Social proof is based on the idea that people will conform to the norms set by those they respect in order to be liked or approved by them.
If someone you respect is using a product, it is a form of social proof that the product is good. This is especially effective if you see them using it on the landing page or pricing page, as it gives you a sense of the product’s popularity or userbase.
If you see that a product has helped another company with a similar challenge, you may be more likely to want to try it yourself.
Start by using the sources of social proof that you already have available to you, then work to get more.
1. Customer testimonials
Testimonials can be written or video testimonials, and they usually include the following recommended items:
- If you want to acquire social proof for your landing page, you can ask your clients and customers for their comments, feedback, and experiences with your offer.
- If you want to appear credible to your visitors, use the real names of real people. This will help you create a landing page with good social proof.
- When creating testimonials for your website, try to use real images of your real customers instead of stock photos. This will help you appear more genuine and will improve the user experience on your landing page.
- If you want potential customers to better understand how your product or service can help them in their job, include a testimonial from someone with a relevant job title and company.
The use of personalized, unique testimonials on a landing page is a good way to invite new customers and provide social proof.
2. Case studies
We recommend that you showcase your previous successes to your visitors and demonstrate what you can do for them. Stats and customer data can be very convincing, and seeing this proof of concept for yourself can be very illuminating.
You can use case studies and test results on your landing page to show social proof and increase the likelihood of acquiring customers.
If a company’s working model is mentioned in the case studies, this will give prospects a glimpse of how it works. This not only creates a sense of trustworthiness around the brand, but also has an indirect endorsement effect that is key on social proof landing pages!
3. Reviews and ratings
There are several different types of reviews that you can find online, including ratings, consumer comments, and rankings.
A review is different from a testimonial in that it is a piece of quantifiable feedback from your consumers, such as a rating, or qualitative feedback from your customers that goes over the pros and cons of your product or service in comparison to similar offerings.
4. Trust icons
There are many ways to show that your site is secure. You can use badges, seals, certifications, or even a link to your privacy policy to show that your site is secure.
Choose the icons, badges, seals, and certs for your industry carefully. If they are tested properly, they can help give your audience a sense of security without using too many words.
5. Integrations
This feature is useful if you have a company that offers software as a service or other services that integrate with other tools.
Since visitors know that integrating software requires engineering and cooperation from both parties, integration icons can be a credible source of social proof for SaaS brands.
If you connect your services to platforms that your visitors are already using and trust, they will be more likely to trust you as well, it can make their experience better and encourage them to buy your product.
An unfamiliar brand becomes more credible to customers when they see that similar companies are listed as using that brand. Integrations make online marketing smoother by creating a sense of familiarity between the brand and the customer.
Integrations can greatly reduce the hassle of online transactions for Saas companies.
6. Data
There is a lot of credibility that can be gained from numbers and statistics. When people see things like the number of users or downloads, subscribers, or purchase counts, it helps them understand how popular your product is.
The examples mentioned above have great data sets that act as social proof of success.
7. Celebrity social proof
Using celebrity endorsements and influencers can be advantageous if you have the budget for it. This tactic appeals to your audience’s emotional attachment to celebrities and their attraction to influencers who are like them.
8. Social media proof
If your offer is attractive to your visitors, social media proof can help seal the deal by playing on the bandwagon effect.
You can use social media buttons with an automatic follower counter that shows how many people have shared your offer. Another option is to embed social media posts into your landing page, which will let your visitors see social connections.
9. Implied social proof
If one person benefits from an offer, it must be good, so the user should take advantage of it too.
Featuring a success story can encourage your audience to think about how the same concept might affect their life.
10. Activity and user social proof
Reflecting user volume and activity through statistics is similar to using activity social proof, but with numbers.
The proof of how your current customers and users are benefitting from your offer can speak for itself.
11. Contact info
Providing your business’s physical address, phone number, or other contact information can help to establish credibility for your business.
This concept is based on the idea that people are more likely to be interested in things that appear to be more local and relevant to their lives.
12. User-generated content
User-generated content is created by people rather than brands. Often, brands will share this content on their social media, website, and other marketing channels.
Many marketers use Instagram as the main channel for user-generated content.
People share posts about your brand with their followers, which brings your products and services to more people’s attention. You can also share that content with your own audience, which will make you seem more credible.
UGC is like a testimonial, but it is more credible and trustworthy because it is more authentic.
This statistic means that user-generated content plays a role in the purchasing decisions of nearly four out of five consumers.
Where can you find UGC?
