My friend said you're good: The Social Proof about Social Proof

Two options:

1. A seemingly amazing product that could revolutionize your life, only that no one else has confirmed if it actually has.
2. An okay product that makes your life better, but most of your peers think it’s amazing.

Which one would you pick? If you pick the first, you’re a trailblazer. Most people don’t take that kind of risk. Most of such people are your customers.

As humans, we're intrinsically tuned to want to belong to a community. We want to do things that make us a part of the community we identify with. We want to take calculated risks. X product may or may not work for us, but if it’s worked for people like us, we can try it out.

‘Influencer’ marketing isn’t new. We have continued to seek advice and reviews from those around us. When we take a risk, we’re usually the outlier. First-mover advantages are celebrated after, and only if, they’ve been successful. After all, why go on the new path when the old one works just as well?

Social Proof is essentially a third party, unbiased proof that is outside the claim a company can make. This goes way beyond pure business—you want your friends to like your partner even if you know how amazing they are!

Why is Social Proof important for your business?

1. It helps your potential customers rationalize their decisions and convince themselves that your product is worth their time and money.
2. It puts you in the league of been there, done that. Your potential customers can trust your solutions because you’ve shown results in the past. You’re backing up the benefits with proof.
3. It tells them that others like them trust your solution. They’d be missing out on something that their community believes is useful to advance the quality of their life.
4. It also makes you credible and helps your customers trust you. Digitally, we have no way of ascertaining not only if you’d be the right solution but also that you won’t take us for a swing. Social Proof assures us that you enjoy some form of respect in our community, even if we don’t know everyone in the community.

Unlike many, many other things a business does for outreach, some form of social proof will always be required. The uniqueness of social proof as a marketing agent is that no matter where the world goes from here, it won’t change how we interact with social proof. If your customer is motivated to test your solution, they are going to seek social proof out—it’s best if you hand it out to them strategically.

What are the kinds of social proofs you can provide?

1.    Case Studies – Case studies help a customer self-select if your solution is right for them or not. You’re able to show the before, during, and after in the life of a similarly placed person or business. It also helps you establish empathy—the potential customer knows that you understand their problem and can give the right solution. You can also use headlines from the case study as reviews and testimonials. Case studies work best for customers who want a deep dive into the exact workings of your product. Case studies are fantastic ways of supporting the claimed benefits of your products. Without this, your benefit is just a vague expectation you’ve set for your product to meet.

2.    Customer Interviews – Interviews are case studies that have been turned over their heads. With case studies, you talk about your product and get inputs from the customer. In an interview, your customer talks about your product. An ideal interviewee would be someone who reflects your target market and has the time to commit to the interview. It’s ideal to avoid questions that ‘lead’ the interview; instead, let the customer determine the direction of their experience. Some good questions to ask are: what was their situation when they decided to seek your solution? (establishes the context and emphasizes pain point); what was their purchase experience?; what was the impact on their life? (avoid putting words in their mouth); what are the results they’ve been able to achieve in the time they’ve worked with you or used your solution? (to show results)

3.    Reviews and Testimonials – These are headliners. What’s the one key message from a case study or customer interview that can convince a potential customer of the importance of your product? When you have limited time (and/or space) to give out such information, reviews, and testimonials work well. If you have a product that might require a customer’s deep dive, use this headliner as an invitation for the customer to be convinced in the first go, and then deep dive into how you actually get the solution to work.

4.    Data – Expertise sets you apart. It helps you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Whether this data is research you (or your company) did, or data from external sources, backing up your claims with solid proof tells a customer that there is a good reason for a solution like this to exist. It also shows them that you have done your background research before coming up with your solution.

5.    Endorsements – This is just another word for using social influence to add credibility to your business and product. If someone your customers anyway look up to endorses a product, it builds a recall value in the minds of your potential customers.

6.    Recommendations and Referrals – Closer home, if people in our first or second-degree connections recommend something to us, we’re more likely to at least try it out, even if it is just to stay in the good books of our family and friends.

7.    Earned Media -– Getting recognized by the press or industry experts adds another layer of trustworthiness. If people at the top of the industry trust you, we’d be a fool not to!

8.    Security Boosters – These are top-ups that add an extra layer of credibility to your offering. Things like 30-Day Moneyback Guarantee, 2 Year Warranty, etc. are used to convince a customer that they are in safe hands and their spending is risk-free.

Where to include social proof?

We use social proof to help a customer jump over any obstacle they might face or to eliminate a pain point. Where are they most likely to be reluctant to trust you? These are places where social proof needs to go. I’d definitely recommend having them with profile matching, benefits, and purchase decisions to make it easier for the customer to take the leap of faith.

What you do want to make sure that the nature of the social claim you provide is proportionate to the context of the obstacle. You also want to ensure that you cater to customers who don’t want a lot of details, and those that do want to deep dive.

What are the common mistakes to avoid when including social proof?

The common mistakes to avoid are:

1.    Not choosing reviewers who’d be your ideal customers;

2.    Not displaying social proof in a manner that is accessible credible;

3.    Not using it to support specific claims—each proof should be able to give away a key message; and

4.    Not contextualizing to the obstacle the customer has to overcome.

Some interesting ways of displaying social proof:

1. Basecamp

I found out about Basecamp last week and they've quickly become one of the top 5 companies I would go back to and understand how to do business from. Notice some key features:

• They support their claim with headline testimonials — notice the language is extremely relatable and intuitive. It doesn’t talk about the details of the product, just how the experience of using it is. Anyone can understand the headline, even if they don’t yet understand how Basecamp works.
• They paint a picture – they tell you what your life is before Basecamp (i.e., now), and what your life can become if you start using Basecamp.
• They ask you to try it. You don’t have to purchase it. You just need to dip your toes in the water.
• They tell you how many companies signed up in the last 7 days. Interesting observation — this does not mean that these many companies paid for Basecamp’s services. This also does not talk about how many stopped using it. The number actually mentions how many were willing to try it out – whether or not they actually liked it, we don’t know. But what it does do is make you think if X number of people tried it, why should I not?

2. HubSpot

Signing up for a newsletter is a super-low effort investment. You only need to give them your email address and some space in your inbox. That's why the kind of social proof given is fairly low-effort as well. X number of people get this email. Whether they read it or not, we don't know. You don't need to verify this claim—if you don't like the emails, just unsubscribe.

3. Zerodha

Zerodha is one of the Indian businesses I look up to — one of the few completely bootstrapped, sustainable, and scalable businesses India has witnessed, and a market leader at that.

Zerodha's largest stock brokerage tag comes from the number of people who are using the platform. This single screengrab tells you the number of customers, the press coverage, and the industry awards, all in one place. Further, all of these surrounding the areas Zerodha enables your investments in. It's a clever way of denting customer psychology.

Zerodha's rise to fame has also been through recommendations and organic growth. I don't remember seeing any paid ads to acquire new customers. (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

All said and done, social proof without a great product is building a castle on clouds. You do need to have a solid product-solution fit, a market fit, and channels that allow for a seamless experience, in order to have rock-solid social proof.

I’m currently upskilling in digital psychology, persuasion, and neuromarketing through the CXL Institute.