Do you use fear to motivate potential buyers?

“Hearing aids can reduce the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s.”

In the last seven years, the conversations around dementia and hearing loss took off and spread like the coronavirus. It was as if suddenly we had a reason to influence people to buy hearing aids.

This is all about fear-based marketing. When people decide to buy a product to avoid pain, this type of marketing is designed to convert them into taking action they wouldn’t have otherwise taken.

Some people view fear-based marketing as unethical. This depends on what actions we are trying to influence people to take.

Fear-based marketing can be a good thing if we are helping people and wanting to better our society.

But how effective is it when our messaging evokes fear? We need to understand when the effect will do more damage to the brand than anything else.

There has to be truth to the claim.

The campaign claiming that hearing aids can help with dementia is false. No research or studies have been made to prove that hearing aids have such a powerful effect on the brain.

Unfortunately, no one fact-checked when they started making the claim, and now it is widely used and promoted as the truth. This kind of behaviour creates more reasons for distrust.

Using fear in marketing will only work to an extent

Messages meant to scare people into taking action are more likely to work if four things are true:

1. Severity: People believe the threat is very serious.
2. Probability: People think the threat is likely to happen.
3. Efficacy of Response: People feel that the suggested protective action will effectively prevent or reduce the threat.
4. Self-Efficacy: People believe they are capable of performing the suggested action.

So, for a fear-based message to be effective, it needs to convince people that the danger is real, likely, manageable with the recommended actions and that they can actually do what’s needed.

So when we are crafting fear-based messaging like stating dementia as a potential harm, we need to also look at the perspective of people with hearing loss.

How likely do people believe dementia will happen to them? Do they think unaddressed hearing loss leading to dementia is serious enough? Do they think that hearing aids will prevent dementia? And are people able to do something about it, especially when it comes to being able to buy or afford hearing aids?

Don’t use dementia as a tactic for getting people to buy hearing aids

We now know that no evidence or proof exists that hearing aids can prevent dementia. Using messaging in a campaign can do more damage than good.

People might try alternative methods to avoid the treats in unhealthy ways or take action because they can’t believe they can do anything about it.

These incidences can create health gaps among our communities through unintended consequences.