8 Must Use Social Proof Tactics

Teaser Alert!

Get excited, yes it’s okay. You love cookies and we are about to give you a delicious one. You are going to be served a whole plate of pocial proof knowledge.

If your eyes pop out of your head we won’t judge you.

By now you’re probably familiar with the concept of social proof or otherwise termed influence marketing. We are all subject to it whether we are aware of it or not.

Most commonly we saw it growing up watching late night TV. That’s when you woke up after forgetting to set the sleep timer and got wrapped into an hour long cat exercise infomercial.

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I now have a perfect understanding of why people are obsessed with cats. 🙂

More likely, you got sucked into P90x or perhaps a Thigh Master product demonstration. Nevertheless, what were the commonalities between these types of programming?

First and foremost, the portrayal was that real people were having success losing weight. There were plenty of before and afters, tears, and testimonials of life changing efforts.

What was the result? By the end of the program you had laughed, cried, and sworn that you could do it too for 5-easy payments of $29.95. But only if you call in the next 10-minutes!

I hated that part, do you really think I’m an idiot? I guess the answer is yes… The results didn’t lie, how many millions of dollars do you think Beach Body has done with P90x? The answer is well over $250 million. The social proof is in the pudding!

Customer Testimonials are just one example of social proof, you might be asking where the rest of these ‘must use’ tactics are. Well, stay tuned my friend because that is just around the corner.

Let’s first remember and reflect on how some of these advertising mediums are arguably becoming less and less effective at delivering content to interested audiences (even content with great social proof). T

he interruption marketing models of the past are having to adapt to a digital world where people are becoming ever so much harder to reach. That’s where the the opportunity rests and why we are in the paid search management business.

People are comfortable making online purchases, fraud departments make it almost risk free. So where do they go to research and make purchasing decisions? Yep, the internet.

Wouldn’t it make sense to place relevant ads in places where consumers were looking to make a purchase? Wouldn’t it be great if after they clicked on an ad that it went to a very specific landing page with multiple forms of social proof?

Yes! This is when we retire that old media budget focused on ineffective interruption advertising methods like: Radio, TV, Directories, and Billboards. Time to make the move to a more trackable and data driven method, Pay Per Click.

Now that PPC is sounding like a sexy fun time, let’s ask ourselves how we can improve our chances to win over that potential customer when they arrive with a very specific need. I now give you the “3 Must Use Social Proof Tactics”, we’ve already discussed tactic #3 Customer Testimonials.

Let’s start from the beginning…

1) Social Follower Count

Have you ever been impressed by how many likes or followers someone had?

It makes you wonder, “What makes this person/company so special?”, but it adds credibility. This can be used on a landing page to legitimize your product or service. Why would thousands of people like something so crappy? The answer is, they wouldn’t!

2) Proof in Numbers

I’ve downloaded all types of content before. Ebooks, white papers, case studies, all of them require some level of credibility presented, for me to trust that I’m getting good information.

Through the decision making process I’m asking myself if I really want to give out my information. If I find the information valuable enough and I trust it, the decision becomes easy.

Adding a dynamic running total of how many times your content had been downloaded or liked makes the consumer feel like they are in good company. An offline example of this would be McDonalds. If 70 million happy people are served daily, then why wouldn’t I be the next? Big Mac please!