Social Proof Marketing

Social proof marketing is a sales and customer engagement technique that uses positive input from a brand's previous shoppers to encourage other shoppers to buy from that brand.

What Is Social Proof Marketing?

Many of today's shoppers look to social proof — or recommendations, reviews, or brand mentions from their trusted peers and influencers — to find and purchase products. Social proof marketing is the process of investing peer-to-peer recommendations to expand customer segments and drive conversions.

These marketing initiatives can take several forms, including:

User-generated content (UGC), in which consumers create their own posts or content promoting a product or brand;
Positive reviews and recommendations through a brand's ecommerce site;
Sales statistics related to the number and type of consumers who purchased a product; and
Written or video-based case studies that highlight how a product benefitted a specific customer.

Social proof marketing is effective because it allows brands to tap into the type of sales initiative that's always worked: word-of-mouth. As a digital and strategic form of word-of-mouth marketing, social proof enables brands to promote the benefits of their product through consumers' trusted sources.

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