Social Proof: What It is and 6 Best Types Of Social Proof To Build Trust For Your Brand Online in 2020

Social proof is a term that was presented by Robert Cialdini in his 1984 book named “Influence”.  People also know this term as informational social influence. It describes a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behavior in a given situation.

In modern marketing, especially in digital marketing, social proof is a vital factor that will decide the success of a marketing campaign for the brand or not, by helping to turn the viewers into buyers. 

However, the question about what kind of social proof is important for the business and how to apply it correctly is still a hard question for many businesses to deal with. So, in this article, I will share with you the top 6 popular social proofs that you can apply directly into your digital marketing campaign to turn the viewers convert to buyers. 

Firstly, before introducing these 6 best types of social proof that make sense for your digital marketing campaigns, I would love to show you some data about the importance of social proof in your digital marketing campaigns. In the research of BigCommerce, it shows that “82% of Americans seek recommendation from friends and family before making a purchase…”.

While in the study of Hubspot, the data show that 71% of people are preferred to make a purchase based on the referral they’ve seen on the social media platforms. 

Based on these numbers, you can imagine how important it is to build a good presence on the Internet with good strategy for social proof if you really want to thrive in your business in 2020.

So, now, let’s discover 6 best types of social proofs that you can use to build the trust for your Brand in 2020. 

1. Previous Successes / Client Case Studies

This is one of the best ways to show how good your products/services are! Did your company bring good results for clients and make you feel proud to share with people to evidence your company’s abilities? And your client is happy to support your business by sharing their successes with the support from your company? 

The client case studies will be ideal to help the potential clients understand what values they can expect from your services. And will give them more motivation to work with you when they can see a lot of success stories from your previous clients. 

So, how to do it? Well, there are so many ways to bring your success stories to the world nowadays, you can choose to create blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, long form success stories to share on your company social media sites, websites or even on traditional media such as TV Ads, newspapers, magazines… And make sure to have your client’s permission to share their stories (Of course).

2. Google Ratings

Have you ever given a product/company 1 star or 5 stars on Google? Then you have given it a rating. And many people will decide to research your company before deciding to work or purchase from you based on what they can see on Google. 

So make sure that your Google rating is not too bad (less than 3.5 star) and with a lot of ratings on your services/products. Asking for good feedback and review on Google from your previous customers for your products is a best way to have a lot of good ratings for your brand on Google.

For example, you can see how powerful the Tiktok has more than 4.6 million reviews with 4.7 rating stars.

And you can see more about 5 powerful advantages of google review from Podium research here.

3. User-Generated Content

If you have a massive community or following, how might you get benefits from them and make your brand to be closer with your clients? One way is by getting them to engage with your brand by submitting their own contents with your products to display on your official site. This will be a great way to provide social proof for the new users/potential clients. 

And how to do it effectively? So, one of the most popular ways is  “Creating a unique hashtag for your business or product on social media”. Then, asking the customers to use the hashtag to submit comments, testimonials, pictures and more.

One example is Coco brand, who use very effective their user-generated contents for their Instagram content.

4. Social Media Followers

How many social media followers your brand is having now?

Do you know that  the number of social media followers you have on your account can impact your brand credibility? And the brand with a higher number of followers can easier to gain new clients compared to the smaller accounts.  

So if you have a business and your business account just has few followers and just uploads a couple of times on Instagram or Facebook (2 main popular social media platforms), you are running away from gaining new potential clients. 

However, I don’t recommend that you should have a big number of followers by buying fake followers strategy. People will less trust the brand which hundred thousands followers but just couple of likes and several comments per post. 

The game of social media takes time and the right strategy to work on it. And if you want to know more about tips to build your brand on Instagram, you can check my blog about 5 Best Advanced Instagram Marketing Strategies For Business in 2020.

5. Social Media Shares

Everyone wants to have viral content, and all of us know that we will create a great snowball effect for our business when this effect happens. However, It’s hard to get that first share of your content.

But once you can create the contents that have hundreds of shares, things come easily. Because people are likely to share things that other people have already shared. And when it happens, let’s think if one share can equal to 50 reaches (the number of friends on Facebook of each account obviously will be more, for me it is more than 3000 friends). So if you have 100 shares, it means your contents can reach organic upto 5000 people without wasting a penny. 

This is a massive opportunity for you to gain more viewers to your site and more followers who will love to see more contents on your social media sites later.

6. Influencer Endorsements

Have you ever wondered why many companies pay celebrities a lot of money to endorse their products, even when that celebrity has never known and used the product before? 

It’s because nowadays people believe in the words of Influencers/celebrities more than the products itself. And when a famous influencer says something about the products, it means that hundreds (or millions followers) will believe in what he says about your brand. So, let’s find an influencer, or a “celebrity” in your niche, and ask them to say good things about your brand in his contents and you may find some of their followers becoming your followers.

Like the way The Rock promoted this wine that reached 5Million views for this post.

CONCLUSION

I hope that the article about 6 best types of social proof can help you to have a better understanding about how to apply the social proof types to grow your brand and your business on digital in 2020. 

And if you want to check more content videos from me about E-commerce and digital marketing, let’s check out my YOUTUBE CHANNEL here.