FOMO as a described concept has been around for a long time now and in terms of social media and digital marketing and engagement it’s been around for about 15 years.
Of course, It’s not ran away because the tools with which you can apply FOMO to a greater population only get more and more powerful and therefore the effect potentially gets stronger and stronger (until it breaks).
Recently, I’ve had two really clear examples of this squeezing into my life where the toxic FOMO effect has been applied to try to define people’s behaviours to make money or increase status.
Firstly, I was contacted by a digital marketing company (I use company in the loosest possible sense as it’s a classic start-up digital venture with 3 guys and a computer). I got introduced to these guys through a personal contact and by a roundabout road and then received an email explaining to me that they’d had a look at my website and it really was time that I had a digital consultation to try and improve various metrics that other dentists (named in the email) had done really well and wasn’t I aware of the fact that I was lagging behind?
What the company were trying to sell me was pay per click advertising (PPC), obviously clearly unaware of the work that we’ve done extensively on PPC in the past and the research we carried out while collecting return on investment numbers for PPC in our business.
We did PPC over 5 years ago with about as much effect in this to our client group as the back of the bus and the radio adverts and the adverts at the gym which we’ve also done.
It doesn’t matter to the guy from the digital marketing company though, all that was clear from his second email was that I wasn’t to speak to my own marketing team as they would be upset by the concept of being investigated by an external group and I should just speak to him. That’s a great strategy because it means that he can put the fear on me individually without me referencing it against somebody else who might give me a reality check.
All that matters here is that I get anxious about the fact that the guy down the road is doing better PPC than me and therefore I go to them to let them manage my PPC because I’m too busy doing dentistry to manage it myself.
For anybody who knows anything about PPC you will know that it is a lot of diminishing returns. The option that exists in the marketplace of PPC means that, inevitably, you will start to pay the same for less results or more to stay still.
That’s all good if your business is growing dramatically but when you reach the inevitable situation where consolidation is required, you have a real difficult choice to make. Increase your marketing spend to stay still or maintain your marketing spend and go down.
Applying the concept of the Disney plus launch to a small dental practice in Basingstoke is not comparable but still the FOMO works, and the investment happens.
Small digital marketing companies like this rely on the fact that dentists don’t understand the first thing about return on investment in marketing and they’re able to strip them for cash while explaining that any patient who turns up to the practice is now as a result of the work done with said company.
Needless to say we kindly declined the offer of a partnership with a company which at the present time has no website and has a twitter feed that is following 27, has 3 followers and has never posted!!
The second experience with FOMO across the same time though was when one of my great friends contacted me to ask me about a new clinical procedure that he was seeing a lot (obviously on social media) and wondered if myself or any of the little group that we have together to talk about these things is actually undertaking this.
I’m glad to say that the instant response from the group was to get off the FOMO bandwagon and stop being educated on social media!
We discussed three individual procedures and products that are making the rounds at the moment on social media and why none of us are using any of them.
I reflected on this again, trying to make sure that I’m not blinkered and that I’m not just anti-social media education for the sake of it.
In the past 15 years or so since I got my first iPhone and my first MacBook air and began to enter the world of this new tool called Facebook, I can think of no circumstance at all where the influence of Facebook or any other social media platform has altered my clinical practice.
I do remember many instances where I’ve seen things on social media platforms and for a second wondered why I wasn’t doing them or why I was falling behind.
All the innovations that have been made in my clinical practice including IFAL, the provision of crown construction for aesthetic cases, altered bone grafting protocols, altered block grafting protocols, changes in the way I do sinus grafts, changes in the design of implants that I use for specific incidences, any aspects of CBCT, any aspect of guided surgery, any aspects of any other part of my dentistry; has not come from watching people on social media showing how good they are and creating a fear in me that means I have to adopt a new clinical practice next week to keep up with the status quo.
We learn by collaboration, input of information and reflection.
We learn in safe places where it’s alright to ask daft question and where it’s alright to feel foolish because there is part of a subject that you don’t know or understand (we all live there a lot of the time).
Finding areas where it’s possible to learn like that becomes more and more difficult as people ‘peacock’ around, trying to create FOMO to scare people into paying them money for products.
Learning to identify the FOMO is perhaps one of the greatest things you can learn, and you won’t find out how to do that on social media.
If you’re interested in finding out about how return on investment effects marketing in implant dentistry and how to save as much money as you can on marketing while getting the maximum effect, you might want to think about our business course which starts in March and the details are here!
Blog Post Number - 2639
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