Fear-based marketing: Spend your money or you might miss something

Ahhh, the “miss something” syndrome. I’ve come to call this the marketer’s gold. Everyone is selling something because “if you can get just one golden nugget it can turn your business around…”

Isn’t that something. Statistics show that we mostly buy on emotion, and I find that more often than it should be, that emotion is fear… at least, I find that when it comes to business growth the buzz emotion most often is fear. I experienced this just this weekend when a trial membership that came with one of the products I bought expired.

The client services rep reached out to me to notify me and gave me a great offer to stay involved as a monthly subscriber at a discount rate. I seriously considered it:

• even though I had not hopped on a call to ask a question in that forum for months…
• even though I only used the private Facebook group to give free expert advice to the other members (asking nothing in return)
• even though I still have many fundamental marketing plans in place for my own business for growth and,
• even though I’d rather spend $100/month on a more trackable and lead-generating activity.

I thought about it despite the lack of use in the past several months because as the rep listed out the benefits of the program that lingering thought remained… “you might miss something.”

How many times have you remained a member of something based on the “just in case” or the “exclusive rewards” or the “what if” scenario? I’ve done that too many times to count so I took a cue from my past experiences and in the end declined the discounted invitation to continue.

Did I do the right thing? In this moment, where I am now in my business and for the plans I have in my business… absolutely. Will I miss some insight that could have been a golden nugget for my business? Almost definitely. Will I miss something that could have made me millions… or thousands… or hundreds… who knows! I have no regrets about it and I’m learning to trust my instinct and expertise MORE and rely less on the possibility of others.

Does that mean I don’t belong to membership groups or networks or associations, etc? Not at all. But I choose them much more carefully now and I trust that business still requires my discernment in my ignorance just as much as it does in my enlightenment. What have been some of the luring concepts that have roped you into business decisions that you know are not the ideal fit for you? Please share them below…