Company: how can I boost my brand’s credibility?
It’s becoming easier and easier to launch a business and compete with established companies. A good way to protect your company against new players is credibility.
Building credibility means collecting social proof.
It’s a powerful asset that will differentiate you and create a barrier to the competition.
Contents
- What is “social proof”?
- What impact does it have on your business?
- Dangers to avoid in 2023
- The challenges ahead
- How to generate social proof
What is social proof?
Social proof is all the external elements that lend credibility to a company and its products/services.
You can’t create social proof for your company.
You can simply provoke it and collect it.
It has to come from the outside.
These are people who talk about you instead of you.
That’s what makes social proof so powerful.
For example, a press article about your company or product.
It’s a powerful social proof that lends credence to what you do. All the more so since it’s done by a media outlet that’s recognized by the general public and has a large audience.
Or video customer testimonials, the ultimate social proof that combines the effectiveness of video with the power of recommendation.
What impact does social proof have on your company’s business?
There’s nothing more authentic than customers speaking out about their experience with your company.
It’s social proof N°1. The one that will reassure your prospects before they buy.
In fact, 91% of consumers trust customer testimonials, compared with 38% for advertising.
Your customers trust their peers to help them make better purchasing decisions.
We live in a world of distributed trust.
The impact of social proof on your business is manifold:
- Credibility: you come across as a reliable, established company. You’re not a scam.
- Conversion rate: customers trust peer recommendations. They can buy with confidence.
- Customer relations: turn your customers into ambassadors. This shows that you have a close relationship with your customers.
- Differentiation: you protect yourself against the competition by differentiating yourself. Your customers are unique, and so are your testimonials. They won’t be able to copy them for you.
What are the social proof pitfalls to avoid in 2023?
The main problem with social proof…is that it’s hard to generate.
As we saw earlier, it cannot be created. We can simply provoke it.
In other words, create mechanisms to encourage people to create social proof for you.
So you’re dependent on their goodwill.
In the article “How to generate UGC”, we explain how to get your customers to make social proof for you.
The first pitfall is fake UGC.
For example, use comedians or content creators to create social proof by pretending they’re your own customers.
The risk is that these same people will do the same for your competitors…discrediting you in the process. Not to mention that social proof is an authentic and honest way of gaining the trust of your prospects.
The second pitfall is not doing it often.
It’s not enough to make 3 video testimonials to be safe for months or even years.
In the same way as written restaurant reviews, you’ll feel more reassured if you have lots of fresh ones all the time.
Social proof expires quickly. After 3 months already.
The challenges of social proof?
2 major challenges for social proof :
1. Generate at the right time
2. Distribute to the right place
Generate at the right time: you need to create your own mechanism adapted to your business for generating social proof.
This mechanism must take into account what you sell, and how you sell it.
This will enable you to ask for testimonials when your customer is most likely to accept, in the easiest way possible for them.
Generating social proof requires effort on the part of your customers, so you need to make the process as simple as possible for them, so that there’s as little friction as possible.
Distribute in the right place: once you’ve done the hard work of collecting social proof, you need to distribute it in the place where it will have the greatest impact on your business.
The first objective of social proof is to reassure your prospects so that they will trust you and buy.
The best places are therefore your home page and your sales pages.
Customer testimonials will replace your lists of customer references.
You replace logos with authentic videos.
Instead of saying that you’ve worked with such-and-such a customer, it’s your customer who speaks directly.
The impact on your conversion rate is much greater.
How do you generate social proof?
Generating social proof can be a complicated process, especially in video.
But you need to make life as easy as possible for your customers to avoid friction.
That’s why we created Charlie. Our online software helps you collect the video testimonials that will enhance your credibility.
Charlie helps you in 3 easy steps:
1 – Invite your customers to take part in a video testimonial, thanks to our personalized email templates that encourage your customers to register.
2 – Your customers answer your questions on video and online, without having to download an application.
It’s simple and fun for your customers.
3 – You automatically get a video montage that you can integrate into your site in just a few clicks, thanks to our widget.
No commitment, no subscription, no credit card.
Find out more about our Charlie software here: www.yourcharlie.com