In the process of development and advancement of the business, the business owner must always be the one to make informed decisions about the direction of the business. FOMO is one of the main factors affecting shareholders as well as management in planning business strategies of enterprises. So what is FOMO? How big is its influence in business and how can FOMO be eliminated? All will be answered by ENUY through this article.

1. What is FOMO?

FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is a psychological effect that sufferers always tend to fear that they have missed or missed an opportunity, lost something.

FOMO is the feeling that people who are “addicted” to social media often experience when surfing their News Feed. They always feel that everyone has more than them, so although social medias are used to connect people, many people feel jealous and lonely. FOMO causes a lot of negative effects leading to you always feeling unhappy, always anxious, unconfident and leading to disconnection from real social activities and lack of motivation to change themselves.

FOMO effect (Fear Of Missing Out)

2. Case study about FOMO in business management

Mr. Nguyen Duc Tai – CEO of TGDD 2 years ago shared that when he first started, TGDD implemented a management system using technology to build a chain of stores across the country. To evaluate the effectiveness of this system, the company opened a branch in the Tay Nguyen City to select an area far from the inner city. As a result, employees cannot move during the day like in Ho Chi Minh City. In that way, it is possible to evaluate and perfect the management system of TGDD in the best way.

Case study of TGDD

A rival enterprise saw that TGDD opened a branch, thought that this was a good market, and immediately opened a branch in that area. The result is after a short time it had to be closed because it was not effective.

Many large corporations in Vietnam have also fallen into a similar situation. EVN, Hoa Sen invested in real estate; Vinamilk turned to selling coffee; Vingroup poured money into the E-commerce field; FPT wanted to take Finance market;… From private to public enterprises, in the period of economic boom, real estate, finance, banking,… are delicious, easy-to-eat pieces of cake. And even if they don’t have experience or core values in those industries, the “bigs” still want to rush into the fight to grab their own piece of cake.

Therefore, despite their huge potential and great ambition, businesses had to close quickly or changed business models before realizing the risk of losing all their investment.

The new market may be potential and easy to enter, but to win, businesses need to build a sustainable competitiveness, must be the top 1 of the market. Otherwise failure is inevitable and only a matter of time.

3. Building sustainable competitiveness for businesses

When doing business, business owners need to understand the core competitiveness of the business. Unique core values help businesses retain their customers as well as affirm their position in that market. These are values that need to be built continuously over many years and must be continuously researched and improved in terms of performance.

When the business field becomes appealing, it will attract many competitors to enter. If you don’t focus deeply on your core values, your business will become the 2nd, 3rd, and 1000th Nokia… Nokia’s failure is not because its business strategy or technology can’t keep up with the market. It’s simply because Apple has done so well. Because Apple focuses so deeply on smartphones (hardware, software, creating ecosystems), when Nokia realized it, it was too late.

Apple won the war by deeply focusing on core values

That is why many businesses, when leaving their core values, expand the market to other areas that do not have strengths often fail. Despite the initial small success, in the long run, it soon failed to stay in the market.

It is the same story in management, for each enterprise has its core cultural values, good personnel are those who are capable and suitable for the cultural values and situation of the enterprise. Choosing good people but not culturally appropriate like buying a Ferrari but in the countryside, gas money is not enough to support, not to mention the roads are not suitable for a million-dollar Ferrari to promote, it is even worse than a motorbike running around in village road!

4. Overcome FOMO by Snowball principle

Overcome FOMO in business management

To overcome FOMO, business owners need to ask himself:

• What is the goal/mission of the business?
• Who are our targeted customers? Where do we look for them? What do they desire?
• What is our core competencies, USPs?
• How to increase that capacity? What do you focus on for improvement?

When competitors and markets appear new things, it is necessary to ask the following questions:

• WHAT: What are those new products, services, new markets?
• WHY: Why did they do that?
• WHEN: Why do they do it now and not in following 6 months or 1 year ago?
• WHERE: What customer files do they focus on? Where do they do it?
• HOW: How did they do it?

The general point of view is always: We should not copy completely, but should learn from them. We need to measure what we gain and lose if we follow them. Would our existing customer base be more satisfied? If we follow our competitors, what is the basis for us to outdo them?

Much of FOMO comes from the manager’s lack of preparation and effective risk management. As a result, every reaction of the business is passive and always has to follow competitors and the market.

Many big corporations like Amazon, Facebook, Google or Alibaba showed that their expansions were very successful, wins were almost for every time. Of course they had many failed projects but most of them were in the R&D stage, haven’t hit the market yet or be closed very quickly.

The general principle of these “bigs” is that they apply the principle of Snowball. Snowball is a strategy in MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games. This principle states that, if a small snowball rolls from the top of a hill and continues to maintain its path, there will come a time when that snowball becomes huge and unstoppable!

Snowball principle

This strategy is that when your business is in the take-off or growth phase, along with the existing customer base, you continuously increase your core value to keep users. Specifically, increasing LTV for them. Keep a certain customer file intact and exploit all the needs around them. It is important to build and maximize this target customer base. Where are they?, What are their behaviors?, What are their desires?, Why do we choose them as Customer Service?,… When digging deep enough into 1 customer base (1 small snowball) and continue to exploit and supply the requirements around them (keep the track running), then when the business develops and launches a new product, there will be a high win rate (the snowball is down the hill). Therefore, the bigger and bigger the businesses are, the more effective they are!

Thus, the most important activity when starting MKT Pro’s business marketing is always market researching. By thoroughly studying the market and target customer, MKT Pro builds a perfect pre-drawn track for the business snowball. The enterprise now only has to maintain its running track and completely conquer the market.

5. Conclusion

Growing and managing a business is not an easy task. Sometimes there will be risks that the business owner cannot resolve in a short time. In most cases, however, success comes from the right approach, careful research and experimentation, and intense focus, not just luck. Careful preparation is always a solid springboard for businesses to continuously expand and develop without fear of going the wrong way.

Through the above sharing, ENUY hopes that business owners have had an overview of FOMO as well as how to overcome it. ENUY wishes businesses always succeed and thrive on the path you have chosen!