Social proof has become a very crucial aspect over the past 5-6 years, particularly due to the sudden and rapid development of internet and social media, connecting people from across the globe. Social proof plays with the mentality of customers, particularly the fact that their actions and decision making can get easily and differently get influenced than they would if they had relied solely upon their own judgment. The "proof" element here is quite basically the idea that if other and "Majority" of people are doing or saying it, then it must be reliable and correct. The numbers of people seeming to promote something or the particular individuals involved the degree to which social proof affects us can be a result.
The general public in most cases trusts the actions and opinions of social influencers about the products and services they themselves have used. In such cases, the new customers believe that the reviews or ratings by the influencers carry more weight with their colleagues, social network than most other individuals. Social media influence also refers to the way social networks and influencers affect the behavior of users in areas like e-commerce.
What is Social Proof marketing?
Let's first and foremost go through what social proof is and the science behind it, before we go through the strategies. Social proof has been defined by many experts and users in different ways, but here is how it has been described on the global information portal Wikipedia.
According to the website:
"Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation."The term "Social proof" was coined in 1984 by Robert Cialdini in his book, "Influence". The term is a shorter and classier version of what is known as informational social influence. It is often thought of as an extended parameter of Social influence and is considered prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more knowledge about the current situation.
In this post, we're going to list the Best Tools For Social Proof Marketing In 2019 that includes detailed insights of its pricing, features, functionality and more. Let's get started here.
[Updated] Best Social Proof Marketing Tools 2019 Must Try (200% ROI)
As mentioned earlier, Social proof is an extension of social media influence. This, plus the fact that the social media industry has seen a rapid boost in success, popularity and application in the last 10 years, numerous developers have designed software and applications that allow businesses up their social proofs game to help customers choose products and service better through influencer reviews and ratings as "Proofs" of credibility.
Social proof tools have also greatly helped businesses strengthen the customer-brand relationship and build stronger brand loyalty among new as well as existing customers. So let us now tell you about two of the most popular and strongly recommended Social proof tools in the market, Fomo, and LetConvert!
1) Fomo :Best Social Proof Marketing Tools
Fomo is a web app was created by Ryan Kulk back in 2014, where it first started its life under the name "Notify". The application was rebranded as Fomo 2 years later and today it is one of the most established and popularly used conversion marketing tools.
After a quick setup, you can just you add your website into your Fomo account. Next, you can take their javascript code and add it to the header of your site. You can then integrate Fomo with one of the many integrations it supports once connected.
Furthermore, you can even connect it with your favorite email service. This email list integration will show real-time notifications whenever someone joins your email list. Fomo has been popularly used by webmasters and business owners for effective Viral Affiliate Marketing Funnel popup on this site.
Then you can integrate Fomo with your Stripe account and display a notification whenever someone buys something from you. Showing these notifications to your visitors is an easy way to add social proof to your offer, which will, in turn, boost your conversions and get you more leads and sales.
Highlight features
As powerful as it is known to be, Fomo is extremely user-friendly and easy to use. The registration and setup of your Fomo account is quick and you can add your website into your account with just a few clicks. Once signed up, all users get access to the Fomo dashboard. This dashboard is neatly organized by offering all the necessary tools and features right at your fingertips.
Fomo boasts of a patent-pending architecture that supports unlimited message permutations so that you can customize your messaging campaigns to keep up with the changing market trends.
Fomo's custom theme builder lets you unleash your creativity so that you can make use of your accumulated knowledge of CSS and create attractive custom themes by tweaking their pre-made themes with a simple point and click mechanisms. Be it a custom Star Wars theme, or a Marvels one, it's totally up to you!
What makes Fomo a versatile tool for marketers is that you get to mess around with over 30 controls and also make use of Fomo's machine learning to optimize conversions. The combination of both these outlooks will help you know your visitors best.
Fomo makes sure that language is never a barrier while strengthening your marketing and conversions. Fomo translates to 23 languages based on the user's localization so that they can experience Fomo in the language they understand.
Control every element of your conversion by adding fallbacks, automation, and styling.
Fomo gives the complete creative freedom to transform data as you wish, ensuring that your marketing remains only yours.
Fomo's page rules modules allow you to control what visitors see, and where.
Fomo helps you figure out how to increase conversions and which configuration works best for you as it crunches 10 billion data points every hour.
Fomo's servers generate insights that help optimize your conversions by referencing the big data with your small data
Integrations
Fomo is not an application that was launched yesterday with a massive budget. It started as a very basic marketing tool about 5 years ago and today has grown to become one of the most popularly used conversions and lead generation tools in the market.
Fomo lets you integrate your business and Fomo account with over 30+ popular plugins and extensions so that you take complete control of your business and marketing.
What's good about Fomo?
Now that you more or less know what Fomo is and what it can do for you, let us now tell you what's actually good about Fomo and why you should go for it.
Fomo is an extremely flexible tool with so many plugins and tools under its list of integrations that it makes it an easy task for you to maintain brand consistency. Fomo's theme editor is quick and responsive offering you a bunch of pre-styled templates and style handles that will get you up and running with your widgets and landing pages in a matter of minutes. It's neat and organized dashboard lets you quickly get a sense of the design flexibility this platform has to offer. You can also add your own styling with custom CSS.
