5 Elements of Social Proof to Explode Your Business
There are many things that I do on a daily basis that almost are not worth my time – things like maintaining a free blog or submitting free articles or posting on forums or even updating my Twitter status.
None of those things directly make me as much money as landing a new joint venture, as writing a sales letter, sending out emails or running a webinar course.
Why do I do them? Because they demonstrate social proof. If someone is thinking about buying from me and they look me up, they'll find hundreds of articles, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of forum posts.
What will I find when I look you up? Will I find lots of social proof or will I find negative social proof? I'll find a lot of good things about you if you follow these 5 steps.
Element #1: Blog Comment Scarcity Or Blog Responses
You probably do have a blog, right? If I go to it, will I find it's being constantly updated or it has not been updated in the last several years? Are there lots of posts or only 1 or 2? And out of those posts, are lots of people commenting? I decided very early on that when I created my blog, I wanted to have lots and lots of comments.
Otherwise, it would look like I was talking and no one was listening.
When I make blog posts and I get dozens, if not hundreds, of comments for every post, everyone can see how much of an authority I am. When you have the same thing, people can see how much of an authority you are. I got a lot of comments on my blog at first by limiting posts to only 10 comments.
I told people that if I got 10 comments on my blog, then I look at either the post content, otherwise I would stop.
Eventually, I escalated this to saying after I had 10 comments, I would close comments completely and now I have this at 100 comments per post and that's how and why you should have blog comment scarcity and blog responses.
Send traffic to your list, to your latest blog post, but have some kind of deal either that you will turn off comments or stop writing unless you get a certain number of responses because people read but they don't like to respond.
Element #2: Price Scarcity
How do you show that what you're offering has lots and lots of value but still get people to buy when you are first launching it and don't have a huge list? If you're entering a new niche or at first building a list, offer your product at a low price but set a deadline for when you will increase that price and then actually increase it.
This way, if people are buying your product for $20 but you are about to increase it to $50, people realize that the regular prize is $50. Don't run a discount because that will anger your early adopters, but this way, you will reward your fast action-takers and early adaptors by letting them buy low, and then once you have a proven selling record and you have testimonials, now you can increase the price at the time and date you said you would.
Element #3: Webinar Replay Scarcity
Are you starting to see a pattern where I'm talking about social proof?
People can be trained to give you a certain reaction. When you make a blog post, you train them to leave comments. When you are increasing the price, you train them to buy. The same should be true for your live instructions. When I run a webinar, I want the maximum number of people to show up live. When somebody shows up live, they're kind of a captive audience.
They can't fast-forward, they're usually not multicasting and they're sure as heck can't pause your presentation either. It's as close to real life as possible.
That's why you shouldn't always offer a replay of your webinar. Maybe you're not going to offer any kind of replay of your webinar or you're going to offer a replay only available for the next 48 hours or even you're only going to offer a replay inside of your paid membership site.
Either of these 3 strategies will motivate people to attend your webinars live and even if they don't believe you now, they will believe you after you stick to your guns and do what you said you will time and time again.
Element #4: Testimonial Follow-Up
The number one problem I see with sales letters is a lack of proof – why should I buy from you, why should I trust you if you can't show me anyone else who has benefitted from your training? That's why the easiest form of social proof is the testimonial.
Ask your buyers what they thought of the product they just bought from you. What I like to do is add this message as an autoresponder follow-up in my autoresponder sequence. This means that when someone buys from me and joins my list after 7 days, which is enough time to look at whatever product they just bought, I will ask them what they thought of it and have them directly reply to me and then I will use their testimonial on my sales letter.
It's important though to ask not for a testimonial but for an honest review, good or bad.
Element #5: Feedback Survey
I told you a little bit about getting testimonials and training people not just to read your emails but reply to them as well. I use this in many of my pre-launches when I ask people things like "do you want to see this product, do you want to see me explain programming?"
And then the next day, I will tell people how many responses I got. This does many things. First of all, it shows everyone that there is a high demand for what I am about to offer and it makes people part of the process. It makes them know that they have an interactive role in my marketing. When they respond to me, their "yes" answer goes into the total number of yesses I receive over email.
If you take any of those 5 elements of social proof, blog responses, price scarcity, replay scarcity, testimonial follow-ups, or feedback surveys, you should notice a slight increase in sales, a slight increase in response, and a slight increase in popularity.
Are you using any of these 5 elements yet? And which one?
If you're not using any of the 5, which one do you plan on using within the next week? Please leave me a blog comment below with your speedy response.
