How to do Social Proof Right — Digital Psychology and Persuasion Review

We as humans are hard-wired to do what others are doing. When we see a big line of people we think that this thing is certainly high in quality that’s why there are a lot of people in line for this. This is called Social Proof and today we are going to discuss the findings from CXL’s Digital Persuasion and Psychology mini degree.

Almost everyone in the online world knows this term and they have tried to use it in their marketing efforts as well. Sometimes it worked but sometimes it didn’t, today we will talk about how to correctly implement social proof.

You will have seen many different forms of Social Proof and the following pointers can help you win with Social Proof

• Social proof can be far more powerful than threats. According to an experiment by Cialdini instead of threatening people to pay taxes an addition of a single line “Most people in Austin Pay taxes on time” and this single line was more powerful than threats that were used before and this resulted in a 9 billion dollars increase in tax collection.
• Instead of showing a generic number, try to show the actual amount e-g “Become a part of Facebook Group of 13,211 members” instead “Become a part of Facebook Group of 13,000 members”
• Personalize the Social Proof as much as possible e-g if the tax was being collected in Austin, Cialdini wrote the copy as “Most people in Austin Pay taxes on time” instead of “Most people in Texas Pay taxes on time”
• As we have all heard that a photo is equal to 10,000 words and a video can be equal to 10,000 photos. The most powerful social proof is photos and videos.
• Use the most important metrics in your social proof e-g “10,543 people liked the video” instead of “77,989 people viewed the video” people don’t care about how many people viewed your content they care about how many people viewed and liked your content.
• There are some niches where social proof can prove to be negative and can decrease your conversion rate e-g luxury items, arts, and crafts, etc. In these niches, people are usually looking for uniqueness and social proof can give them the impression of being part of a herd instead of uniqueness.

How to start with Social Proof?

Every word on your landing page should be either reinforcing the motivation of your customers. So where does social proof stand? If you are showing your monthly traffic stats on your product page. Is it going to be beneficial? No.

The purpose of social proof should be to reduce people’s fears and anxieties related to your product, so before jumping into Social Proof. Start with working on the fears and anxieties of your customers and then search for reviews that are addressing those fears and anxieties.

There are 6S when it comes to social proof

Sum it:

This is about your decision of how many reviews/ratings you should be showing on your product page. Your design should not look cramped up after too many testimonials or it shouldn’t pull away from the spotlight from your main USP.

Score it:

What kind of score you are going to use for your social proof? Percentage? Ratings out of 5? Ratings out of 10?

Say it:

What type of social proof are you going to use? Is it going to be a webinar? Podcast review? Testimonials? Video Testimonials? Audio Testimonials?

Sign it:

These are the details apart from the actual review or testimonial including the name of the person who said it, the Company logo, any badges, date, stamp, etc.

Show it:

How are you going to visually show your score? A star rating? Avatars? Thumbs up?

Shine it:

This part is about shining your social proof. Presenting it on the most important pages and using the colors that do compliment it but not stealing the whole attention from the main CTA.

Following this, process you’ll be able to make sure that you have the perfect amount of social proofs available on your product page and at a perfect ratio to other blocks. As we have discussed above that the social proof should just answer the fears and anxieties of the customer and should reinforce their motivation.

Certain elements make social proof most effective. This can also be said to be CRAVENS.

Credible: The credibility/Authenticity of social proof is one of the most important features of social proof. If you are using self-written social proof with generic names like John Doe. No one is going to believe that these are actual reviews and this kind of review is going to hurt you instead of improving your conversion rate because your customers will know that you lied and maybe you are lying about the quality of your products too.

Relevant: If you are showing completely irrelevant social proof to a customer, you are just adding unnecessary stuff to your landing page and your conversion rates will take a major hit.

Attractive: In this context, attractive doesn’t mean beautiful or well designed. It means how emotionally triggering it is. Is it emotional enough that it will persuade people to click on that purchase button? As we have already discussed that a social proof should reduce customers’ fear and anxiety. If you are successful in that with a little bit of push from the other content of the page you can easily drive the customer to the conversion.

Visual: The visual representation of the social proof matters a lot whether you are showing your social proof in the form of a graph, simple graphic, image, a video, etc. matters a lot. The visual of the social proof needs to be relevant to your website.

Enumerated: The social proof could be quantifiable e-g ratings, percentages, scores, etc. This will provide you with an instant trigger from the old brain. When our brain sees a rating of 5 stars, It automatically goes to the conclusion that this is a very trustworthy product that’s why its rating is 5 stars.

Nearby: The proximity of your review. Don’t use the social proof you collected from south Asia on a product page that is being sold to a Texas audience.

Specific: The description and detail of the social proof should be to the point and should be addressing the solved pain points of your customer.