🧨 Explode Your Conversion Rate With Social Proof!

Key Takeaways

one of the biggest thing is getting in the way between your business and a new customer is trust so you know sure you can talk about how great your products or services are on your website but they'll always be a little bit doubtful just because you're the one who's saying it and that can be tough to hear especially if you've been working really hard on creating great content for your website but don't worry this video is going to show you some really simple clever little-known secret ways you can use social proof in certain places on your site to make all your existing content work much better than it's working right now I've used these techniques with my own clients too sometimes triple the number of conversions on their websites and I'm not just talking about testimonials I'm West McDowell web strategist at the deep end and this is the channel where I show you how to use your website and what's working now in digital marketing to supercharge your customer growth so you can make more money and build a business you love to show up for every single day if you don't know what social proof is social proof is just the idea that people will act differently based on seeing what other people are doing and there are many ways of taking advantage of this right on your website so things like reviews and testimonials are 12 times more trusted than descriptions and sales copy that comes directly from the business itself so in other words your customers want proof from people just like them not just from you so let's give them what they want actually what they need to feel good about pulling the trigger with you so obviously reviews and testimonials are gonna be the first thing I'm gonna bring up here so according to research done by Nielsen 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone they don't even know so think about who you can ask for testimonial and I highly recommend getting at least one video testimonial and for a deeper dive in how to get one and what it should say click right up here for a video all about that but beyond getting that video I want you to get some text-based testimonials too and be sure to include a photo of the room you were it just helps it read is more authentic that way and I always recommend adding a star rating along with it even if it's arbitrary it's just a little visual cue that lets people know at a glance that it's a glowing a positive review and obviously only add that if it actually is a five-star sounding review and one interesting piece of info from a bright local survey says that people don't just trust the first review they see on average people check about two to three different review sites before making a decision about the business so that means that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket with your reviews so in addition to putting them on your website you want to try to get positive reviews on all the major sites in your industry and for local businesses you know that's probably gonna mean things like Yelp Google reviews face book reviews and possibly Foursquare but I promised you more than testimonials so let's get to the other interesting lesser-known ways of putting social proof to work on your site all right next we have case studies so these are a little more formal than your standard testimonial but they're often used to provide a higher authority version of social proof so it's also referred to as long-form social proof case studies basically use the idea that customers want longer more in-depth information sometimes depending on what you offer because they perceive it to be a little more reputable than just like little brief testimonials at the deep end we definitely have a dedicated case studies page where we basically highlight the success stories of some of our clients and exactly how we took them from point A to point B you know think of it like math class we had to show your work that's basically the idea here now this next one is not gonna apply to every type of business out there but if you get creative you can probably make it work so it's definitely worth mentioning and it has all to do with encouraging and featuring user-generated content so do I mean by user-generated content so basically everyone's on Instagram so if you have a retail store or a bar or restaurant anywhere people come in to a physical location encourage them to post and tag your business with some kind of test or giveaway you know you can then feature that feed on your website basically showing off how popular your business is with other customers and even if you don't have a physical location where customers actually come in to think of a challenge you could run weird customers basically show off their results or what you've helped them with while they tagged your business next up I want to talk about micro influencer marketing so influencer marketing is becoming one of the fastest growing forms of marketing going into 2020 and it's only gonna get bigger from here so as I've already mentioned customers really trust outside opinions more than with the brand's themselves say so it makes sense that they trust the word of people with influence even more forty percent of people say they purchased a product online after seeing it used by an influencer on social media and content from influencers earns more than eight times the engagement rate of content shared directly from brands in other words if you get an influencer to say it it's more likely to be heard and responded to influencer marketing is also extremely profitable so businesses on average they get about 650 back for every $1 spent on influencer marketing with some earning twenty dollars for every dollar they spend or more that is a crazy ROI probably because most influencers don't really know what they're worth yet it's still kind of a new space and this is especially true with micro influencers which is basically just what it sounds like so imagine if one of the Kardashians had a hundred thousand followers rather than a hundred million and you know it gives you a good idea and a hundred thousand still a lot of people you can reach for a lot less money so do some research and find those micro influencers who your ideal customer probably follows either on Instagram Twitter on a podcast or even right here on YouTube just find them get in touch with them and let them know you'd like to work something out and they can send your message out to their followers and you can then repurpose their content on your own site so that it lives on forever but maybe you don't want to rely on other people taking the time to write something for you or post something for you so this next tip is gonna bypass all that so they don't have to do any of that for you to get the social proof that you need one of the coolest website software add-ons I've come across over the last few years basically automatically shows new visitors that other people have already been there and either bought something scheduled a consultation or downloaded a lead magnet and these are what I would call FOMO pop-ups and if you don't already know FOMO just stands for the fear of missing out you probably knew that and these pop-ups play right into that basically letting people know ok other people are doing this action there they've done it so I feel safer now doing it too and I might not want to be left out of the action so I actually use this on my free video masterclass signup page so that people can see that this is a real thing that real people are signing up for and benefiting from and there are a few companies that offer this I like use proof com there's a few others though and these are not free they're actually kind of pricey but for me I've seen a serious uptick in signups what I'm using it as opposed to without so you'll just have to look at the price and determine if it's worth it for you and here's another tip that doesn't involve getting your customers to do anything for you so if you have any impressive stats just use big numbers to your advantage you know they can be an incredible example of social proof let's just take a page out of McDonald's playbook okay for years they're signs touted ninety nine billion served and okay let's be real I'm sure you don't have numbers like that you know there McDonald's no one does but even if you have hundreds of happy customers where thousands of dollars saved you know using numbers like this is gonna help show people that they're part of a group and that is what social proof is all about so adding the stuff is going to help you convert more visitors into leads and customers but it's only one piece of the puzzle so the next thing I want you to watch is this video right tell you about all the other important things you need to add to your website and I promise it is all easy stuff so click right here to keep watching and I'll see you right over there in 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