Filed in: Mindset • Price Training • Product Launches • Social Marketing • Traffic
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As usual, you made me think. Initially my web presence was under a screen name. I thought since my real name is rather common that having a unique name would be beneficial. Rethinking this, I’ve started to use my real name in internet marketing areas. I still use my screen name in niche areas where the name is established but have added my real name too.
I haven’t started blogging or doing webinars but will follow the advice you’ve provided when I do.
Thanks,
Dan
You have some great ideas and full details in this post (not unlike you!)! I am using #2 and #4. Your other ideas are a bit bold for me right now but i appreciate the fact that those things are possible for me too. I am ready to implement idea # 5.
Webinar / teleseminar scarcity is a hard one to believe right now. I am getting my name out and I am promoting myself. I don’t share that there will be a replay and I hope that encourages people to attend live, but I like to send the replay in case they missed the call. The calls are to create the know like and trusr factor and I don’t want to limit that just yet.
Blog comment scarcity seems harsh when you are first starting out. You are popular and have 100’s and 1000’s of readers. It sounds like a good idea for you, but not for me. If I said I need 10 comments or I am not writing anymore I would just be crushed if I didn’t get any comments. Maybe there is another way to encourage people to comment?
Thank again and I am happy you joined the 30 day challenge with us, it was great to see so many posts from you!! Way to go!!
xox
Helen
You’re a keeper, Robert!
I haven’t started doing any teleseminars or webinars yet, but when I do, I love the idea of having the replay up for only a certain amount of time — the scarcity factor. But I will plan to always offer a link to a replay because I know there are others out there like me who honestly have a heavy workload offline and stringent time constraints. Without question, there are folks who would prefer to attend “live”, but it’s not in the realm of possibilities.
My blog hasn’t celebrated it’s first year yet but I really appreciate your tips on limiting the number of comments, closing the comments, etc. It’s very apparent to me that you’ve really got this blogging thing down pat!
Melanie
#blog30
P.S. Thanks for the lift, Robert. It’s been a wonderful ride! I’m happy that I made the commitment to visit your blog every day during the 30-day blogging challenge. Can’t remember exactly how you convinced me to do this, but I’m gonna figure it out and start using your strategy! 🙂
Good stuff! I do both #2 and #4.
How do you inspire people to leave comments Robert? How do you engage them?
Andreea
I have used the principle of price scarcity, and will adopt the principle of never having seasonal discounts any more. I have treated these as firesales, but do acknowledge that it might anger those who took action early.
Thanks for an inspiring month, Robert. 🙂
Have you checked up how many were faithful all the way with comments and tweets? 😉
I have attempted element 2 to a point. I don’t drive enough people to a site to use it effectively.
I like #1 and am going to start testing that with my posts.
Some good info as usual Robert!
Right now I’m still working on building a list..and blog comments are hard to come by. I’ll be using blog comment scarcity when I get to a point in which it would influence people to do make comments.
Unfortunately,I did not use any element so far…Maybe this is a beginning!
I don’t use any of these — YET! So glad I found you thru the blog challenge — along with a lot of other really groovy people I’m happy to know!
🙂
Evelyn
Thanks Robert for the 30 blog posts. Do you plan to continue?
I haven’t really used any except #1. I get a lot of comments on a couple of my other sites. To the point that I’m confused. Do I tag all comments to be a “no follow” because I’m slowly losing page rank because all the comments linking to their site? or
If I allow “do follow” and they link to their site. Their site in return links to a bad site. The search engines don’t like this site.
I have a question. Hope you can answer.:-)
With the site getting bad links is this going to directly or indirectly effect my site?
Hey Robert,
I guess I wasn’t done. I hit the submit button a little too quick.:-)
Maybe you can clear up a few things about allowing or not allowing “do follow” links in your comments section.
I would appreciate your thoughts or anyone else. It might help a lot of us that a struggling with this issue. Thanks!
Robert,
I really appreciate the information you put out there.
I’ve added you to may list of trusted sources. During the blog challenge I didn’t have time to read every one of your posts, but I will be going back now and catching up. You are big on a getting people to make a commitment – even when it comes to making a comment. I can really see the value in that.
Thanks for being upfront and sharing with us your success tips.
Definitely agree with you on not running discounts.
With some marketers they seem to go through a ‘product life cycle’, where they launch a product, after the sales die down they sell it with resale rights, then eventually they’re giving it away for nothing.
Resulting I’m sure in many unhappy customers and much fewer repeat customers.
I have used #2 and #4.
As for #1 – I wonder if people aren’t leaving comments on your blogs, not because of scarcity, but because you write so inspiring, so we sit with our hands in the air, until you’re done, and we finally get to the comment section and can write?
That’s a gift.
I don’t think that the average boring blog can obtain the same, just by having scarcity on the blog comments.