- Instagram photos and videos
- Tweets
- Articles from bloggers
- Comments
- Reviews
- Forum discussions
13. Recent sales notifications
A recent sales notification is a website popup that alerts visitors when someone else buys.
Sales notifications take advantage of people’s fear of missing out and uses social proof to create a sense of urgency and desire.
This means that your potential customers may say, “If all of these people have purchased something while I’m on the website, I’m probably missing out on something good!”
TrustPulse reports that their sale popups can help conversion rates by up to 15%.
14. Frequently bought together
An example of “frequently bought together” is shown on Amazon’s product pages. Amazon uses subtle social proof to encourage customers to buy more products.
Approximately 35% of Amazon’s sales are generated by their recommendation engine.
Including related items on your eCommerce landing pages is a great way to increase sales. When customers see items that others who purchased their same item also bought, they are more likely to add those items to their cart as well.
15. Endorsements
There are three types of endorsements- celebrity endorsements, expert endorsements, and influencer endorsements.
Why do endorsements work? Familiarity.
Our brains have trouble distinguishing between what is real and what is not, so we tend to trust celebrities, popular influencers, and industry experts as if they were friends. Because of this, the products and services they endorse feel more familiar to us as well.
16. Trust badges
All forms of social proof increase trust, from testimonials to star ratings and everything in between. But when we talk about “trust badges”, we’re referring specifically to website security seals of approval.
For example, some popular logos that signify a website is safe include SSL certificates, the VeriSign Trusted seal, and various safe checkout badges. Other well-known logos that may appear on safe websites include ones from Norton or from popular payment providers like Visa or Mastercard.
Adding a trust seal to your website makes potential customers feel like they can trust you because other reputable website security and payment providers have deemed you a legitimate business.
Why are trust seals so important? Because online shoppers are skeptical.
61% of respondents in a survey from ActualInsights said that they have not bought something in the past because there were no trust seals present.
What trust badges should you feature on your website?
It depends on whether your an eCommerce site or a B2B site, but according to CXL, the most recognizable trust badges include:
Other trust badges include:
- Partnerships (e.g. Google Partner, Facebook Marketing Partner, etc.)
- SSL certificate (website security provided by hosting company)
- Payment providers (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover)
17. Research
Credible research or statistics about consumers and markets can help communicate herd behavior, even though it is often overlooked.
For example, to increase conversions for a financial success kit for Equity Trust, a prominent stat was featured directly within the landing page headline. The stat read: “Learn what only 2% of Americans know about creating wealth.”
This success kit is only available to the 2% of Americans who are wealthy. This implies that 98% of Americans are not wealthy because they don’t have access to the information shared in the success kit.
18. Years in business
The number of years a business has been in operation is a good indication of how many satisfied customers it has.
Keap writes that they have over 20 years of experience working with 200,000 entrepreneurs.
19. Customer data
What evidence do you have that your product or service is effective, based on data from your users or customers?
Kajabi reports that it has served 41 million students and that its customers have earned a total of $2 billion.
Canva eliminates the need for designers by providing templates for users to create designs, which can be accessed through the Canva app or website. Canva also provides metrics on total designs made and the percentage of Fortune 500 companies that use Canvas.
20. Wisdom of friends
Friends’ endorsements are more likely to make people trust a product or service than any other type of social proof.
This is why it’s important to be friends with people that know and trust you, because then their friends will also know and trust you.
According to Nielson:
- When referred by a friend, people are 4x more likely to purchase (i.e. they’re already sold)
- 85% of online buyers trust recommendations from friends
When landing pages feature testimonials from people who are respected in your industry, it’s an example of wisdom of friends social proof.
I know what you might be thinking – that these people aren’t really friends.
Although you are correct, it is difficult to determine which friends actually made a purchase, so well-known celebrities in the industry can be used as an approximation.
Another option to increase social media interaction on your website would be to embed a Facebook or Instagram widget on your landing page that shows which friends like or follow your social accounts.
21. Wisdom of crowd
The wisdom of the crowd phenomenon is when a large group of people all agree that your brand is good. It’s a form of social proof, and is often used to get more people to buy into a brand by using FOMO (fear of missing out).
Three common types of wisdom of crowd social proof include:
- Social media followers (if you have thousands) or share buttons with share counts
- Total or lifetime customer count
- Product badges (“Most popular” or “Almost out”)
Make sure that your customer count is competitive with other businesses before you post it.
Key takeaways
Like choosing a house, the social proof you use as a brand depends largely on your social marketing strategy and your foreseeable needs as a company.
It is important to experiment with different types of social proof to see what is most effective for your particular goals and objectives.