Ep. 230 - WRONG!🚫You are doing SOCIAL PROOF WRONG!🤬People Annoy Me - Jay’s SCOOP

0:08Welcome 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 Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40we are here for do this not that presented by marigold today we're talking about social proof and i'm here to tell you probably doing it wrong you are because you think with social proof that okay great we got some testimonials we got some reviews we're going to stick it on our website we're going to stick it on our social media posts and we are good you are basically checking the box that you're doing social proof. And I'm telling you, just like anything else, okay, just like the words that you put in your search ad, just like the subject line of your email, there are very little things that you can be doing that can change the outcome of everything by how you're leveraging social proof, both business and consumer marketers.

1:20So I want to get into the tiniest detail on how it will change everything specifically. But first, what is social proof? What are we talking about? Listen, we all know that social proof is the idea that people are more likely to take action based on what other people say or do. We just follow each other. That's what we do. We want to know what other people think. That's why influencers exist. It shows that if people like or use something, then others will feel more confident in trying to do that too. Anyway, so this can be testimonials. It could be five-star reviews. It could be user-generated content like photos or videos that people share.

2:01This is social proof. Now, here's the thing that doesn't work that we need to stop doing immediately before we get into the specific tactics that do work. What doesn't work is generic and vague social proof. Taking generic and vague testimonials or reviews and then using that in all of our marketing is a recipe for failure. So what does that sound like? Like a generic social proof would be a quote that says something like, this service was amazing and it met my needs perfectly. Who cares? It means nothing. Or the team was amazing and helpful throughout the process. Whatever. The customer support was excellent and responsive.

2:40Nobody cares. It's not real. It's nothing. So what does work? One of the tactics that works incredibly well is quantifiable metrics in your testimonials and in your social proof. What does that mean? Quantifiable metrics are when there are measurable data points that provide clear evidence of a product's effectiveness or a service's impact. So what we did was we took 100 destination pages, offer destination pages, business and consumer, and we had half of the traffic go to pages that had a generic testimonial, like the boring ones that I just read. And then the other half of the traffic go to pages that had quantifiable metric testimonials.

3:20And what we found was was that conversion rates jumped on those destination pages by over 35 % when you have the quantifiable metric testimonial. So what does that even, what does a quantifiable metric testimonial sound like? It sounds like this. Let's say something related to time savings. It would say, this app saved me 10 hours a week on my meal planning, allowing me to spend more time with my family. Or if you're talking about increased sales, after using this marketing tool, our sales increased by 25 % within six months, or my child's grades improved by an average of 15 % after using this tutoring service for just one semester, or by implementing this software, we reduced our operational costs by 20 % within the first year.

4:05It is this quantifiable metric that says, oh, that's what I can get out of using this because that's what this person got. it's not this generic wallpaper garbage. And you need to be intentional about asking for better testimonials, better reviews. You don't need a lot of them. You just need a handful of them that you can use everywhere. And you say, can you leave us a review or a testimonial that shares exactly how you use our product? Can you share why you love our product and exactly what you got out of using it? You have to be more intentional about how you're asking for this stuff so you get the stuff that then can change your conversion rates.

4:44Like, listen, bounce rates are crazy high. They shouldn't be this high. What is a bounce rate? A bounce rate is when somebody goes to one of your landing pages, your destination pages. I don't care if you're business or consumer, right? And they get to that page about your product or service. And then they decide to leave the page without taking any action on that page and buying the thing. According to DataBox, for both business and consumer destination pages, bounce rates are over 60 % on average. that's terrible i mean think about what's happening somebody's clicking on a search ad an email a social post they're interested in the thing that you're promoting right and then they go to that destination page and over 60 of them leave because they're turned off by what's on that page they're turned off by your vague generic horrendous testimonials another one another version of testimonials and social proof that I love is contextual details.

5:39This is gold, okay? And increases conversion rates by over 40 % versus generic ones according to World Data Research. What does this even mean? Contextual details and social proof refer to when the specific background or circumstance that make testimonials or endorsements more relatable or persuasive to the audience. What does that actually mean? Let me give you examples. Instead of somebody saying, our software improved efficiency, you would say, as the operations manager at a manufacturing plant, switching to this software reduced our production time by 20%, allowing us to meet tight deadlines consistently.

