How To Use Social Proof In Your Marketing (Beginner’s Guide)
Social proof is one of the most powerful concepts in marketing.
It’s the idea that as humans, we look at what other people are doing to inform our own opinions and decisions.
For example, we’re much more likely to purchase a product if we know that many other people have already purchased that product.
In this post, I’m going to share 19 actionable ways you can use social proof in your own online marketing campaigns—i.e. in your landing pages, social media posts, ads, and so on.
Plus, I’ll also share some real-life examples to show you what each type of social proof looks like in action.
1. Customer reviews & testimonials
Customer reviews are—in my opinion—the most powerful form of social proof.
They’re the first thing customers who are on the fence about whether to buy your product/service will look for.
And what they see will often determine whether they complete the purchase or walk away.
A lot of brands feature their best reviews on their sales & landing pages for this very reason.
For example, the language learning app Babbel has a slider of glowing reviews from satisfied users towards the top of their homepage that’s impossible to miss, just below the heading ‘People love Babbel’:
Featuring positive reviews on your website is great—but why not share them on social media too?
Pick out comments from your happiest customers and post them to your Twitter feed, Instagram Stories, Facebook Page, etc.
For example, mental health app @headspace Tweeted this positive review from one of their members, alongside an eye-catching graphic to get attention and highlight the feature the user liked best.
These are just a few examples of how you might use customer testimonials in your marketing campaigns, but there are many more.
Bonus tip: Use one of these social media scheduling tools to create and schedule social proof posts to be auto-published on all your brand’s social profiles and pages from one unified content calendar.
2. Star ratings
Imagine you’re looking for an Indian restaurant to eat at in your local area.
You search the web for options near you. One restaurant has 1.4k reviews with an average rating of 4.9 stars out of 5. The other has 120 reviews with a rating of 3.8 stars out of 5.
Which one are you going to choose?
If you’re like most people, it’s going to be the former. And that’s why star ratings are such a powerful form of social proof.
The best way to increase your star rating on review aggregators like Trustpilot, Apple App Store, Google Play, etc. is to create a great product and make sure all your customers are satisfied.
You can also incentivize customers to rate you, such as by offering exclusive discounts when they leave a review.
If you have a strong star rating, feature it prominently on your website. Ideally, above the fold so customers don’t have to scroll to see it.
Here’s an example from contract automation software Juro, who use a prominent section of their homepage to highlight their G2 rating and instill trust:
3. Activity notifications & counters
Another way to use social proof is by adding counters & activity pop-ups and notifications to your website.
For example, you can use a plugin to trigger a pop-up when a visitor clicks on one of your product pages to tell them how many other customers are looking at that product right now.
This is a trick a lot of ecommerce stores use. It’s great because it does two things at once.
- It creates a sense of urgency (customers will want to buy it before it sells out)
- It provides social proof (by proving that other people are interested in the same product)
You can also use notifications to tell users things like how many times a product they’re interested in was purchased over the last 24 hours/week/month. Or to show them how many visitors are browsing your store right now. Both of these serve as powerful social proof.
Amazon does this really well. They display a counter to show how many people have bought each item in their marketplace immediately below the product name:
They also have a ‘Customers who bought this item also bought’ section on every product page:
Remember: The idea behind social proof is that people often ‘copy’ what other people like them think and do.
So by telling customers what other products customers who purchased the same item as them bought, Amazon encourages them to add even more items to their basket.
4. Quantifiable data
One straightforward way to use social proof is to add a section to your website highlighting quantifiable data that shows potential customers that plenty of other people already use and trust your brand.
This allows you to tap into the tendency of consumers to trust the ‘wisdom of the crowds’—If thousands of people trust something, they probably should too.
For example, if you sell a smartphone app, you could tell customers how many people have downloaded your app so far on iOS and Android.
If you’re a social media platform, you could tell visitors how many monthly active users you have. If you’re a SaaS software provider or membership site, tell visitors how many paying subscribers/members you have. You get the idea.
Marketing software Semrush offers a great example of this. They’ve added a graphic to their homepage highlighting that ‘10M marketing professionals use Semrush’, as well as ‘30% of Fortune 500 companies’.
If that doesn’t prove they’re a name you can trust, what will?
5. Customer results
Share real-life positive results from customers who already use your product or service on your website, or in your social media posts.
For example, Hootsuite has a section on their website titled ‘What can Hootsuite do for you’, underneath which they share the impressive average results achieved by people who use their social media marketing software.
