6 Reasons Why Social Proof Is Important for Branding

Do you check the reviews and ratings before buying a product on Amazon?

Why?

Because it lets you know how satisfied the existing users of the product are. 

You TRUST the users of the product more than you trust the brand. Hence, by looking at the reviews, you’re looking for a PROOF to trust the brand!

This is what others commonly do, and it is one of the main reasons your business needs to prioritize social proof in the branding strategy. 

In this blog, we’ll understand what social proof in marketing is and how it benefits businesses of all kinds, from online businesses to offline brick-and-mortar stores. 

What is Social Proof?

When promoting a product or service, social proof indicates that a sufficient number of individuals have already bought it and benefited from doing so.

Using social indications of someone else’s experience assists us in deciding what to purchase, what to do, and even where to go. These indications make up social proof in marketing. 

The concept of social proof may be described as a judgment-making trick, often a trust builder or breaker of a brand. 

Building social proof is crucial in the branding strategy of any business and can significantly affect your sales and revenue. Several examples of social proof in B2B marketing brought success for various companies.

Types of Social Proof in Marketing

Numerous forms of social proof exist, each with the potential to increase conversion rates uniquely. Here’s a list of a few effective types of social proof: 

• Customer Testimonials: A customer testimonial is a statement by a former consumer about the quality of a service or item they have received. Testimonials from satisfied clients are a great way to get the word out about how great your business is.
  
  Testimonials from satisfied clients are a great way for potential clients to learn the truth about users of your product from existing clients. It tells how other people like them dealt with a similar issue, went in quest of a solution, discovered your product, risked trying it out, and fell in love with it.

• Customer Review: Customer reviews are opinions on products and services written by actual customers. They vary from testimonials.
  
  How? 
  
  Note that while testimonials are only positive client experiences gathered for promotional reasons, reviews are the consumers’ genuine opinions about a product or service, both favorable and unfavorable.

• Celebrity endorsement: Using a celebrity’s name recognition and social standing to promote a product or cause is known as celebrity endorsement. Marketers use famous people to promote their goods in the hopes that consumers would associate the endorser’s good reputation with the advertised brand.
  
  You may contact celebrities to execute a paid partnership for a product or service you offer that they can support. Ensure that they have a suitable target audience among their followers and that they are trusted authority figures.

• Social media influencers: they are a part of a whole industry built based on the consumer need for social proof in marketing. Influencer marketing involves a popular content creator promoting your brand in their content to their dedicated audiences.

• Video testimonials: A video testimonial is a clip of a satisfied client or customer complimenting the services provided by a certain business. They often discuss how the brand has improved their lives, describe their experience with the product or service, and praise the business.
  
  Seeing and hearing a person’s voice and expressions makes a video testimonial more convincing than a written one. The emotional effect is greater than that of text alone.

• User-generated content: User-generated content (UGC) refers to material that is developed by consumers specifically for a brand and then shared through digital distribution platforms like social media. 
  
  Images, videos, blogs, reviews, testimonials, and audio or video podcasts are all examples of user-generated content. Brands can repost these on their website or social media platforms as testimonials to show how their products satisfy the customers.

• Social media presence: A company’s social media presence is the level of recognition it has among its target audience and the depth of its engagement with them through social media. 
  
  The more visible you are, the more credibility you’ll earn with your target market, paving the way for you to go beyond advertising into more personal interactions. You can leverage your social media to target your audience by creating content specific to the needs and interests of the viewers.

• Expert Approval: When a recognized leader in your field endorses your offerings or makes a public connection to your company, you’ve garnered expert social proof.
  
  We put our faith in established authority and our industry’s foremost professionals and thinkers. Your website’s credibility will increase after you include social proof from established industry leaders.

What is Branding?

Branding involves building trust and familiarity between a brand and its target audience and creating a brand identity. Branding emphasizes the complete brand instead of just one service or product by utilizing those services and products as examples of how the brand delivers on its promise.

Parts of Branding Strategy

Social proof is a crucial part of branding, which falls under the awareness-raising stage of the marketing funnel. 

The brand strategy structure has nine branding components spread over three requirements to fill with three components. 

Let’s look into each: 

1. Building the core of the brand: This can be done by defining the purpose of the brand, vision, and values. The brand’s core is the reason behind your business and why it matters. It defines your goals and gives clarity on how to reach them.

