Social proof is a concept where people won’t engage with you until others do.
New things make people nervous. People will wait to see what others think.
But then when the social proof is in—the customers like what they’re receiving—the avalanche will start as people accept that the product is being widely adopted and they too should participate.
The psychology is really based on three things in this example:
- People are simply uncertain of whether it’s a good thing or not: When there is no social proof, people don’t know if the product is any good or not. They wait for others to test the waters, then they jump in.
- People are looking for a similarity bias: If people with the same values and ideas are buying something, then they feel it’s a good thing to investigate and inquire about.
- Momentum effects: The faster proof accumulates, the more compelling it seems, and so velocity of social proof can generate a FOMO—and viral spread.
Avalanche building tactics
Tactics to implement | Implementation example |
Testimonials | Include real reviews from real people on every page. |
Live counters | You can show metrics of visitors or purchasers |
Social media feeds | Create a place for customers / members / casual observers to engage with you and the products. |
Case study library | Put on free events, and document them so larger audiences can view what’s going on |
Scaling your social proof
- Automated testimonial collection
- Send customers links to fill out testimonials for your business.
- Dynamic website displays
- Use platform plug ins to surface testimonials to your website.
- Peer generated content
- Encourage your users to create content and syndicate it on your social or web properties so people can see it
- Multichannel syndication
- While you may have a single landing page for your customers either on a website or on social media, you may wish to syndicate content onto other platforms to funnel people across.
- Share proof snippets across email footers, social media posts, in-course dashboards, and webinar intros, each reinforces the others.
Conclusion
Social proof is necessary for trust and engagement with your product. By showcasing real testimonials, live metrics, social media engagement, and case studies you can go some way to fulfilling this desire.