3 great examples of social proof from other industries. Use these when marketing your local business.
Your job as a local marketer is to prove it.
“We are the best credit union in town” is great, but can you back it up? Using social proof is to use the words of your customers to prove how good you really are. And that can mean a lot more than simply having multiple good review examples.
The most credible sources of feedback to your prospective customers are from previous customers, far from bias or influence of the business.
To help your local business I’ve put together three examples from other industries to get the ideas flowing.
Basecamp is a software company that makes productivity software for remote teams.
This page is pretty wild. If you look at the scroll bar on the right side of the video you’ll see I only recorded roughly ⅙ of the total content on the page.
So much social proof - you’ll never read it all.
It’s not flashy. But the overwhelming story is that hundreds of customers like Basecamp enough to take the time to leave a review.
I also like how easily scannable the content is, not including images or any extra content. Prospects come to this page, skim through 10, 50, 100 reviews and then move on to the next page feeling validated their peers support the use of this product.
Consider adding a similar page to your site and ensure you're set up to effectively manage your online reviews.
Show off commentary that exists “in the wild”
Former Drift VP of Marketing, Dave Gerhardt, talks about showing off feedback from your customers that lives “in the wild”.
Drift does this by directly displaying brand mentions from Twitter on their site.
Chatter about Drift on Twitter is completely organic and a result of a great brand experience. Their customers and prospects enjoy working with them and are excited to share.
Harnessing this energy and presenting it to prospects is a powerful marketing move.
P.S. Download our Local Business Reputation Management Playbook to learn what a rock-solid strategy looks like today. If you're debating an in-house vs. vendor strategy, we break down the cost-benefit of each approach.
Build your core branding around your reviews (if you have a lot of good ones)
Privy makes marketing software for eCommerce companies that use Shopify.
They’ve gone so far as to establish their core brand positioning around their reviews and google star ratings. They can say they are the #1 sales app on Shopify and prove it because they have the most reviews.
This positioning could be replicated on a local scale - “The #1 Chiropractor in Burlington, VT with 700 5-star reviews”.
Simple, but hopefully there are a few thought-starters in there you can put to work for your local business. Especially if you're on the market for a Google review service vendor.
If you’re looking for more, I recommend a new article by our Review Response Team Lead, Jane, 15 Lessons After Responding to 150,000 Reviews.
I’m certainly not going to respond to that many reviews in my career, so when she speaks I listen. She makes a bunch of great points that will help you improve your (or your team’s) review responses.
Additionally, if you are researching automated review software solutions vs. a managed service I recommend Pros and Cons of Automated Google My Business Review Response Software. There’s a lot of buzz around this topic so I think you’ll find it useful.
Thanks for reading.
- Jake, Marketing Manager
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