A lot of visitors who read this will think ‘If other users increase their reach, growth, and revenue that much when they use Hootsuite, then I will too’. And that will be all the incentive they need to subscribe.
6. Case studies
Case studies are a more in-depth version of the above.
The idea is to share a detailed account of the experience your most satisfied customers had with your business.
That might take the form of a blog post you share on your website, a video you post to your YouTube channel or socials, etc.
In the case study, you might look at how your product/service solved a problem for the customer, or what they were able to achieve thanks to it.
For case studies to be effective as social proof, they need to show your business in a positive light. So, identify clients/customers you’ve had the most success with and reach out to see if they’d be willing to participate in a case study.
You could offer an incentive, like the opportunity to be featured on your website (with a backlink if necessary), a free product package, an exclusive discount, etc. in exchange for their cooperation.
SEO company Thrive Agency has a whole section of their website dedicated to case studies from customers they’ve worked with. Visitors can filter them by audience/industry/service to sort through the success stories and find examples in specific sectors.
In each case study, Thrive outlines the services the client used, offers an overview of the project, and highlights the KPIs they achieved.
7. Celebrity endorsements
If a celebrity endorses your brand, it sends a clear message to your audience that your brand is the real deal.
If you’re big enough to get a celebrity to back you, you must be a name they can trust, right? And if they’re a fan of that celebrity, they should probably use your products too, right?
Naturally then, celebrity endorsements are the holy grail of social proof—but they’re hard to come by.
The easiest way to get a celebrity endorsement is to pay for it, but you’ll need deep pockets.
You can onboard a celebrity as a brand ambassador, so they act as the public face of your brand but expect to pay tens if not hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars for the privilege.
Alternatively, you can pay a celebrity for a one-off sponsored post and have them promote your brand in a social media post as part of your influencer marketing campaign.
Shaquille O’Neal acts as the brand ambassador for Papa Johns, and his celebrity social proof has been a huge asset for the brand.
He regularly promoted the pizza chain to his army of social media followers and even pitched a new specialty pizza—the Shaq-a-Roni pizza—which was added to the menu and sold over 3 million units within a couple of months.
8. Expert endorsements
Endorsements from experts in your industry are another powerful form of social proof.
If a thought leader in your industry gives their stamp of approval to your brand, it goes a long way towards engendering trust in your target customers.
That’s why every toothpaste brand always seems to be ‘recommended by dentists’.
There are lots of ways to share expert endorsements in your marketing campaigns. You can share a video on TikTok or YouTube featuring your interview with an expert in your industry, or have them share a guest post on your company blog.
Or if an expert in your niche uses or recommends your product, you could highlight that on your website or in your social media posts.
Sensodyne regularly invites dentists on as guests on their YouTube channel/podcast for interviews.
This helps to associate Sensodyne with professionals and experts in dental hygiene, which is great for branding.
9. Brand endorsements
Another type of endorsement that works as strong social proof is an endorsement from big-name brands.
An easy way to use brand endorsements in your marketing campaigns is to add a ‘trusted by…’ section to your landing page, in which you list some big-name brands that have used or recommended your product or service in the past.
CapCut has done this to highlight their endorsements from TikTok, Nvidia, and Mobile Legends.
Likewise, Bluehost is one of just three web hosting providers officially recommended by WordPress. They make a big deal out of this, highlighting it on their website and landing pages. And they even go so far as to place it in the title copy of their Google Ads.
10. Awards & accolades
If your brand has won any awards or received any sort of accolades, make sure you show that off on your website.
It’s a great way to let your target audience know your business is trustworthy and respected in your industry.
Budgeting app YNAB has displayed their awards alongside its star rating near the top of the brand website.
At a glance, visitors can see that they’ve been rated the best budgeting app this year and have been featured on Apple and CNBC for their excellence.
11. Credentials & qualifications
Aside from awards, it’s also worth displaying your business credentials on your site.
That might include any accreditation you’ve received, e.g. qualifications, certificates, etc.
This is especially important for freelancers in service industries where customers need to know they’re working with someone well-qualified for the job.
For example, Holly’s Happy Hounds clearly outlines their certifications and qualifications on the ‘about’ page on their website.
This lets potential customers know they’re a real, bonafide dog trainer who can be trusted with their pup.
12. Social media followers
The number of followers you have on social media tells potential customers how popular and well-known your brand is.