Fomo offers some top of the class advanced settings such as looping, randomization, and positioning. That will help you have complete control of your campaigns. You also get the ability to track and display the number of live visitors on your site at any one time.
Here a notification with the number of current users can add yet another level of social proof assuming you have the traffic numbers to back it up. This tool is perfect to help you double up as a scarcity marketing technique.
Another great thing about the Fomo dashboard is that you get instant access to a list of relevant marketing insights powered by machine learning which help you make key decisions about how to use Fomo in your marketing. Many of these insights boast surprising benefits as a result of seemingly small changes.
Plans and Pricing
Fomo is one of the most cost effective applications of its type in the market today. The developers of Fomo offer customers to choose from 3 pricing packages loaded with features that can help businesses of all types unleash their ultimate potential and achieve profitable results.
The prices mentioned below are monthly subscription charges. All these packages are priced at 30% off when billed annually, meaning you can save more when subscribing to the annual packages. Another good thing is that all of these packages offer a limited period free trial.
One very unique feature that Fomo has developed for its customers is an estimation scale which they display right below the pricing section on their website. The function of this scale is to help you figure out which package to purchase in case you are not sure what option suits you best.
All you need to do is drag the pointer on the scale shown below to tell them how much monthly traffic you have and the scale will tell you which package will be the best option for your business.
You can visit the Fomo official website for more information on their features, plans, pricing and more.
2) LetConvert :Best Social Proof Marketing Tools
LetConvert is a popular lead conversion software that has been specially designed to help you instantly increase your leads and conversions. It is one of the 3 powerful applications developed and marketed under the LetX franchise along with LetReach and LetGamify. LetConvert is globally touted as one of the few applications you will need to boost up the sales on your site with social display proof by growing hacking your sales by 3x.
LetConvert makes use of strategically designed Social Proof & Real Time Testimonial Pop Ups to guide your users to take actions on your website more effectively. These techniques work incredibly in establishing credibility, fear of missing out and relatedness. These are considered the main ingredients of driving herd mentality.
LetConvert has garnered widespread critical and commercial acclaim from customers and critics from across the globe for their sensible and powerful use of social Proof & Real Time Testimonial Pop Ups that has helped numerous online businesses worldwide boost their conversions and profits.
Highlight features
LetConvert is loaded with rich features that will enable you to up your lead generation game with powerful tools that are available right at your fingertips in a neat and well laid out dashboard.
LetConvert converts the visitors into users by creating Instant Credibility among them as it shows notifications for leads, registrations, checkouts, purchases or any other action on your website.
Completely customize your ALERTS by choosing how your alert will look by playing with a range of fonts, colors and animations. You can also choose where it will be displayed.
Let your visitors know that they are not alone on your website by showing live visitor counts to them.
Use this feature to display your own email list of users by uploading the list on your Websites.
Easily map the journey of your customers under Customer Card across the website and track complete details of your users once he signs up.
Choose for how long will an alert show on your website and when will it be displayed.
Capture and integrate the emails of the users with your favorite Autoresponder.
Why should you try LetConvert?
Here are the top reasons as to why you can and should try LetConvert to suffice your lead generation and CRO requirements.
Convert the visitors into users by keeping them engrossed with their recent activity
You can also gain more attention and trust by showing how many conversions took place on your website
Another way to build trust among visitors is by showing how many people are online on your website with a live visitor count.
Get information whenever someone fills the email id on your website
LetConvert's mobile optimization lets you choose and control whether to display alerts on mobile or not.
The LetConvert editor is extremely customizable and you can play with a variety of fonts, colors, animations, highlight and customize the alerts completely
Plans & Pricing
LetConvert offers four separate pricing plans, designed to suit the requirements and budget of everyone who's looking to employ the power, efficiency, and innovation of LetConvert.
All of these plans offer a 14-day trial period to users in case you are confused which package you should choose or whether you should invest your money into it or not. You can also contact the LetConvert support team in case you need a higher traffic plan or are looking for an enterprise or agency solution.
Importance and role of Social proof
Social proof has a wide range of marketing applications in many areas when it comes to both offline and online marketing. The most prominent use of social proof is used in social media marketing strategies to boost your marketing effectiveness. Social proof is considered an extremely powerful and result oriented tool for social media marketing as it brings accuracy and knowledge about consumers and their preferences.
Social proof is one type of conformity where a person who is unsure of the correct way to behave will look to others for clues concerning the correct behavior. The undue influence of others can result in conformity and errors. Social proof is demonstrated in mob behavior and the lack of individual opinion sometimes referred to as herd mentality.
This varies from person to person and situation to situation. There are two crucial outcomes that pop up as a result of the effective use of social proof:
Conforming to the behavior of others publicly without necessarily believing it is correct.
Conforming out of a genuine belief that others are correct.
Social media is perhaps the most common and easy way to understand the role of social proof in determining the image and reputation of a person or brand. This often implies to the number of followers, fans, views, likes, favorites and even comments on whether Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube, that a user has made. This aspect positively affects how other users perceive them.
