Why Clubhouse should continue to use FOMO in order to attract the Gen Z market

You know what psychological principle people hate? The fear of missing out, or FOMO. Let me tell you, Gen Z absolutely hates the idea of FOMO more than any generation. It brings feelings of anxiety, self worth, insecurity, good/bad decision making …(the list goes on), all into play.

This is why Clubhouse needs to continue to use FOMO in order to acquire customers when they launch their new audio-focused social media app. If you haven’t been following VC and startup twitter recently, you probably don’t know about Clubhouse. This is because Clubhouse used a unique strategy where they had a little under 5000 beta testers, where most were VC investors and some celebrities.

One of the pros of only having VC investors as beta testers? You can essentially have a sweepstakes for who is leading your Series A round. In this case A16Z won, leaving Clubhouse with a $100 million pre-launch valuation. Read that again in case you missed it.

One of the biggest components of clubhouse was the human psychology behind the beta testing. Those who were on the app felt important and powerful, they were in an exclusive club that was invite-only. Those who weren’t on the app, were begging for invites, because all we saw were people preaching how amazing it was.

This same principle could be key for Gen Z customer acquisition. Use our own psychological makeup against us. The idea of making Clubhouse a closed community, sort of like a frat or a bar, would result in having gen z kids begging to join.

Once you’ve been able to attract them, keep them waiting. A great idea may be to have people use invite codes just like the beta testers used. Another idea would let people join in waves, maybe 1,000 users a day. The idea that there is a social media app out there that is cool, yet we can’t join, would kill us. Like I said before,we are impatient and when we want something, we want it now. Some people would be practically begging to join.

Clubhouse has lightning in a bottle and the launch will be exciting.

• This was a feature piece in our most recent newsletter. Subscribe here https://www.genzvoice.com/subscribe.

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