Advertising 101: Using the Fear Factor

Every business needs an advertising strategy. Business income is one of our four pillars of Retirement 4-50. As we begin our journeys to Financial Freedom- business, marketing, advertising, and automation are all words that we will need to research and learn. 

I never thought about advertising until I read the book “Ca$hvertising” recently. Ever since then, I have been more conscious about advertising and marketing, not only my own but other people’s as well. The world of advertising is enormous, and it is everywhere. 

For the Advertising 101 series, I will focus on advertising strategies for people who own small businesses. I choose to do my own advertising and marketing. Not because I am cheap, but because I enjoy the process. Some of my strategies fail, but some succeed. However, each time I launch a book cover or ad, I learn more and more. Being an effective advertiser is about trial and error and willing to humble ourselves throughout the learning process.

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For our first foray into Advertising, we will take a look at “The Fear Factor.” Fear drives everything we do, especially as Americans. “Fear Sells” is a traditional advertising and marketing guideline. If you were to watch the news all day, every day, you would probably be too scared to leave your house.

So how do you tap into people’s fears to get them to buy your product? According to “Ca$hvertising” and a study called “Age of Propaganda” by Pratkanis and Aronson, there are four steps to inducing enough fear to grab your audience. All four steps need to be present for the process to work effectively. Let’s review these four steps in detail. 

1. It scares the heck out of people. You cannot be too scared to scare people. Writing engaging and frightening copy (advertising) is part of inducing the fear factor. Not all types of products can use the fear factor, but don’t be afraid to turn up the fear when you find something to sell.

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If my product is a house cleaning service, I will use the fear of what lives in a dirty house. I would want to focus on “what lies beneath,” such as mold, critters, and mildew. People would have no choice other them to order my service. 

If I am selling a new computer, I will use the fear of having old hardware and out-of-date software. Having old hardware would potentially become slow and make people miss the latest Facebook feed, scary stuff indeed.

2. It offers a specific recommendation to overcoming the fear-inducing threat. It is not enough to scare people; you will now have to build them back up. Your recommendation should not be your service or product just yet. You have to give them the option to solve the problem on their own first. 

In the house cleaning example, you can write that cleaning one’s house every two weeks is a great way to reduce mold, mildew, and critters. The subject now knows that he or she can reduce their fear by themselves.

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3. The recommended action is perceived as effective in reducing the threat. You cannot go all out and scare the crap out of your audience. It has to be in the realm of possibility for your product or service to reduce the threat.

If I were selling 9mm bullets, I wouldn’t want to run an ad showing the zombie apocalypse. A 9mm isn’t going to be that effective in this situation. I would probably want to focus on stopping a home intruder from my 9mm bullet products; that is more realistic. 

4. The message recipient believes that he or she can perform the recommended action. The final part of using the fear factor is building confidence in the subject, not the product. If the person does not believe that they can perform the action you are recommending; your whole ad falls apart.

Returning to the 9mm self-defense advertising, if the recipient does not believe that they can shoot an intruder, they will not buy your 9mm bullets. You will have to address this by perhaps partnering up with a shooting range to offer 9mm pistol handling classes. 

If I were using fear of losing one’s employment to sell an online training course, I might have to offer the first module for free. Once someone knew that it was possible to complete the first module, that person may be more inclined to purchase the full product. 

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Being aware of what your audience can or cannot do is vital to producing engaging copy. Don’t just focus on selling your product via fear. Your job as an entrepreneur is to solve someone’s problem at a profit. 

A complete example. Let’s now do a full model from start to finish. I will use a product that is an online course that teaches people how to become successful Kindle publishers. The idea is for people to build passive income from writing books and publishing on Amazon. This online course requires a complex ad because most people fear writing more than being broke in retirement. How do we solve this problem?

1. Being broke in retirement scares the heck out of people. Most people, especially once they hit age 45 or higher, start to realize they will run out of money in retirement. Social security’s status is unknown and can’t be relied upon in the future. It is not hard to induce fear of retirement in most people because they have been living with anxiety for years. I would just need to tap into it. 

2. My recommendation. My recommendation would be for people to diversify their income by creating royalties from books. I would show them how much I make per month from royalties and reflect on how much I made when I first started. I would also convey how long it takes to write a book. 

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3. My recommendation needs to be perceived as effective to help combat the threat. Creating royalties would need to be effective in assisting the audience in retirement. I would run a copy showing that the average social security check is $2,500. If the person wrote enough books, they could potentially make $1,000 to $2,000 a month. I think most people would find that effective in supplementing their retirement. 

4. The person would need to feel they can perform the recommended action. Fear of writing is the problem I would need to overcome with my copy. People are scared of retirement; however, people are more afraid of writing and releasing books. I would need to ensure that my products and advertising address this issue specifically. 

I would probably have two separate online courses to address the fear of writing and another to teach the Kindle publishing portion. My advertising would need to grab the audience enough to take action. Trust me, everyone wants a beautiful life in retirement, but is that enough to overcome the fear of creating content? That is my problem as an entrepreneur. 

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Welcome to the world of advertising. It is very elaborate because there are usually multiple issues to solve. I think it is safe to say that everyone wants someone to come in and clean their home every week. The problem is the cost of this service. So just leveraging the fear factor may not be enough. The solution has to be effective through the eyes of the audience. 

Our job as entrepreneurs is to solve someone’s problem for a profit. To become an effective advertiser, you need to step into the shoes of your audience. Remember from “New Business? Identify, Target, and Memorize Your Audience” you need to find who your target audience is. How much money do they make? What do they fear, and how much money do they have to solve the problem? 

Once you have those questions answered, start running your copy. Remember, you probably won’t get it right the first time. To me, that’s the fun part of advertising. You can see the results of your advertising, almost in real-time. I will talk more about conversion percentages throughout the series. 

So get out there, learn your audience, and build an advertising campaign. The fear factor will not be influential for every product. I will review many more types of advertising throughout the series, so standby and start being creative. The world needs your voice. 

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Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it.  I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.


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