The Concept of Social Proof and the Impact on Online Marketing
Social Proof can be understood as a testimony to your or your brand’s authority. To be on the technical side of things it is actually a psychological concept or factor of human decision making. When caught in circumstances where one is not sure about a decision usually the decisions of those around us seem the right one and we tend to follow it (something like herd mentality, though not quite the same). This need of observing others behaviour to overcome ambiguity is the idea of social proof.
With the advent of social media, social proof as a metric has got into the marketing man’s lingo. Blogs, social networks, etc. have played a major role in creating the social proof for brands online and thus helped their marketing efforts. As the web goes into higher versions and more social, the influence that its users have on each other is bound to increase and therefore the role of social influence is bound to tread the same path.
Social proof in fact is such a powerful phenomenon that one can assert the goal of new age web marketing, the one that involves the socialness of the Internet is perhaps to build your products’ social proof. It goes beyond quarterly sales targets and creates a sphere of influence that turns customers into sellers [no, not quite affiliate marketing 
]. Having said that, social proof isn’t a concept relegated to social media. It has its place in all web marketing efforts, from banner advertising to pay per click campaigns, from social bookmarking to search engine rankings. Advertising online is a factor of persuasion and social proof is the psychology of persuasion.
Social Proof and Online Marketing
While social proof has been orchestrated effectively in many traditional advertising efforts by roping in celebrities, it hasn’t quite kicked on in the virtual world at least in India. This despite the various options the web provides to build social influence on the target audience. This can partly be attributed to lack of creative talent coming into digital media sphere considering the domain the birthright of just geeks. Perhaps posts like these as well as those that came before this and those that will follow will provide ample social proof for the creative nuts to jump into the digital stream as well. Anyway, we will keep that discussion for another day.
The question is how to build online campaigns that make use of social proof as well as build social proof of the brand.
The answer is neither hard to understand nor difficult to implement. The trick in any effective use of social proof is to first put in place the correct set of influencers. Social proof is building influence, and influence is built upon trust. And hence, the most amount of time in an online marketing campaign has to go into choosing the right set of people to form the influence group.
- Who influences a typical college student?
- What forum on the web would he be looking for social proof and where would he himself be the social proof for someone else?
- Which celebrity carves an influence on a certain product segment and user base?
- What set of information would quantify as social proof for someone looking up Google for a book review?
- What copy will tempt someone to click on my PPC advert?
These are some of the questions you need to ask before embarking on a campaign blueprint online. For this will help harness the right mode of influence on your target. Given the fact that a lot of advertising tools online offers pin point targeting you can tailor each influence in a way to convert people on an individual basis.
Besides these some universal points of social proof regardless of the target is getting high search rankings, being prominent on social bookmarking sites, getting blog mentions and networking Fanpages and groups. These are like a ready reckoner of the scope of your brand’s influence or social proof online. And a common thread across all these vertices of social proof are inimitable content that people want to share. Content and information runs the web and the idea of social proof is further cements this fact.
Any campaign that you do, whether social or otherwise ensure that it creates a buzz beyond that of the product. Make a kickass banner that all graphic design forums can’t stop talking about, make a killer web copy that every copy writing blog mentions as a case study, make a social media campaign that sets Stumble Upon on fire. Buzz is the buzzword when it comes to social proof and online marketing and that is where its impact lies.
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in fact social proof can also push people into a decision making scenario… perhaps on social media, (not digital in general) social proof would happen better through peers, than celebrities? as simple as say, the ‘xyz uses minekey’ banners on Fb.
Yep actually that is the way it functions..something Is hould have touched upon..
The whole idea though is to build your personal or your brand’s social proof.. in the new media this scenario is in fact your peers using and recommending it… like the other day when the Cleartrip blog mentioned Rajiv in their blog ..it is social proof for WATblog sort of..
What Marketers need to concentrate on is who is the influential party on their target audience and then use them…
So in case of web services for decision makers it would customer’s testimonials
In case of movie/book reviews it would be peers/ movie buffs on social networks with an existing social proof themselves (Amazon/Flixster etc.)
so on…
Thats the market niche folks like contentxn.com are focussing on i guess.