Whether you're a brand-new solo business owner or have owned your business for a few years, offering social proof to your potential clients is a key to bringing business in the door. In fact,
no matter how big a business is, offering social proof is an important step in making a offer to new clients.
What exactly is social proof?
When we're deciding or choosing something, we subconsciously want to know what others are thinking or doing about that same topic. Even though we are each unique, when we are about ready to do something new, we look around for social proof that it's a good thing. The actions we see others taking (or avoiding) often influence our own actions, even if we're totally unaware of it.
Social proof is especially important for solo-preneurs. Why? Because, for one thing, most of us don’t have a huge, well-known organization or business that we are a part of (that gives us something called “affiliate” or “referent” social proof).
In order to position ourselves and our business so that we become the obvious choice for potential customers we must do several things, and one of them is offering social proof. It's the way that we subtly say, "This is a good thing, it's safe to invest, other people have done it and you can, too."
Here are some simple examples of social proof you're probably familiar with:
• Bartenders often put money into their tip jars at the beginning of their shift so it appears others have left tips, imply it’s expected that you to do the same;
• Planted audience members will “start” a standing ovation inspiring other audience members to follow suit.
Sandra remembers a great example of social proof from her high school years…her class president, running for re-election, gave his speech and, without telling us why, asked every member of the class to stand and turn around. Once the first few people did it, we all did it because it seemed “right”.
And Sue remembers a hilarious night in her college dorm when she got a bunch of friends believing that it was normal to clean out your belly button with a Q-tip™ by talking it up so much that finally two friends actually started doing it - and once two were doing it the rest eventually joined in. It's still the best April Fool's joke she's ever played!
High school elections and April Fool's jokes aside,
how can you incorporate social proof into your business, even if you're a new solo-preneur? It's simpler than you might think. If you don't yet have clients, you can:
- Do a free workshop and get testimonials off of that (we call that a beta-test).
- Ask the people you’ve trained with to give you testimonials (Sue did that with Michael Port years ago – you use THEIR standing and connect to it)
- Do your own video testimonial about yourself – your years of experience, who you have trained with, the story of why you do what you do.
- Use industry statistics that underscore your point. Something like “research shows that 89% of people who use a coach when they are on a weight loss program stick with their program and the weight stays off longer than people who go it alone”.
You can also
gain social proof using social media. Show your website visitors, Facebook friends, Twitter peeps, etc. that others like and trust you. You can do this with:
- Testimonials spread throughout your website (you want more than a single testimonial page – you want to sprinkle them throughout the site so visitors can’t help but see them).
- Show the number of Facebook friends you have with a Wordpress plug-in such as the Facebook Social Plugin (see an example at http://getresults.sandramartini.com) – this has the added benefit of allowing people to “like” you without ever leaving your webpage.
- Build a “tweet ring” with friends and colleagues where they automatically retweet your blog posts (www.Twitterfeed.com is a great free source for this) – if they add the word “Reading” as a prefix, it shows their followers that you’re post is worth checking out.
Here's a few
more ways to build social proof that will work for your business:
- Let your clients know that you value their referrals – word of mouth is one of the strongest “proofs” available.
- Incorporate scarcity into your marketing campaigns – when prospective clients see you have “20 spots” available and then “16”, “12”, “8”, etc., it “proves” that others are wanting what you offer and that if they don’t act soon, they’ll be left out. Just be sure to stay in integrity with what you state.
Finally,
here's a little tip for setting up your social proof – use customers (testimonials can work, video testimonials are better) who closely match the target market you’re looking to work with. For instance, if you want to get more customers among retired people, don’t offer social proof that is filled with stories, pictures, and testimonials from the under-20 crowd.
By honing your message so that you’re speaking to a specific audience (your niche), you greatly increase the benefits of social proof – your testimonials will be from people who are “just like” your prospective clients and we tend to place more weight on what people who are “just like us” are doing.
How will you incorporate some social proof into your business today?
