EP. 16- #1 RATED Episode! The Power of Social Proofing l Jay’s Scoop

Foreign. Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. We are here.

I am here, you are here, and together we shall do this and we shall not do that. We're talking about a topic that I love, which is social proofing. Now, you may say to yourself, oh, I know all about social proofing.

I'm not going to listen to this, and that's fine. But I want to give you specific tactics related to social proofing that really can totally change your overall engagement on all of your marketing.

In general, we talk about social proofing.

We're talking about this idea that we all have one society, has one collective brain, and we all rely on each other to help us decide what it is that we should or should not be interested in. That's why Yelp exists. That's why Google Reviews exists. Because this idea, oh, it has a good Google review. I'll check it out.

I'll give you an example. If you were going somewhere right now and you had to order an Uber and you go, okay, I'm going over here. 15 minute ride.

You order the Uber and then the thing pops up on your phone and it says, great, we found your driver. This Dude's got a 4.1 rating. You're like, I'm not getting in that car. I'll die. That person will kill me. A 4.1 is horrendous.

I've never seen a 4.1 for an Uber driver, right? And you're like, cancel, cancel, cancel. No chance. That's risking my life because all these other people have given a bad rating.

Now imagine you go on your phone, you order your ride, and now it says, a 5.0 in 12,000 rides. Like, this is the greatest human of all time. 12,000 rides of 5.0. Who is this amazing human? I can't wait to get in their car.

It's going to be better than going to Disney World. That's because we share a brain. We share one brain. Now, that has a huge impact on our marketing if we leverage it properly.

So I'm going to tell you some quick tips right now about how to put social proof into your marketing and crush it. First, let's talk about the subject line of your email. Yes.

You need to be using social proof in the subject line of your emails in very specific ways. First off, you want to be using the word most. Most is a secret sauce word in the world of email. This is our most read blog post.

This is our most watched video. This is our most reviewed clothing item. The word most tells everybody. Everybody else loves it. I gotta check it out, right?

When you have the word most to start your subject line, you are going to be seeing an open rate lift the percentage of people are opening up your emails by about 20% increase and you're not doing anything. You didn't create new content. You literally just went and found the thing that is the most digested thing.

Content offer, whatever consumer B2B and you're saying this is it, this is the most whatever. And I don't care how big or small your company is, you have a most, right? You have the most red thing.

You have the most purchased item could be three times. I don't care, it still is the most. You have a most. You have a least. Leveraging most in the subject line is a no brainer.

You can also do the same idea with things like top rated, number one rated. These things work incredibly well at the start of your subject line because it's telling the people, hey, this is the thing you gotta watch.

You gotta take advantage of like the most watched on demand event. Oh my God, everybody's watching it. I am going to also watch it. So this idea of social proofing in the subject line is a no brainer.

Now let's say somebody opens up your email and this also works on social posts as well. It works on your search engine ads as well.

Anywhere where you are marketing, you want to layer in that social proof and tell the person, hey, it's okay to everybody else digs this too. That is how we function, right? That is all we care about is what everybody else is thinking and we have to layer that into our marketing.

So now somebody has opened up the email and they're thinking about should I click on this email? Is there anything in here that's compelling? And they get down to that call to action button and they're thinking that. And here's what you got to do.

You got to take a testimonial, a quote, one quote, okay? Just one testimonial. And you want to put it right near that call to action button. And you have to say, this is the greatest software, said Susie.

These are the most comfortable shoes ever, said Bill. I don't care.

You put that one testimonial right there, right near that call to action button and you see your click through rate increase by about 15% on average. Now you might be saying, hey, I'm not a big company, I don't have a million testimonials. Well, neither do I, but you got to have one.

You got to have one testimonial. Somewhere somebody said, hey, this thing's cool. And by the way, if you don't have one, that's weird, go get one, you need one.

And you could ride that one testimonial all the way to the finish line.

