How to Overcome FOMO in Marketing When Building Buyer Personas

Struggling with FOMO in your marketing strategy? Learn how to overcome FOMO in marketing by using buyer personas to better engage with your target audience and enhance your business growth.

Overcome FOMO in Marketing

If you want to better engage with your target audience, there’s one valuable tool you should consider using: buyer personas. Overcome FOMO in marketing by creating buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your company’s ideal customers based on market research. Rather than marketing to a broad and vague target market, personas allow you to market to a clear and specific audience. This approach helps you find ways to better engage with and relate to the most prominent people in your target audience.

Unfortunately, some companies struggle with the concept of personas—not with their value, but with the quantity of them. This is mainly due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

These business owners or marketing executives think, “Won’t I be losing other potential customers if my limited number of personas don’t allow me to target them?” The answer to this question is no! To overcome FOMO in marketing, remember these seven tips:

Get the Ones Who Care First, and the Rest Will Follow

Why would you try to sell to people who aren’t fully interested in your business when you know others who would love to know more? Your personas tend to represent the types of people who most want and/or need your business.

When you pursue your personas, your ideal consumers are more likely to engage with you and become customers. If they do become customers, they will probably love your company because you’re giving them exactly what they need! When the half-interested people in your target audience see these happy customers, they will be motivated to approach you too. This strategy effectively helps you overcome FOMO in marketing.

Personas Save You Time, Money, and Effort

Those in the dating world know this lesson well: Don’t waste your time pursuing someone who isn’t truly interested in you. If you’re trying to find your perfect match, you can’t waste your time convincing someone you’re right for them. You just need to find the ones who believe that you could be the one and who will respond to your efforts!

Similarly, businesses shouldn’t keep pursuing customers that aren’t very likely to convert. When you pursue only your ideal personas, you avoid wasting time, effort, and money on weary target audience members. As a result, your marketing efforts will produce stellar results. You will get more website visitors, attract more social media engagement, and ultimately generate more leads. This efficiency is key when you aim to overcome FOMO in marketing.

Your Content Will Begin to Shine with Personality

By creating personas, you get to discover common demographic and psychographic traits of your target audience. This information will help you in several ways, such as with writing more personal and relatable content. It’s easier to write website copy, blogs, and other content that your consumers will like when you understand their personality traits and habits.

Knowing your audience on a deeper level can also help make your content ideation process easier, as it can reveal several ways for you to reach unique members of the same audience. When your consumers find your content interesting and applicable, they will undoubtedly engage more.

Being Focused Generates Better Results

When businesses are trying to sell their products and/or services, why do they target a specific audience instead of targeting everyone? Because targeting everyone wouldn’t make sense (that defeats the purpose of targeting!). If you spend all of your time reaching out to everyone, establishing meaningful connections with anyone is impossible.

By narrowing your focus down to those who most resemble your personas, you will have more time to engage with them and tell them about your company—instead of just saying “hello” to everyone. This focused approach is vital when you seek to overcome FOMO in marketing.

Every Once in a While, We All Need a Reality Check

Too often, business owners get carried away with shiny new objects and ideas that they find more interesting than their target audience does. Their newfound excitement makes them want to tweet out a new tool they found useful or write a blog that they think will go viral.

But in reality, nobody cares—not even their target audience. When you have personas to refer back to before hitting the publish button, you can make sure that you’re always on the right track and staying relevant. This regular reality check helps you stay grounded and focused, allowing you to overcome FOMO in marketing.

Knowing the Difference Reveals the Answers

If you’ve ever gone shopping for a puppy, you know that you always want every dog in the store at first because they all seem equally cute and perfect. But as you start narrowing down which one is best for you, the differences between each dog instantly become clear.

Similarly, when you narrow your focus down to three or four personas, the differences between each persona become obvious. This makes you more likely to address the specific needs of each unique persona, instead of always addressing your target audience’s generic problems and providing the same solutions. This differentiation is crucial when you aim to overcome FOMO in marketing.

Just Like Normal People, Your Buyer Personas Can Change

When you create your personas, you aren’t stuck with them for the rest of your life. You can and should update your personas every few months to make sure you’re always targeting the best audience possible.

Factors such as new tools, business growth, and updated market research can alter who you should be targeting. Most marketers are well aware of this, and they will help you update your personas as you go. This flexibility ensures that you continue to overcome FOMO in marketing by adapting to changing circumstances.

Buyer personas can help your business learn how to best connect with its ideal audience. Once your business successfully engages with its target audience, your sales and marketing efforts will certainly pay off. Not only will you gain more profits; you will also gain more lifetime customers that are the perfect fit for your company.

For additional insights on effective marketing strategies, check out Neil Patel’s guide on buyer personas and MarketingProfs’ article on customer journey mapping.

If you need help creating personas for your business, our digital marketing agency StringCan Interactive can help! If you want to learn more, message me or comment below.

I reside in Scottsdale, Arizona with my wife Rachel and our two daughters. As the Founder and CEO of StringCan Interactive, my eighth venture, I lead a strategic digital marketing agency also based in Scottsdale. At StringCan, we are dedicated to helping businesses that aim to improve people's lives expand their digital influence and reach.

Over the years, through successes and setbacks, I've discovered that our professional achievements are deeply intertwined with our personal happiness. True success emerges when our home life flourishes, creating a foundation that allows our business endeavors to thrive. It's a powerful insight that every entrepreneur should embrace.

Inspired by my own journey and the challenges faced by many business leaders, I designed a 4-day family retreat in 2015 to address these pivotal balance issues. The profound impact of this retreat on my life and the lives of others led me to author "FAMILY 2.0: Harness Business Principles to Reboot Your Family in 4 Days." This book offers practical steps for entrepreneurs looking to enhance their family dynamics, thereby reinforcing the strength and stability of their businesses.