Top 5 Ways to Use Social Proof to Boost your Sales

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon which digital marketers use as a tactic to improve CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) by helping worried minds of customers.

In general, the more people perform certain actions (buying a service or product), this creates a high influence on society or a particular group of people. Likewise, search engines rank high those with high social proof such as tweets on Twitter.

Social proof is indispensable for an online business, an eCommerce website or brand to gain widespread visibility across the Internet.

• It makes you visible.
• It helps you generate more revenue.
• It makes you stand out of the crowd.

Therefore, I’m going to share the top 5 ways to use social proof to boost your sales.

Rest assured: They are tried-and-tested, and they will bring desired results for you.

Let’s start...

Related: 14 Examples of How to Use Social Proof in Marketing

1. Display testimonials on your website

Displaying testimonials on your website is a great way of showing customers’ shouts-outs.

While gathering testimonials, make sure that you’re highlighting all the pain points of your buyer personas.  Many of your prospects look at your testimonials to find the element of relatability.

It will be better to feature customers from all demographics and varying buyers’ personas to attract qualified leads. Because relying on just limited type of testimonials won’t help you reach of credibility and worth which you deserve.

Example:

At the bottom of the landing page, Slack has included logos of prominent and well-known customers i.e. AirBnB, Ameritrade, Intuit, AutoDesk, and Target. It is a form of expert user proof When one knows that such great organizations are benefitting from Slack, that customer will most likely feel more driven to try Slack in his organization.

2. Share milestones

To be grateful to users and follower milestones is another quick way to create social proof. Celebrating when you’ve reached the milestone is a fun occasion. It is a great time to be thankful to people who helped you to achieve your goal.

Below are some of the examples of milestones you can celebrate with your audience:

• When you’ve reached X users.
• When you’ve reached X customers.
• When you’ve reached X downloads of your app.
• When you’ve reached X followers on your social media profiles
• When you’re engaged in anniversaries
• A brand can share its stories of financial and emotional contribution to the betterment of society on social media platforms. 

Example:

3. Mention the size of your customer base in your bio

Well, if you want to boost sales with solid social proof, then you should the size of your customer base in your profile bi, luckily enough, if you already have a large customer base, it will definitely help in your favour. Mentioning the size of your customer base in your bio is one good example of crowd social proof. Because when people see that many others are using the same product of yours, they will most likely to get a positive first impression of that specific product.

Not just the size of your customer base, there are a few other stats you can mention:

• You can mention the number of countries your companies serve or your customers are (e.g. in 100+ countries)
• Number of goods sold every day, week, month, or year
• Rating or number of recommendations given ( For example, 100+ 5-Star ratings on Yelp)

Example:

a) Turkish Airlines

Companies like Turkish Airlines and Adobe include the size of their customer base and the number of countries their customers are in their Twitter bio.

b) Adobe

4. Always Be Responsive

Being responsive to your followers on social networking platforms, you enhance your social proof which will help you to drive maximum sales.

Take an example of Facebook, you can choose to show how responsive you’re on Messenger. Likewise, if you provide customer support on Twitter, you can show the time period when you’re most active and responsive.

Actually, this practice encourages people (your followers) to message and connect with you -- knowing that they will get a quick response from you. As a result, it will help you generate more leads for your business.

Here’s how you can set it up for Facebook and Twitter:

- Facebook: Go to your Page settings on Facebook, select the “ Messaging” tab. Now scroll down to “Response Assistant”, and select the best response time that represents how fast you reply to messages. You can also set it to update automatically.

- Twitter: Go to business.twitter.com and set up your Twitter account to be more responsive to your followers. Not only can you set responsive hours but also customize a welcome message when you get direct messages from your followers.

Example:

Especially those businesses with support Twitter account, use this feature. Some use Facebook for a similar purpose. Airbnb is a big example here for Facebook - It is very responsive to messages and Apple Support on Twitter which is available to help followers from 5am - 8pm Pacific.

a) Airbnb

b) Apple Support

5. Display Social Share Count

Showing the number of social share count is helpful for strengthening social proof. People like to give special attention to an article that has been shared greatly.

Same way, lower social share count can have a negative effect as well. People may think that the article or blog isn’t worthy, even if it’s well-written.

Example:

Search engine journal that displays the share count of articles on its blog. With a good number of shares for almost all of their articles, they are able to generate social proof that they are reliable and they share information worthy-mentioning.

Final Words:

Social proof guarantees quick ROI. It consolidates your presence as a reliable source. On top of everything, you gain momentum as a business.

Therefore, if you want to win big; you’ll have to plan and execute big to achieve your targets which you desire most.

By this, not only will you improve but also avail opportunities for growth and increased revenue.

So, these are the top 5 ways to boost your sales with social proof:

1- Share testimonials of happy clients.
2- Mention milestones you achieved.
3- Show your customer base in your bio.
4- Always be responsive.
5- Don’t forget the social share count.

In the end,

If you’ll use these 5 ways tactfully, they are surefire solutions to help you escalate your conversion rate. And, you can improve your online presence for greater viability and effectiveness in your targeted audience. Though social may come in varying sizes and shapes but with these ways which I discussed here, they can help any business get started in marketing and can also help in generating more ideas.

Featured image by Erik Lucatero on Unsplash