if you follow the tips we’ll cover below.

Whether you’re running an established online store or you’re in the process of moving your business online, you stand to gain from integrating FOMO into your marketing strategies.

What is FOMO all about, anyway?

Here’s an easy-to-understand definition of FOMO from Wikipedia.

“FOMO, is a social anxiety stemming from the belief that others might be having fun while the person experiencing the anxiety is not present.” — Wikipedia

People experience anxiety when they miss out on good things.

In some places, FOMO is even described as the “fear of regret.” As in, people fear the regret that stems from not experiencing the same good things that others are experiencing.

Can you see how game-changing FOMO can be for your eCommerce business?

If our brains are naturally wired towards experiencing FOMO, then it makes all the more sense to incorporate it into our strategies.

FOMO strategies to grow your online sales

To start racking up those sales, let’s apply several FOMO strategies to your online store.

The FOMO strategies covered below will set you up for success.

1. Show your customers that people are buying.

When your web traffic sees that people are buying, it validates their hunch that you have a good product.

Think about it.

They’re on your page because they saw a link about your product and they clicked it. (That means they had an initial interest in what you’re selling.)

When they reach your landing page, however, they see several pop-ups showing the first names of those buying your products. With that, their initial assumption that your product is awesome is validated.

With all the people that are buying, they’d be hard-pressed to click away without buying anything because, at the back of their heads, FOMO starts to kick in.

Here’s the self-talk they’re having while seeing the pop-ups, “If I leave this page without buying, I might regret not buying since people are already enjoying the product, and I’m not.”

You know what happens next, right?

Bonus tip: Add a notification sound for your pop-up. Don’t make ‘em too loud; otherwise, it’d annoy your web visitor, just make it loud enough for them to hear. Seeing the pop-ups is one thing; hearing the notification sounds is another. Adding the latter reinforces the FOMO element of your page.

2. Show your remaining stocks.

When your customers see how low on stocks you are, they’ll think twice about not buying immediately.

After all, you might run out of stocks in minutes, which then leaves them with nothing.

This strategy is so reliable that even established eCommerce sites such as Amazon and eBay are using the strategy.

Now here’s a question for you: If Amazon and eBay — two companies that spend millions of dollars testing their website elements to optimize it for conversion — show their remaining stocks to entice their web traffic to buy, is there a reason why you shouldn’t follow suit?

Bonus tip: If you have thousands of stocks available, don’t bother adding it to your product pages. Add the number of stocks remaining if there are only a handful of them left. If you let your customers know that you have bajillions of stock available, it’ll trigger them to procrastinate.

3. Be explicit about what they’re missing out on your copy.

If you’re working with a seasoned copywriter, you’ll find them incorporating FOMO in their copy even without you telling them.

That’s how established the FOMO strategy is. It has become one of the go-to tactics of the best copywriters.

You can use a storytelling angle to hint FOMO, or you can use bulleted statements to cover a wider variety of scenarios where your readers miss out on the fun.

Bonus tip: Create a buyer persona. You’ll be hardpressed to conjure up highly relevant scenarios where your audience is missing out without a buyer persona.

4. Add countdown timers

Countdown timers are powerful because they keep your web traffic from procrastinating.

Here’s how it looks.

They feel a sense of urgency or pressure (stress, even) to think about whether they should buy your product or not and make a decision immediately, otherwise, they’ll lose the opportunity to obtain your product.

According to Neuroscience Marketing, a test has shown that just by adding a countdown timer, an offer garnered three times as many conversions compared to an offer without a timer.

Pretty sweet, huh?

Is the prospect of growing your conversion rates by three times appealing to you?

Do you want your audience to seriously think about whether or not to buy your product and take action immediately?

Use a countdown timer.

Bonus tip: Be strategic on where to add your countdown timers. For the most part, adding it above the fold and near your “buy now” buttons are ideal.

5. Free shipping until

The word “free” in and of itself bears with it psychological triggers that can influence your audience to buy your product.

Everybody likes free, after all.

When you couple the power of the word “free” with FOMO, you get one helluva marketing material.

Here’s the thing, your customers know that people are already enjoying your free shipping offer.

But they also know that your promotional offer is only available for a limited time.

Because of FOMO, they’d be compelled to make the purchase immediately; otherwise, they’d miss out on the opportunity of getting your products free of shipping costs.

Bonus tip: Make your “Free shipping until…” statement, pop. Use a different text colour, a different text size, or add the statement on a background that highly contrasts the text colour. Don’t let the statement blend in your product page — your customers might miss seeing it.

What’s next?

Capitalise on FOMO to generate loads of traffic and shoot your sales through the roof.

By highlighting that your customers will miss out on something important, you increase the likelihood of them taking out their wallets immediately.

If you have other FOMO strategies that you can share with our readers, feel free to add them in the comments section below. Cheers!