You are looking to build a fierce community around your business. You know that creating an online store is easier than ever, and many people are selling the same thing online.
So how do you differentiate yourself and your brand? You do it by building an amazing and loyal following. This post will be a mini-guide that shows you how to create loyalty by utilizing social proof.
Let’s take a step back first and go through the logic of building a loyal following, also known as a brand community.
How do you do that though? The best way to showcase social proof on your website is to utilize two simple social proof tools:
While reviews are testimonials are two different things, many people consider them to be the same. Let’s go through the difference and how you can generate both.
Customer reviews are the most common and useful form of social proof. Having them on your website allows new customers to see that your company is legitimate. It also helps web visitors view valuable feedback on the experiences others have had with your products and services.
An effective way of using customer reviews is to allow customers to post photos either of themselves or of your product in real-world situations. Reviews can give customers more confidence when purchasing from a website where they are unable to see the product in person.
As a reward, you can give a customer points towards their next purchase or provide them with a gift or discount on their next purchase. Either way, you want to encourage honest reviews at the height of excitement for your customers. That is usually when they get their product!
One important thing to remember is to make sure that you give reviewers who attach a photo with their review better perks or more points. You want to encourage photographic evidence, and you will understand why when you get to point #2.
If you don’t know who to ask for testimonials, or how to ask for one here is a simple guide and script you can use.Look at the back end of your and see who has spent the most with you. You can also sort by the number of orders per person to give you a sense of who loves your brand and your product the most.
You can provide these customers with an incentive to provide a testimonial But more often than not, your best customers like you and they are willing to help out your business for free.
Hello [customer name],
I hope you are doing well and you have had a wonderful fall so far.
I really appreciate all the business you have given us over the past couple of months, and I’m reaching out to see if you could provide us with a testimonial.
You are one of our best customers, and a testimonial from you would help us expand our business, and we would be forever grateful.
I have a few written questions in a Google Form that you can answer, or we can schedule a call next week on Wednesday at 2 PM.
Here is the link to the form: [LINK}
I look forward to hearing from you!
For example, I would ask our B2B customers’ radically different questions than our B2C customers.
Broad examples for any business include:
Once you get this information, make sure you get a headshot of your customer and add their testimonial to your front page and share on social media!
First of all, showcasing and promoting your best customers makes them more likely to come back because they feel appreciated. Not only that but the next time you reach out to your customers for testimonials and reviews to generate social proof, they will be more likely to give you one in the hopes of being featured as well!
User Generated galleries are an amazing way to build loyalty. Being able to use customer’s own photos to showcase on your website or social media shows other customers not just that other people use your products, but how they look doing it!
If you don’t have a lot of photos from customers, you can still create a gallery pictures taken solely by you, but the best photos are review photos or ones that satisfied customers have provided themselves.
Doing this is a great way to have people feel appreciated when they buy your product and share their features with their friends.
You help motivate that delivery photo, you can make up super cheap business cards that say something like
“Take a selfie with your new jewelry and email it to us @[email protected] and we’ll send you a free bracelet in the mail.”
You’ll quickly build a loyal online following by featuring your customers on your website and social media. Doing that will strengthen your brand community and get you more sales over time!
The key to having a successful e-commerce site is to have persuasive and relevant content. The key to ensuring your content is persuasive is to have some understanding of how people think. They want to feel appreciated and part of a community!
Social proof is one of the most significant factors in helping to shape the decisions that we make. It is one of the most important parts of how customers make their choice to part with their hard-earned money.
So make sure that you are taking full advantage of the benefits of social proof in your e-commerce site and building loyalty with it!
This article was originally published by our friends at Smile.io.