You put that testimonial right by that call to action button and you do an A B test, you do a version of it where you don't have it conversion that you do and you come back to me, you tell me which one did better because it helps. Now we got the next step. Hooray, they opened the email. Hooray, they clicked on the email. Now they're at the destination page.

They're there, they're at the finish line. How are we going to get them to buy the thing, subscribe to the thing, register for the thing, do the thing? What are we going to do?

Here's what we're going to do. Now they're filling out the form and they get to the final button, the submission button, which better not say the word submit.

It says something awesome like I want in or let me have it or doesn't matter.

But the final button right there on that destination page where they're filling out the form, you are going to take a testimonial and you're going to put it right by that button, right next to the button, right below the button, somewhere near the button and it's going to say, this is the greatest software ever, said Ronaldo. Okay, these are the most comfortable shoes on earth, said Sarah.

You put that one testimonial right next to it because when that person and subconsciously is on the fence, should I do it, should I not do it? Yes, I'm going to do it.

And they click the button because they see that final vote of confidence, you will see your submission rate go up a little over 15% on average by having that testimonial right there. So it's critically important to use social proofing at every stage. You are validating the person's decision to take the next step.

That is the world that we live in. And do not get in an Uber that has a 4.1 rating. Okay, this comes to the segment of this Crazy podcast. I always have too much coffee. I do.

I mean, that's the only answer. The only answer for the reason I talk the way that I do. I mean, come on. I actually do wake up like this, which is really weird.

Anyway, this is the portion of this podcast that is called since you didn't ask. And this is where we talk about stuff that has nothing to do with work or business or whatever, just whatever it is I'm up to. What am I up to?

This is true. My wife made me go clothes shopping because I was in my closet, and she's like, you got to clean out stuff your closet. And I go.

And I started taking stuff out, and she goes, well, you got to get rid of that. And I go, no way. And it was T shirts from when I was in college. And she's like, that's disgusting. Because I met my wife in college.

Go Gators, University of Florida. And she goes, you wore that in college. I go, it's awesome. Isn't this awesome? She goes, it's the opposite of awesome.

She goes, we're going to the mall. Oh, so we go to the mall. Which is fine. I like going to the mall. I just don't like shopping for myself. I like shopping for other people.

So we go to buy. She wanted me to buy jeans because my jeans, I mean, they're disaster. Whatever. And here's the fail for me. What I do. I don't know if you do this.

I don't know why I do this. I shop optimistically, okay?

So I will get a pair of pants that are definitely too tight around my waist, and I'll say, yeah, this is exactly what happened. But it's going to be great in like a week or two because, you know, I'm going to really get focused and drop a few pounds. We're good to go.

So I'm going to go with the tight ones because we are good to go. This is what I do.

I shop optimistically, which is, like, possibly the dumbest thing you could do, because then I get home and I'm still a farm animal, right? And I'm still like, I'm not thinking about the pants that will not fit me that I just bought for no reason.

And so that don't shop optimistically, I will tell you. And then I wind up buying just stuff online, right? I don't do very well in the mall. And then I go deep on a brand.

So right now, the two brands, I'm not sponsored by these brands or anything like that. The two brands, I'm deep on are mango. I think it's mango.com. i don't even know. I love mango. Everything mango. It's like, not really that expensive.

It all kind of fits. It looks. Fits the way, whatever. So I love mango. Nobody's asking. It's kind of like Zara, but it's mango. I don't know.

And I don't even know what to do about. And Tommy John. I love everything Tommy John. If you don't. I gotta tell you something. If you don't wear Tommy John, I'm about to talk about underwear.

Tommy John underwear is the greatest underwear, like, on earth. And it's so weird because it's like, I shouldn't be talking about that, but I'm telling you, it's life altering. Okay.

All right, this is done completely off the rails. Who cares? All right, so what have we learned? We learned that I wear Tommy John underwear, which is a weird thing to share.

We have learned don't shop optimistically. We also learned don't get into an uber with a 4.1 rating and and use social proofing everywhere in all forms of your marketing.

And you are awesome for checking out this episode of do this, not that. Thanks. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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