How This Powerful Marketing Concept Grows Brand Awareness
And the ways you can implement it today.
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In 2017, Hubspot published a report to understand the main marketing challenges that companies face. It’s no surprise that 63% of companies revealed that their biggest challenge is generating enough traffic and leads. Why?
Today, the fight for a consumer’s attention has never been harder. Each day, 500 million Tweets are sent out and 95 million photos are posted on Instagram. More frighteningly, digital marketing experts estimate that the average person is exposed to roughly 4,000–10,000 ads a day. This is the reality that modern brands now face.
That’s why not having to rely solely on paid advertising and finding ways to connect with potential customers in a meaningful way can be much more powerful. This is where the concept of social proof and “word of mouth” comes in.
“Social proof is an informational influence and can lead to herd behavior. Research suggests that receiving information about how others behave (social proof) leads to greater compliance among people.” — Cialdini et al., 1999
Why is social proof important?
The main reason why social proof is so interesting is that people are more likely to follow the actions of others, and importantly, trust in their choices. As a company, this is can be used as an extremely effective marketing tool in order to grow brand awareness, sales, and leads.
In a recent study on the effects of social proof and social media shopping, researchers conducted an experiment to test how it influences consumer purchasing intention. Participants were shown different versions of a fictitious cellphone company on Instagram and were told to imagine that they needed to buy a smartphone. Interestingly, the group that was shown the version with friends or recognized community endorsing the fake company, was the group with the highest purchasing intent.
The researchers concluded that:
“Social community recommendations does indeed impact a…