The common psychology behind this is that is a consumer looking for dependable opinions usually perceives a user on Twitter with a million followers as more trustworthy and reputable than a similar user with a thousand followers. This would then result in faster growth of followers and higher engagement and click-through-rates.
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Types of Social Proof
Social proof has come a long way over the past decade, particularly due to the revolutionary development of social media. Social proof today stands as a cornerstone for social media marketing, as new customers are more likely to trust other socially popular users for reviews, thus taking their reviews as a virtual "Proof" for the genuineness of the product or service. There are mainly six types of social proof in general.
These are social proofs where an expert in your industry either recommends your products or services to customers and clients or is associated with your brand. Examples: "Shoutouts" on social media platforms like Instagram or having an expert on your Twitter chat are the most common ways through which an expert provides social proof about your product or brand's credibility.
Celebrity social proof is almost exactly similar to expert social proof, the only difference being that in this case a celebrity endorses your products or is associated with your brand. Examples: an Instagram post or a shoutout, or a tweet about your product by a celebrity or influencer.
User social proof comes into existence when based on their experiences with your brand your current users recommend your products and services. Examples: Positive ratings on review sites praises on social media.
Whenever a large group of people is seen to be endorsing your brand, it is commonly known as "The wisdom of the crowd" social proof. Examples: having thousands of customers or millions of followers on your social media profiles.
"The wisdom of your friends" type of social proof is when people see their friends use your product, approve your product or follow you on social media.
The most common example for this would be the blue checkmark you see against the name of the user's account on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Quite evidently, this type of social proof is when you are given a stamp of approval by an authoritative figure in your industry.
Easy Ways to Use Social Proof in Your Marketing
Now that you have more or less understood what social proof is and what are the different types of social proofing that exist in today's' competitive marketing world, it's time we tell you about the most common and easiest ways of using social proof in your marketing.
**Please note that these are NOT THE ONLY WAYS to use social proof for your brand's marketing. Rather these are THE MOST COMMON and some of the easiest ways to do it. You may extensively search the web for more information regarding social proof and more ways to do it!- Invite experts to take over your social media
A great way to tap into the influence of experts to blend it with your brand's image and performance is by having industry experts take over your social media profiles. This helps you create a positive association with them and with their followers as well, along with anything the experts do, commonly known as the halo effect.
This is a very common scenario in social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook where an expert takes over your Instagram account to post educational content. They may Instagram Stories, or go live, and her presence on your social media creates a positive influence on the people who know her or follow her, might like your brand more. Such collaborations are often considered as a win-win situation as the industry experts also benefit from getting to reach your audience.
- Collaborate with experts for a social media event
Another similar approach to the one discussed above is that you could invite experts as guests for your social media events. You may invite them on Twitter chats or Facebook Live video discussions and this will allow you to tap into the experts' positive influence, allowing you to give your social media audiences an opportunity to hear and learn from experts in the industry.
Sometimes receiving a nice mention from the press, a big brand, or an influencer in your industry can really play as a great form of expert social proof. There are many ways to share such social proof on social media and usually you would want to show your appreciation for such mentions and avoid coming across as being boastful.
Showing gratitude for your user or follower milestones is another quick way to create social proof. Whenever your brand reaches a certain milestone, it is always a fun occasion to celebrate and a great time to thank the people who have helped you achieve that.
The most common ways of showcasing certain milestones to celebrate with your audience can be:
- Reaching X users
- Reaching X customers
- Reaching X downloads of your app
- Reaching X followers on your social media profile
- Anniversaries
- Share customers' love for your product (Ratings and Reviews)
Receiving shout-outs on social media from your customers is popularly touted to be one of the best things about being a social media manager! Sharing these shout-outs on your social media profile is a fun way to generate user social proof. You can also do the same by showing others the love your users have for your product.
Customer reviews are considered to be immensely powerful and influence the views of a new customer or visitor to a great extent. Testimonials, ratings and reviews and scoring systems often go hand-in-hand as a source of social proof.
- Display testimonials and shout-outs on your website
You can also use shout-outs and testimonials in your content. This is another fun way to generate user social proof. You can also use your customers' shout-outs is to display them as testimonials on your website.
User-generated content is considered to be a popularly used and great strategy for generating user social proof on Instagram because it has helped many brands grow following and engagement within a matter of months. You could either re-post users' social media posts (like Boxed Water) or encourage your users to use a branded hashtag (like Herschel Supply Co).
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Conclusion: Best Social Proof Marketing Tools In 2019
As we have mentioned earlier, Social proof is an extension of social media influence. This, plus the fact that the social media industry has seen a rapid boost in success, popularity and application in the last 10 years, numerous developers have designed software and applications that allow businesses up their social proofs game to help customers choose products and service better through influencer reviews and ratings as "Proofs" of credibility.
You can try tools like Fomo and LetConvert in order to get better results for Social Proof Marketing. We highly recommend you to get started with tools like Fomo and LetConvert and ramp up your Social Proof Marketing strategy.
We hope this post, suits your purpose well. Feel free to share your views about Social Proof Marketing right in the comment section below. And please to give us a moment to share this post on trending social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Linked.