This is the second post in a series of articles that will help you avoid scams and invest your time and money into legitimate business opportunities. You can find the whole series in the Business Scams section.
Emotional Triggers
Triggering an emotional response is a common advertising technique. People can be convinced to do almost anything if their emotions are controlled. The two emotions most commonly targeted by scammers selling fake business opportunities are fear and greed.
Before I go any further I should point out that legitimate businesses also attempt to trigger the emotions of potential customers through advertising, just as scammers do. Legitimate advertisements would be pretty bland if all they contained was basic information.
When an advertisement for a business opportunity uses emotional triggers it does not necessarily mean that the business is illegitimate. However, when the triggers are used excessively or dominate the advertisement, they become a strong indication that the business opportunity on offer is a scam.
Fear
Fear is a powerful emotion that has been used to control people for hundreds of years. When you are fearful of a situation you are more likely to make quick, irrational decisions. If you are afraid of something, you will act in a way that will take away the fear.
Marketers are well aware of this concept. Advertisements for bogus business opportunities which are designed to fill you with fear often use lines such as:
- Are you having trouble paying your bills?
- Could you be fired from your job?
- Join now or miss out forever!
Questions and statements such as these incite fear. No one likes the thought of not being able to pay their household bills and being chased by debt collectors.
Many people have careers in which they have invested many years of study and work. Losing their job would be devastating both financially and emotionally.
And of course no one likes to miss out on an opportunity, particularly if everybody else is (supposedly) making money from it.
Greed
Greed is another emotion that is commonly targeted by fraudsters to trick people into investing in scam businesses. Greed is an emotion that we all have and it can be easily manipulated.
The main purpose of starting a business is to make money. An advertisement for a legitimate business opportunity will often include an indication how much money can be made. Claims made by advertisements for legitimate businesses will usually seem reasonable and possibly underwhelming.
Scammers, on the other hand, will attempt to trick you into making a decision based on greed. Examples of lines commonly used to trigger greed include:
- Become a millionaire!
- Get rich!
- Incredible profits!
- Make money effortlessly!
- Quit your job!
Bogus businesses will usually quote numbers to make the outlandish claims seem real. These could be hourly rates such as “make $200 an hour” or monthly totals such as “make $5,000 to $10,000 a month”.
Some fraudsters even claim that they have made millions of dollars and disguise their fake claims by quoting specific numbers rather than round numbers. Claims such as “last year I made $2,897,456″ look more believable than “last year I made $3,000,000″.
Quoting numbers is a common technique for triggering greed and often there is no evidence to back up the claims.
Fear + Greed
When greed and fear are triggered at the same time the scammer will have almost total control over their target. A cleverly written advertisement can build up fear and greed slowly without you even noticing it.
Next time you are evaluating a business opportunity, gloss over statements designed to trigger your emotions and instead spend your time evaluating the underlying business. Disregard outlandish claims and perform proper due diligence to reduce the chances of losing money by investing in a fake business.
Read the next post in the series Part 3 – Time Pressure
Read the previous post in the series Part 1 – Products and Services
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