What is fear-based marketing?
Essentially it involves highlighting a perceived threat that your target market has and using the emotion of fear caused by that threat to motivate them to take action. This action could be buying your product, subscribing to your mailing list, starting a free trial, or downloading your report, etc.
Lots of people feel uneasy whenever the subject of fear-based marketing is brought up. They may feel that it is unethical to use someone’s fears to sell products and services.
Let me state that there is absolutely nothing wrong with using fear to market and sell your products and services – as long as your product is able to provide a genuine solution to that fear.
If you are selling a product that can genuinely solve a legitimate problem, then it is your duty to share that solution with people. You would be doing them a huge disservice if you kept the solution to yourself.
How often is fear used in advertising?
Fear-based advertising is very common. Lots of industries use fear to appeal to the market and sell their products and services. Think about all the types of products that sell themselves based on the underlying emotion of fear.
Examples of products that target the emotion of fear:
- Insurance policies
- Smoke alarms
- Home security systems
- Mouthwash
All of the above products sell well because they target certain fears that their end users have.
Life insurance policies are sold to people who are worried about what would happen to their loved ones if they were to die unexpectedly. The threat here is an unexpected or untimely death, which causes the fear of leaving your loved ones unsupported and in a bad financial situation.
Smoke alarms are sold to homeowners who fear the threat of a fire breaking out and their loved ones and home being ravished by flames. Home security systems are sold because people fear the threat of their properties being broken into and themselves and their family being harmed by intruders.
Mouthwash products appeal to the threat of having bad breath or poor oral hygiene. This leads to the fear of not being socially accepted. No one wants to be an outcast or be ridiculed – having bad breath could cause huge embarrassment, could prevent you from getting that date, and could cause you to lose friends and social status.
The threats are different in each case, but they all produce the same emotion – FEAR.
Self-preservation and the desire to protect ourselves, the people, and the things we care about are powerful desires we are born with. They are part of human nature. In fact, copywriter Drew Eric Whitman talks about 8 powerful biological desires that all people are born with, he called them the Life-Force 8.
Anything that threatens these and other similar intrinsic human desires is a cause of legitimate fear in people. The products mentioned above are able to alleviate or reduce that fear and provide reassurance to their end users.
Why does fear motivate people to take action?
Fear causes stress, and stress creates the drive to take the actions necessary to reduce that stress.
When we feel threatened by something we naturally want to act in order to alleviate the threat or safeguard ourselves against it – the fight or flight response. This is what makes fear-based marketing so effective.
In order to be successful, the products themselves don’t have to completely eliminate the cause of the fear, they can be successful even if they reduce or help manage the fear better.
Installing a smoke alarm doesn’t completely eliminate the threat of a fire happening, but it helps to reduce the owner’s stress levels and gives them greater peace of mind knowing that his family and home are much safer with it installed.
Anything that reduces or eliminates the fear your prospects feel towards a perceived threat is a good thing. When your prospects take action to alleviate fear, it gives them back a sense of control – this is a powerful motivator to get them to buy.
You have to really understand your target market
In order to tap into the emotion of fear and use fear-based messaging effectively, you have to have a good understanding of your target market.
You need to know what their perceived threats are. Identify what problems they have, what keeps them up at night, and what makes them feel stressed and anxious.
Once you know what these are, you can ethically tap into those emotions and present your product as a viable solution – as long as it genuinely addresses the threat and alleviates the subsequent fear.
It’s no good using fear to sell a product or service that doesn’t actually address the particular threat that causes the fear. For example, you wouldn’t sell smoke alarms by using the threat of an intruder breaking into your house. That makes no sense. For one, you won’t sell anything, and second, it is not ethical to market something as a solution to a problem if it is not a genuine solution at all.
I’ve think I’ve hammered the ethical point home hard enough.
I’m going to assume you’re all people with good moral standards and want to market your goods and services in an honest and ethical way. Now that we’ve got that clear, I want to introduce you to the actual process you can use to induce fear. You can use these steps in your written sales copy, video sales letters, direct mail marketing, or any marketing channel you use.
The four-step process to effectively induce fear
Fear has been studied for over 50 years.
In that time social psychologists have discovered that using the fear appeal to motivate people to act is only successful when these four steps are followed:
1. The fear has to be real and has to really scare your audience
2. You have to recommend specific actionable steps they can take to alleviate the fear-inducing threat
3. They have to believe the recommended actions are capable of reducing the threat
4. They have to believe they are capable of performing these actions
If you adhere to these four ingredients you will have the recipe for successfully being able to induce fear into your marketing.
The importance of giving clear, specific actions
Step 2 is vitally important! It’s no use introducing the fear but not giving your audience specific instructions on actions they can take to alleviate the threat. If you do that then all you’ll achieve is scaring your audience without actually guiding them to your product or service that can relieve them of their fear. That would be mean….and it would also be highly ineffective marketing!
A study conducted by Howard Leventhal and colleagues studied the very importance of supplying specific actions when using fear-based marketing messages. They gave students a health pamphlet that detailed the dangers of contracting tetanus.
Half the students were given pamphlets that featured fear-inducing images of tetanus infections and the consequences of not having the tetanus jab, and the other half were given pamphlets without these horrible images. Half of the group was also given a plan outlining clear recommended actions they could take to get the tetanus jab, whilst the other half were not given any instructions at all.
The study found that the group that was shown the fear-inducing images only took action if they also received the plan of specific actions outlining how to get a Tetanus injection, therefore reducing their fear of Tetanus.
This proves the importance of outlining clear, specific, and easy-to-follow steps as an essential part of this strategy. Once you introduce the fear you also have to introduce the steps necessary to overcome it.
Fear has the ability to paralyze us and stop us dead in our tracks. Without outlining the specific recommended action steps your prospects should take to alleviate the fear, you will simply end up scaring them stiff, and they’ll end up doing nothing.
Introduce the fear, emphasise it, and then introduce the actions your prospects need to take in a clear, specific, and easy-to-follow series of steps.
Targeting the emotion of fear in your marketing is a great way to motivate your prospects to act, but as I mentioned earlier, it should only be used if your product or solution can genuinely alleviate their fears.
If you truly believe it can, then follow the four steps process to induce fear and you’ll be tapping into a powerful psychological trigger that can bring you more customers, sell more goods, and ultimately make you more money.
Your customers will also thank you for it!
Fear is just one of the many psychological triggers that can be used to make your marketing and sales messages more effective. For more tips, check out my list of powerful psychological triggers you can use to improve your sales copy and boost your marketing results.
