Fear drives profit. Let’s go!
I notice more and more people spreading out fears to cash in profit. When I look at the method, it looks silly. So many people do it, which makes me assume it really works. After all, what is more efficient than fear? What makes you act irrationally and careless about the value a purchased service actually gives you? Fear.
It’s so silly yet so trendy. Some people even do it on autopilot. I opened YouTube and the video of a famous IT guy, seen as a role model, pops up. He starts with: “The crisis is here.” Then explains why it’s better to become a freelancer and how his company can help. Do we really need to use fear to increase sales, just because it’s trendy and we’ve run out of ideas?
Just like we self-educate to spot phishing emails and fake news, we should do the same about fear. It’s manipulation, after all.
There is a big difference between what we are told is good for us and what we think and know is good for ourselves.
A YouTuber I followed, for her creative life and insight into another mindset and freelancing, opened a finance channel. It had lots of valuable hands-on advice until this year when everything changed. Now she makes doom and gloom videos about what are close to be scare conspiracy theories. The direction? An app for investing in gold. And 7.2 million views instead of like 100k. It works. That is why it’s hard to let go.
Using fear to sell is the new “sex sells’. It’s trendy and some don’t mind as long as the bank account is dinging like a casino machine. And what does that tell you? That the service can’t sell itself, so they use something powerful that works. At least for many. Fear.
When you don’t have strong selling points or don’t want to attempt to provide a better quality, to care, you choose the trendy superpower, fear. Act now, the end of the world is here.
Do you remembeeer, rememmmmberrr… Rememmmmmbeeeeeer…. COVID he, he. There fear proved to be an excellent sales method.
To me this, what some people (we know who) rush to call a financial crisis, rings like COVID. Financial crisis, oh, oh, should we run to grab toilet paper? OMG, of course yes! – says the owner of the toilet paper company. Run, don’t walk. Run invest into that crypto app, into that loan, into that gold app and the list goes on. Run and buy now!
I just get flashbacks from the beginning of the COVID pandemic when companies were cramming into my Facebook feed to display ads of solutions to all the trendy fears possible: air purifier, essential oils, toilet paper, anti-COVID talismans, and any other solutions for rumors about healing or preventable products.
Scare them and then make them buy the solutions. Just like in the supermarket, they’ll grab everything. People panic. This time it doesn’t happen at the supermarket, but in our own homes. And there are people taking advantage of that.
Who scares you and what are they subtly selling?
