What is Social Proof?
In the marketing arena, we can know social proof simply is all about using the idea of human masses and their views, to create positive connections around your brand. So, why we should know about social proof? Basically, social proof is something that will affect the psychology of consumers and have an impact on their decision to purchase or not. In fact, Statistical studies show that when it comes to hearing peer reviews about a product/service as opposed to a company’s description about the same product and service; consumers are 12x more likely to buy. That’s a huge impact.
#1 Building a Community with Comments
This is a great strategy to build your own community. Comments and talking with customers will help you create a strong relationship with them. This also a simple way to engage with people interested in doing business with you. Always keep in mind that nothing sells better than the consumer knowing that other people are talking about your product in a positive manner, and it influences their decision to a large extent.
#2 The Product Reviews
Product reviews, there always is something that customers pay attention to when shopping, especially when shopping online. Read the product review is the way that consumers can get the most objective review of the product they are interested in.
Let’s take a look at the app store, the apple app store takes the concept of social proof a step further, by using app ratings to decide in what order apps are listed. The same holds true for search results – if I’m looking for an app to help me listen to music, apps with higher ratings will show up at the top of my search result, which is automatically an incentive for me to open them up, and maybe even, hit download!
However, to get the best results, be sure that you will give your customers the best user experience and the best products to get the highest product rating.
#3 The Social Media
Social media now is a hot marketing channel for businesses. Social media is where you can reach and interact with a lot of people. Imagine the impact of social media like Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest when someone tag/tweet your brand’s name into their status/post. It will make your brand more widely known.
So, displays the sharing buttons on your site to help people can easy to share your product in their network or give them the option to follow you on different social networks is a great way to start building your social proof on social media. In fact, displaying those numbers actually of like/share/tweet or follow can increase your conversions. But the medals always have the reverse; displaying low stats can actually hurt you because people tend to use that as a measure of how much they can trust your product. However, there will have no problem if you use it in the right way.
#4 Using SEO as a Proxy for Social Proof
The higher position in search results will bring to you more traffic, but do you believe that optimizing for higher positions is another way of having a social proof-driven strategy? My answer is YES because higher search rankings automatically lead searchers to believe that you have enough traction and enough trust, then they will click to your site. Optimizing for SEO is good at all, it’s like you can shoot 2 targets with just one bullet.
#5 Displaying Statistics on Product Adoption
This also works like when you showing your social media stats. Displaying Statistics on Product Adoption will help strengthen the trust of your customers. For example, having a simple element on your landing page that displays how many users have signed up for your product helps a lot, so the other people will look at that and they will see how many people trust your product.
But the same like social media, there also have a disadvantage here if you have a new product and displaying a small number won’t really help much. Then now, displaying short testimonials will be another way that brings greater effect. Always use the numbers that on your side.
#6 Logos – Who Do You Already, Work With?
Displaying client logos will lend greater credibility to your work. That’s right! Display the logos of your clients or other companies as partners and showcasing the fact that you work with them; it’s a great way to convince customers.
#7 Media Mentions
Being featured in media publications is a great marketing strategy and it also an effective way to promote your brand and your products. Moreover, it’s a good way to create social proof-after all, at the same time. Try to feature in a media outlet and displaying logos linked to those write-ups on your landing page.
Source @vwo.com