If you have tens of thousands of followers, the wisdom of the crowd dictates that you’re probably a brand customers trust. Whereas if you only have a few dozen followers, it’s probably going to make potential customers skeptical.
Make sure you’re active on all the most popular social media platforms, and consistently post high-quality content to grow your audience.
If/when you have a sizeable following, you could add social counters to your website that tell visitors at a glance how many followers you have on each platform.
13. Social media engagements
If you have a blog, place social media engagement counters at the top of each post you publish to let users know how many people have liked and shared it on different social networks.
Not only does this serve as powerful social proof, but it also helps to encourage more users to engage with/share the post to their own socials, helping you to get more eyes on your content.
There are lots of plugins for CMS like WordPress and Shopify that can automatically add social counters and share buttons to your posts.
14. User-generated content (UGC)
Run a photo or video contest on social media in which you ask users to submit photos/videos of themselves using your product, or talking about why they like it.
Then, pick out the best submissions and share them to your own feed as user social proof. You could also use them in other marketing materials, like your website landing pages or in your ads.
It’s easy to set up a UGC contest using a giveaway app. I’d recommend SweepWidget as it’s super easy to use and supports 90+ entry methods.
15. Positive social media comments
People often talk about brands on social media. Sometimes those comments are good, sometimes they’re bad.
You can use a social listening tool to ‘listen out’ for any mentions of your brand across social media.
Then, pick out the most positive comments and retweet/repost them to your own page as social proof.
16. Press mentions
Mentions of your business in the press (e.g. in a local newspaper or authoritative online publication) help to establish your brand as an authority in your niche.
There are lots of strategies you can use to earn positive press coverage.
For example, you can create press releases and distribute them to newsrooms. Or you can sign up for HARO (part of Connectively) as an expert and respond to journalist’s requests for expert quotes and opinions to get featured in their publications.
If you manage to earn a press mention that shows your brand in a positive light, use it in your marketing materials as social proof.
For example, you could write ‘as mentioned in [popular news outlet]’ next to your brand name on your website homepage.
17. Business milestones
When you reach an impressive milestone in business, share a post on social media to notify your audience about it. This is another form of social proof.
For example, let’s say it’s the 20th anniversary of your brand. Celebrating this on social media shows your audience that you’ve been in business for a long time.
This sends a clear message to potential customers: If you’ve been around that long and you’re still going, it’s a sign that you might be doing something right, right?
You can celebrate other types of milestones too. For example, maybe you’ve just had your 10,000th customer, reached 500k users, or acquired another company. Anything that shows your brand is successful will work.
18. Friend endorsements
Another important concept in social proof is the idea of ‘the wisdom of friends’.
It refers to the psychological phenomenon that people tend to trust the opinions of their close family and friends even more than the opinions of the crowd.
In other words, if you can get your customers to recommend your business to their friends and family, that can serve as incredibly powerful social proof for your business.
One easy way to incorporate this into your social proof strategies is to run ads that target the friends of people who are already fans of your business.
It’s simple enough to do this in Meta Ads Manager, for example. When creating your ad targeting options, just go to Connections > Add a Connection Type > Facebook Pages > Friends of People Who Like Your Page.
Then, Meta will only show your ads to people who are friends with people who have already liked your business’s Facebook page. And when they see the ad, it’ll also appear alongside a notification that tells them which of their friends like it.
19. Employee advocacy
You can get your employees involved in your marketing strategy by asking them to share positive endorsements of your brand on their social media pages.
Some social media management tools like Sprout Social and Hootsuite include built-in employee advocacy tools to help with this.
Starbucks offers a good example of a brand that’s successfully leveraged its employees for social proof.
Their employees—dubbed ‘partners’ to make workers feel that they’re an important part of the company—are regularly featured on the brand’s sites and social media channels.
They have a dedicated section of their site ‘Starbucks Stories’ which often includes stories from existing partners.
They even provide a set of social media guidelines for employees to follow when posting about the company.
Final thoughts
That concludes our beginner’s guide on how to use social proof for marketing. I hope you found it useful.
Remember that having a strong presence on social media is an important part of social proof. You can use social media automation tools to build your social media presence while saving time.
And if you plan to run giveaways to farm UGC for social proof, make sure you check out our roundup of the best social media contest apps.
While you’re here, you might want to read our roundup of the latest lead generation statistics that marketers need to know this year.
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