Business building – Social Proof marketing – Part 2

So how do you pull together a social proof marketing campaign?  OK here are some common strategies:

• Convince potential buyers that there are hundreds of people lined up to buy your product.  This influences them to make a choice to purchase your product because everybody around them seems to like it too.

• Build trust by letting your potential customer know of what others think of your product.  Testimonials, comments and feedback from happy customers are commonly used.  However, people have become used to them and tend to skip past them on sales pages, not quite knowing whether they are real or fake.

• Independent reviews, case studies and endorsements by non-related experts, independent opinion makers.  It is important to have a credible source for any of these strategies.  It is common to give free samples in return for a favourable case study or review, which is then posted with the product.

• Leaking information about an upcoming product.  Politicians have been ‘accidentally on purpose’ doing this since politics began.  Leaking favourable news builds the anticipation and excitement, whereas leaking unfavourable news early helps make it more palatable and easier to accept.

• Creating a sense of urgency for a product before and after the launch.  Product run-outs, end of year sales, limited time offers and many other strategies create urgency in the mind of the target audience.

• Customers want what they can’t have (even more), so by limiting the supply of a product and promoting messages of value and scarcity, the effect is to increase demand and price.

The more people who are engaged to believe in a particular product then the more acceptable the product becomes.  Of course the downside is that sooner or later, but probably sooner, the target audience will move onto something else.  So unless you are the supplier of the ‘something else’, you could be become cold and poor.

Until next time!

Gary