You’re mindlessly scrolling through your Instagram feed when you see a new post from one of your close friends.

They are posing outside with their significant other, and immediately, your eyes are drawn to your friend’s sneakers.

You click the photo to see if they tagged the brand, and you see that the shoes are made by an athleisure company you haven’t heard of before.

You decide to shoot your friend a DM and ask about the shoes.

“They’re the BEST,” your friend messages back. “I literally have been wearing them everywhere, and I get so many compliments!”

Your friend sends the link to the exact pair on the brand’s website, and you instantly click it.

You check if the shoes are available in your size and see that they are in stock!

You add the shoes to your cart and hover your mouse over the checkout button.

What do you do?

In today’s edition of Why We Buy, we’re taking a look at Social Proof – why we take cues from others.

Let’s get into it…​

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🧠 The Psychology of Social Proof

Social Proof is a psychological phenomenon where people look to others to help them make better decisions or adopt the right behaviour.

When we’re uncertain about what to do, we assume that the people around us (experts, celebrities, friends, etc.) have more knowledge about what’s going on and what should be done.

There are 6 categories of Social Proof that people respond best to:

• Experts
• Celebrities (paid or unpaid)
• Users (past and present)
• Wisdom of the Crowd (approval from a large group of people)
• Peers
• Certification

There are likely plenty more, but these six categories can apply to nearly every industry.
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🧐 Inside Your Buyer’s Mind

Humans are always looking for social cues to help guide our decisions so that we can fit in with our peers.

When harnessed, Social Proof can be a powerful addition to any marketing or sales campaign.

Just like a kid showing off to their mother, buyers seek approval for the decisions and actions they’re taking.

Showing proof that others have bought and enjoyed your product will ease your buyer’s mind.
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🤑 How To Apply This

Alright, so how can we apply this right now to sell more?

Collaborate with experts

Invite experts to create content with you.

This will attract new audience members from their followers and position your brand as trusted by the experts (even if they don’t officially endorse your product).

​Andrew Huberman’s podcast has risen to fame in what feels like an overnight success. He has two types of episodes: solo episodes and interviews with experts.

By bringing on highly accredited health experts, he positions his brand as trusted by some of the best professionals in the world (even if they’ve never listened to an episode!).

Positive Tweets, emails, and blog comments from real people can be one of your best marketing assets.

Not only can you snag great copywriting from them, but you can display them to create more legitimacy and credibility.

​Swipe Files turned its entire landing page into a gallery of testimonials.

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Show prospects how excited customers are to share their experience—and give yourself bonus points if you can show them sharing that experience organically online.​
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Encourage customers to create content

Asking your customers to send pictures or videos of them using your product or explaining why they bought gives you amazing content to share.

The technical term for this is “user-generated content” or “UGC”. The untechnical term is “marketing gold.”

Why? Because research shows that consumers are 2.4 times more likely to see user generated content as authentic compared to content created by brands.

Both big brands like Starbucks and and small brands alike are jumping on the UGC-bandwagon by reposting content created by real customers.

Video is one of the most powerful forms of UGC, but the key to sourcing great videos from customers is making it easy for people to say yes.

Don’t ask your customers to jump through hoops to send their videos.

​Use Vouch to make it easy for your customers to create videos of them using your product or leave their video testimonials.
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💥 The Short of It

The urge to get approval from our peers, friends, and the crowd can influence people to do what others are doing.

Leverage one of the 6 categories of Social Proof to ease your buyer’s mind into knowing that they’re making the right decision.

Be proactive and ask your customers for reviews and share their feedback publicly.​
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Until next time, happy selling.