In Part 1, I wrote about how to use your internal jealousy to pinpoint where you want your goals to be and determine what you want to do in life and business. For this post, I want to examine it from a marketing perspective where you use jealousy to subtly encourage sales and drive FOMO (fear of missing out) among your customers.

Unless you’re a marketer, you’ve probably not thought about marketing psychology tactics. Many times, in social media, you are not advertising once and converting that customer on a sale. In general marketing principles, the average consumer needs to see an ad seven times before committing to a purchase. And this number jumps even more if you have luxury goods. It is important to note that the stat was established before social media came about. So it’s very possible that your ad could be shown an average of three times before conversion.

Ways that businesses harness jealousy among consumers include: limited edition products (a special color or style), flash sales, and creating an in-group of influencers. We often want the lifestyle that someone else has, even if we are aware that it’s a facade. I highly doubt that any influencer out there lives the life that is shown on their Instagram feed. We all have to run errands and deal with friendship crises. But the unglamorous parts of life is not what sells. The best kind of influencer is the one that makes you think that you, too, could live their life if only you had the products. It doesn’t matter if you actually can, it only matters if you could.

So, to execute some of what I mentioned, here are some ideas for you try out for your coffee company. Each of these are doable throughout the year. Many of these ideas also hinge on the hope that customers will post about them on social media and brag in a way that will cause other potential customers to be jealous.

Limited edition products

Even if you’re not a manufacturer, swag is included here as a limited edition product. You can take an existing swag product that you already offer and release a new design on it by working with an illustrator. Turn it into a series with different illustrators and it becomes a collectible item. Or, change up colors and release them in limited quantities. 

Flash sales

Everyone loves a sale and a flash one really drives up the need to buy right now. Mark the discount or sale as even higher than you normally would for a sale and then limit the sale. This can be limited in two ways: number of uses or time.

Number of uses

  • Online sales: “First five customers to enter this code online receive this free gift.”
  • In-person sales: “First 10 people to mention this sale get a free drink.”
  • DM gifts: “First five people to DM will receive this gift!”

Time: Many of these depend on your reach. So if your social media presence is small and/or your audience isn’t very engaged, then you may need to extend the flash deal time.

  • Online sales: “This coupon expires in two hours.”
  • In-person sales: “Buy a drink, get a cookie for the next two hours.”
  • DMs: “Send us a DM while this story is up with your favorite drink and receive a free drink coupon.”

In-group of influencers

This now gets into more influencer marketing territory. To execute this, you need to cultivate a group of influencers that you can send products to ahead of a launch. They then post about it and you have people driving buzz before the product is available. This creates a sense of jealousy among your customers. 

Alternatively, you can time their posts with the same day as your product launch so your digital share of voice is high that day. To make the product even more desirable, turn it into a limited edition item.

I hope some of these ideas help create new marketing campaigns for you! The holidays are a great time to test some of these out.