Fear of Leaving

September 5, 2008

No, this is not about co-dependency and relationships.

I have had the experience recently of several situations where people kept paying money because they were afraid of losing what they had, even though they were not using it to the full extent. This is interesting if you think about it. Can you offer some kind of preferred membership that keeps a reoccuring revenue coming in that people will not want to lose?

Example #1

Cell Phones - I found that I was not using all my minutes every month and I’d banked many thousands of minutes. I could change plans, but I would lose most of my banked minutes. Even though I was never using those minutes, I was also afraid to give them up - I’d already paid for them. Finally I did make the switch - but many months after I should have.

Example #2

New Pricing - I just got off the phone with a guy that has an aWeber account. He is still on their old pricing plan even though they have increased the price. He will probably never change the plan or cancel it because he now feels like he has a fantastic deal.

Example #3

I was in a blog publishing network where I could publish articles to thousands of blogs. I liked the service and I thought some of my clients might find it useful, but to pay what I was paying just for me was not worth it. So I thought about it for months and finally did cancel it. But I was afraid of losing it because I kept thinking that a client might want it, and the group was closed for new members.

In all of those cases, you can see that people were paying for something that they did not want to stop having but could also not really justify as an expense. It is just food for thought. Is there a way to make people afraid of losing your service?

- Thank You!

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Internet Marketing