How To Imply Social Proof For Massive Conversions

Humans are social creatures. Pack animals. Those of us that wanted to go off on our own while our primitive ancestors were migrating got eaten by tigers, or died from exposure, or didn't have any kids.

Millions of years of evolution has taught us that going along with the crowd is generally a good idea. Not only is there safety in numbers, but it doesn't require much thinking.

If there's anything about human nature that has been proven time and time again it's this:

We're generally afraid and lazy.

Going along with the crowd solves both these problems. Minimum danger, and minimum thinking required.

This can easily be leveraged if you're selling stuff online.

One obvious solution is to get a bunch of testimonials, real or not, and paste 'em all over your site.

But this attracts two potential problems. One is that people may not believe they're real, which will have the opposite effect.

Two is that even if they're real, if they don't match the general demographic of your readers, they also have the opposite effect.

Sure we like to follow the crowd, but only if the crowd looks and thinks like us.

The best thing is to simply get as many real testimonials as you can from as wide a variety of people as you can.

But what if you don't have that?

You can imply social proof. Mention it covertly in your sales letter.

For example, let's say you're getting ready to list your benefits of your widget.

You can say:

This widget lasts for ten years.

OK, decent selling point, but what about this:

One of the things people like about this widget is that it lasts ten years.

You're still saying it's got the benefit, but you're also implying that "people" like it.

What people? How many people?

Who knows, but the reader will imagine whatever people they need in order to feel comfortable buying it.

You can make this more enticing if you know anything about your reader.

Let's say their buying some kind of link building software.

So you can pace them, and say things that are likely true about them.

What do you know that's true about them?

They've got a website.

They need links.

They've been involved with IM for a certain amount of time.

They would likely like their links sooner rather than later, and with higher PR rather than lower PR.

This is obvious, I know.

But it will help with the "implied" social proof.

First pace them:

You've got a website and you need links fast. You don't want to pay more than you have to, and you need your site ranked ASAP so you can start making some money.

Then drop in the implied social proof, but say that these "people" are like your reader:

This is exactly why people like you have been using our product for years.

You also get to imply the idea that "people like you," which everybody likes to hear.

Try this out, and see how well it works.