Introduction
In this guide we’re going to be focused on the important topic of social proof.
There’s a severe lack of trust in the world today.
It’s not surprising – every day you’ll hear about a new scam or charlatan relieving people of their cash.
This is ten-fold online. People trust very little online.
When we are building a business online we need to make sure that people know they can trust us.
We do this, first, by being trustworthy! That should go without saying!
When you make a promise deliver on it. Nay, overdeliver. Surprise people in a positive way!
But this itself isn’t enough – we need to make sure other people, prospects, know that we are worthy of their trust.
One powerful method is social proof.
Social proof comes in many forms:
- reviews
- written testimonials
- video testimonials
- case studies
- happy customers referring your product
and many more.
Social proof is powerful because it’s not you, the business owner, talking about how great your product is.
It’s other people, people who have purchased, used and love your products.
Testimonials for example can help boost conversions on a sales page by 34% and 72% of consumers will only purchase after receiving a favourable review.
In marketing we tend to work in the realm of adding a couple percentage points here and there – shifting a conversion rate from 5% to 6% for example is a big deal.
With social proof though we have a powerful lever than can mean the difference between a product/service’s success or failure.
This week we’ll be deep diving into social proof and how it can supercharge your business:
- Part 1: Collecting text testimonials
- Part 2: Capturing stories with video testimonials
- Part 3: Strategies to incentivise
- Part 4: Social proof goes social media
- Part 5: Supercharge your website
The basic shape of the week is to first show you how best to collect and then how to deploy social proof.
Let’s get started:
Collecting Text Testimonials
The most basic form of social proof is the written testimonial. Here’s an example:
Thanks Chris! Go follow him on X!
These are not reviews of a particular product or service but instead a general testimonial about you and your business.
This generality makes them very powerful as we’ll see as we go through the week. It allows me to deploy them in many different ways: on websites, on social media, on sales pages, in marketing emails etc. etc.
They become extremely powerful assets that once collected can be used again and again.
How to get them?
People do not write them automatically. Unfortunately!
You need to nudge people, often multiple. Sitting down to write a testimonial takes time and people are busy.
I like to nudge at a few different points, specifically:
- during email sequences after free sign ups. Ie. “if you are finding this valuable please can you tell me how and in what way?”
- after purchases – a follow up a few days later asking for a review and a nudge a month or so later once they’ve had time to fully use the product.
- after providing a service as part of the feedback collection.
Most of your customers (as long as your product/service is good!) will be happy to write you a testimonial – it’s just we need to i) nudge them and ii) make it as simple as possible for them.
Here’s a prompt to write a personal request that you can email them. This will be the heaviest hitting and most likely to lead to a testimonial.
Act as my marketing assistant
I want to request a testimonial from a recent purchaser
Their name is [name]
The product they purchased was [product name]
and the product is: [Description of the product including benefits]
Please write a request email asking them to provide a testimonial
Focus on how they should now be experiencing the benefits of the product.
Explain that it would be a personal favour and extremely helpful if they are able to provide a testimonial.
Finish with a call to action for them to give a testimonial here: [give link]
Keep it to 300 words max. Don't overdo the language, keep it simple. I’ve run this using my 10 Steps programme as the product, providing the description to ChatGPT.
That’s perfect – it’s tailored to their product specifically. You can go further and add in any other details you know about them from engaging with them previously.
Is it more work to personalise and send individually? Yes absolutely!
But remember that these testimonials are worth their wight in gold and will help you sell and help more people in the future.
For collecting the actual testimonial you can ask them to respond to the email (simplest, fastest) with their written testimonial.
Alternatively use a tool like Senja.
That’s what we personally use (and love) as it managing, collating and keeping track of hundreds of testimonials becomes a logistical nightmare later on! Senja is free to start with and is my personal recommendation.
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Pulling it together
Get everything rolling with text first of all. These will be the bedrock of most of your social proof so just doing today’s work will get you a long way.
Tomorrow we’ll look at video testimonials – a much rarer and hyper powerful format.
Here’s a reminder of what we’re covering this week:
Part 1:Collecting text testimonials- Part 2: Capturing stories with video testimonials
- Part 3: Strategies to incentivise
- Part 4: Social proof goes social media
- Part 5: Supercharge your website
Until then, keep PROMPTING!
Kyle
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