6:21That is contextual. Or this blender is amazing. That's generic and useless. Versus As a health-conscious college student, this blender has made my morning smoothies quick and easy. I love how it blends everything perfectly in just 30 seconds. You can ask for these kind of testimonials or social proof. You don't need a lot of them. You could literally get a handful and then you put them in your emails, in your headline of your email. You put them in the subject line of your email. You put them as the lead content in your social posts. You put them on your destination pages. Okay? You put them everywhere and this is how you win.

7:01This is how you win. When someone opens up one of your emails and the headline of your email, for example, the big letters, when it is a testimonial versus just the standard offer that you're promoting, right? When it is a testimonial that you're putting in that headline spot, we see click-through rates on those emails go up 25 % for consumer and 32 % for business to business emails because it's speaking directly to what the person is thinking about for your product or service or offer. This is secret sauce stuff. All right. Before we get into since you didn't ask, I want to let you know that, by the way, that's the ridiculous portion of this podcast.

7:43I want you to know this podcast is presented by Marigold. Listen, Marigold is a role of the best email platforms on earth, Sailthrough, Campaign Monitor, MyEmma, Cheetah Digital, Live Clicker. They're all part of Marigold. And I'm telling you, I've been using Marigold for years. Whether you're a business or consumer marketer, you got to check them out. You need to at least check them out. And listeners to this podcast, there's a special offer up to 50 % off. All you need to do is go to jschwedelson.com slash save. That's jschwedelson.com slash S-A-V-E. And that is the only spot that you're going to find this amazing offer.

8:19I'm telling you, check out Marigold. Strong endorsement. I've been using them for years. Listen, since you didn't ask, I think that I need to hide out because we've been having lots of people over. We have people in town for the holidays and hanging out with lots of these people and everybody's driving me crazy. And I don't know what else to say. They are because everybody wants to talk about things I don't want to talk about, right? We'll have football games on the TV. And we're sitting there, a bunch of us on the couch. And then invariably, we'll have one or two of these people that know everything about every player.

8:57Did you know this person? And they rattle off these stats and the random things and the history of this. And I'm like, who cares? Who are you? What did you go ahead and Google every player on the team? Like the starting backup tight end on whatever team? Who cares? And I'm not impressed. I'm not. But I shouldn't be sitting near people because instead of me absorbing the information, I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. I'm like, enough with you. Enough with whatever you're saying. I don't care. And then the other, I think the most annoying thing any human being can do, and this is not just related to the holidays, but in general, let's say I got a good story to tell about something that happened in my life.

9:37I'll tell the story to somebody. This is what keeps happening to me right now. I tell the story to somebody and I go, this, this is this, whatever we did this. And they'll go, oh, I got one that's even better. And then they tell me their story, which they of course think is better. And all they were doing while I was telling them my story was that they were getting prepared to say, I got one even better. Like this, this one upper person, whoever you are out there, don't be that person. Just take in the content, take in the information the person said, oh, and say, that's an amazing story. That's so interesting.

10:12And then you ask them a question about their story. You don't say, I got one even better. That's like the rudest thing in the world. And it's driving me crazy. I'm very anti the one upper person out there. I think I like the one upper person less than I know everything sports person. All right. So, wow, this is like a rant. I need to chill out. I just need to chill out. Listen, I appreciate you being here. If you want to leave this review, then you would be way cooler than a one-upper person. That's for sure. I would appreciate it. That's your holiday gift to me. I appreciate you. And also, we're about to open up CertifiedGuru.com.

10:48This is the 100 % free email certification program that my company is putting out. Only the people on the wait list are going to be able to get on this thing. It's opening up in a few days. CertifiedGuru.com. We've been working on this for months. It is going to be the most amazing email marketing specialist certification. It's 100 % free. Check it out. Thanks for being here and keep it real. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time.

11:28Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 % free, visit guru events.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John Martha Stewart and me guru events.com check it out