2. Positioning your brand in the market: This involves clearly defining your target audience or people you’d like to reach and deliver. 
   
   Market analysis is crucial to understand the prevalent competition and outlining ways to beat it. 
   
   Only once you’ve figured out the first two can your business move into setting awareness goals, reach your target audience, and increase the popularity of your brand. You can meet these awareness goals with several advertising and marketing strategies, including developing solid social proof.

3. Lastly, branding strategy involves curating a brand’s persona. This is done by giving your brand a personality, voice, and tagline. 
   
   The brand persona is expressed through all the content related to your brand. It allows the target audience to build a relationship with it like they’re building a relationship with an actual person. 

In this article, we specifically understand how social proof in marketing helps position your brand in the market by raising awareness. Let’s look at the major reasons social proof is an important branding component. 

Why Is Social Proof an Important Part of Branding?

For a variety of business purposes, social proof may prove to be an invaluable tool. 

The bandwagon effect, a theory from social psychology, asserts that individuals are more inclined to participate in an activity if many of their contemporaries are also participating in the same activity. 

The following are the main reasons why social proof is an important part of branding: 

It Gives Your Business Credibility

Would you buy something from a brand no one has heard about? Or buy something from a brand that claims to be brand new? Most likely, no! Because every purchase is an investment, and you wish that the product or service you get returns your money with value. 

So people who buy from you see you as a partner they want to make a financial commitment to. They want to be certain that you will provide the outcomes they seek. This surety comes when your brand pops up first when people are looking for or talking about your business sector. 

You may establish yourself as a reliable expert with solid social proof. This can be done by associating with prominent figures in your field, getting recommended by influencers, commenting on hot subjects in your sector, and providing helpful content to your audience at every touchpoint.

It Helps Build Customer Trust 

The Internet is a shopper’s greatest friend since it has a wealth of information on practically any brand and its products. A buyer’s choice to purchase or continue exploring might be swayed by a simple internet search.

Trust is earned when you have a solid reputation and a high profile. If you have the reputation and social proof to reinforce your claims, people will believe you. The number of people who share the interests of your target customer and like what you provide is the social proof that may convert a follower into a purchase.

It Increases Market Reach

Customers may spread the word about their positive experiences as they talk to others individually, on social media, on independent review sites, or through the review section of your website. Word-of-mouth is a great way to reach new customers, and social proof is just that.

The best way to use social proof is to collect testimonials and reviews directly from your consumers. Advertisements, social media postings, websites, pamphlets, and more may all benefit from using such social proof if the appropriate rights are granted.

It Improves Customer Experience

Customers, particularly those in the same market category, often have the same questions and worries. They will always show some degree of skepticism on making a purchase decision. 

Modern customers frequently doubt the reliability of a company’s claims, the effectiveness of a product’s features, or the track record of the experts they’re consulting. 

You can ask past consumers willing to provide testimonials or reviews to mention such queries. Such testimonials from satisfied customers that answer questions and issues raised by other customers provide a wholesome customer experience. 

It Establishes You as an Authority 

Becoming a go-to expert might open doors for your business as a strong brand. You can let the audience know that you have laid the groundwork, and you’ve been the one who’s faced similar problems and come up with a solution. With social proof, you can disclose how long you’ve worked in your field to set yourself out of the pack. 

Professionals specializing in a certain field have more information and experience than the average person. They keep track of trends, shifts, opportunities, and current events and reflect them with a strong social media presence. Audiences and even your colleagues will take notice if you consistently strive to outshine the competition in terms of your expertise.

It Creates a Showcase of Your Results

The value of social proof in the form of recommendations from satisfied customers cannot be overstated. When you’ve helped your customers reach a milestone, they’ll become your biggest cheerleaders and spread the word about your business.  

People often wonder whether they will get positive effects from using your product or service. They are more likely to pay attention if you can publicly demonstrate the positive changes your service or product has brought to your clientele. Whether you’re there or not, the results will speak for you. At the very least, people will start talking about you. 

Conclusions

The use of social proof has been shown to be a successful marketing strategy by several statistics. Social proof may help you transform your company from an ordinary online store into a reliable and perhaps even beloved name in the industry. 

You can use effective social proof strategies in the form of reviews, testimonials, user-generated content, and more. It can help you extend your reach, emerge as an authority in the market, improve customer experience, and everything we discussed above. 

Written in collaboration with the team at Printify.

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