Hi, welcome to the fifth psychological principle which is vital for your marketing. We'll be talking about social proof. In today's marketing so heavily influenced by social media, you cannot choose whether to apply this principle or not, you're required to do it otherwise you will be doomed to fail. So as we've been doing so far for each chapter, let's give a definition and some examples. What is social proof? social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomena where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation, or the simple version.
Social proof is the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something when it comes to social proof. One of my favorite examples smart Applied where bloggers is that they show you the number of subscribers they have in their email list? Have you seen it in a blog, there is an opt in form. And then somewhere next to the opt in form, there is a counter of the subscribers who opted in. Those bloggers are well aware of the concept of social proof. And they brilliantly know that showing the number of subscribers they have, especially if this is a big number, because you don't want to do this.
If you have, you know, 10 people in your email list and say, Hey, I have 10 people join us. But you have to, you have to say I've got 34,000 people, and those people opted in for a reason something you don't want to miss out. So this number would influence your visitors who haven't opted in to it. Now let's look at the screenshot Social Media Examiner 400,000. So this is this script. Another thing seedy social bars here, the social numbers, this is also social proof.
And another example, testimonials. Now, positive comments about your product about your company and about yourself are social proof. You get testimonials from your customers and not from your friends. That's important. So people think that testimonials are out of date. Everybody uses them potential customers don't, don't read them and so on.
But those people are completely wrong. testimonials still get read and are an important parts of your social proof. So let's look at what's what's in it in a good testimonial. In order for a testimonial to be complete, it has to consist of a picture of the person, his full name and address and that's it. You've got social proof. When it comes to testimonials.
Remember one thing the more the better. Now I'm going to open my website and show you how I apply the concept. See, I have a whole section in my website with testimonials. Those testimonials are from people who have taken my courses. I would like to have future students read them, because this will facilitate the decision making process whether to enroll in some of my courses or not. So then I have a section courses and where I offer my core courses with a nice discount.
This is another incentive. Why should those customers enroll? Okay, this was all for this lecture. In the next one we are going to be talking about the marketing implications of social proof and some of the best places where social proof can be applied. Thank you for watching and see you in the next lecture.