Some words on how to use Reverse Pyschology and Fear in Marketing

Fear turtle - Fear turtle, expresses fear
Belgium
January 13, 2008 7:22pm CST
A very succesfull way of getting people to read your blog or buy your product is to induce fear. Fear is a very strong emotion and people are extremely responsive to it. People who experience fear act in a non-rational way and sometimes that is exactly what marketeers want to exploit. When we think of what scares us while being on the internet it's viruses, identity theft, spy-ware, Trojans, scams ...etc. No wonder that you see a lot of a software that is being sold is geared towards preventing what we are scared off, spy-ware, viruses and so on. Now you can also use this strong emotion to get traffic to your blog or to make people sign up for your product or service. Many people have been using this very successfully. Write an article or blog-post with an headline called "XXXXX SCAM!!! " were xxxxx is the product or service you wish to promote. When people see 10 headlines about product XXXXX were one is title scam no matter if it's number one or 10 on the page, the user will check out the one with the word scam. After all the last thing they want is getting scammed. The rest of your article of course will be focused on explaining how it's not a scam as some people may think and to put the mind of the reader at rest so he or she can safely buy or use that product or service. But you could also explain people about a true scam just to draw traffic to your blog where it's not that product you want to sell but where you would like to use that bad product to your advantage. Or you could use reverse psychology to warn people to not look at those disgusting nude pictures of this or that celebrity knowing that this will cause a lot of people to just do the opposite. How many people click on a link that says "DO NOT CLICK THIS", you'd be amazed. Psychology and knowing how people respond is a very important skill to have as a online marketeer.
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2 responses
• Australia
14 Jan 08
Excellent post, the whole psychology thing is how Internet Marketers make a lot of money - another variation is to actually use the headline Who else wants....., or DOn't get left behind.... This sort of marketing needs to be recognized for what it is, but there is no harm in using it if you have a product that can back up your actions
• Belgium
14 Jan 08
Yes a lot of selling is to actually use or abuse if you wish certain emotions, not only fear but also other emotions can be used together with it. To play on "the sense of belonging" for example, people like to be part of something thinking it will be beneficial to them mix this with fear and you have exactly what you are referring to. Another trick is the duration of offers in time, by limiting the offer in time you induce fear of missing an opportunity, thereby making people wanting to buy quickly and irrantionaly out of fear to miss that chance.
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• Belgium
14 Jan 08
Yes if you have a little understanding about webtechnology you can find many things that are used to deceive people going from Javascript counters, to totally useless software that is being sold to make people believe they can get their blogranking up.
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@mizrae (587)
• United States
14 Jan 08
A friend of mine uses the word "scam" in promoting one of his programs and says he has had more traffic to this site than any other he has made! Unfortunately, this practice does work!
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• Belgium
3 Mar 08
Understanding human behaviour can make you rich on the internet
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