Mia Fileman
Life's too short for crap marketing. The Got Marketing? Podcast is for marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs who want marketing that's fun, accessible and meaningful. Join me, Mia Fileman for inspire chats with my favorite marketing insiders about marketing that works, campaigns that inspire and the fads, fakery and false prophets to avoid.
Welcome to a special episode of the Got Marketing Show. Recently, my friends at Creative Plus business invited me to participate in a webinar on the topic of the Psychology of Social Proof. What a ripper of a topic. It was a fabulous discussion with marketing manager Lillie Brown, and I know you will enjoy it. Thank you to Creative Plus Business and New South Wales Business Connect.
Lillie Brown
Hello, and welcome to the psychology of social proof. My name is Lillie Brown. I'm the Marketing Manager at Creative Plus Business, and today, we're diving into the world of social proof. Before we begin today's session, I'd like to acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the original custodians of this land, and their continuing spiritual, cultural and physical connection to this place we now call Australia. I pay my respects to Elders who may be here today and those past and present. sovereignty has never been ceaded, and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
I have immense pleasure of calling Yuin Country on the New South Wales far south coast home. What about you, Mia, what land are you tuning in from today?
Mia Fileman
I'm proudly working from the lands of the Larrakia people in the Northern Territory.
Lillie Brown
Beautiful! Feel free to pop in the chat what land you're watching from today.
I'm just going to run through a little bit of housekeeping. So this webinar is going to go for one hour, so you'll be wrapped up by one o'clock. And the replay is going to be available as soon as the live broadcast ends from this link. If you have any questions at all during today's conversation, we welcome all of them. Please ask us questions. You'll get so much more out of the learning experience if you do ask those questions you've got on your mind. So pop them in the Ask a Question box to the side and we'll get started.
And finally, a big shout out to New South Wales Business Connect to have funded today's webinar. New South Wales Business Connect is a dedicated and personalized government program that provides trusted advice to help you start, run, adapt or grow your small business. A big thank you to Business Connect for funding this webinar today.
So let's get into it. Humans are inherently social creatures. Our desire for connection, community and belonging is hardwired into us on a physiological level. Through a marketing lens, it's really important to understand that the psychological phenomenon influences our purchasing decisions. If we're weighing out whether to buy a product or service, we naturally want to hear about other people's experiences. Did it meet and exceed their needs? Was it worth the investment? Do they recommend it? We could harp on until we're blue in the face about how wonderful our product or service is. But this only gets us so far.
This is where social proof comes in. In a marketing context, social proof is evidence that other people have bought a product or service that a business is offering and found subsequent value in it. It can take many forms things like reviews, testimonials, user generated content, case studies, and so much more. It's a really powerful and also underrated tactic to boost your credibility and stand out in a sea of competition.
Today, we're going to be looking at how you can harness the power of social proof in your own business. And it's gonna be such an exciting conversation.
You might notice a familiar face here this afternoon. I am thrilled to once again be speaking with the inimitable Mia Fileman of Campaign Del Mar. Mia's marketing prowess is unmatched. I think this is her third or fourth webinar with us and it's not going to be the last. For those of you who don't know her Mia is a marketing strategist with over two decades of experience and she's worked in brand management roles with global companies including L'Oreal, BIC and Kraft before going on to manage her own marketing agency. After agency days, her current business Campaign Del Mar was born with a simple purpose: to help female founders and small business owners think big and create clever marketing campaigns.
When I first met Mia, what really struck me about her work is her no BS approach to the world of marketing. She completely rejects the false promises and one-size-fits-all advice from marketing gurus and instead focus on tactics that will actually move the needle in your business. Mia, thank you so much for making a comeback and sitting down with me again. But what a treat.
Mia Fileman
Thanks so much for having me. And yeah, I will happily wear the crown of crowd favorite. It's always so good to have these discussions with you Lillie. I feel like we scratch below the surface and we get down to the good stuff, not just the surface level fluff. I just I find that exhausting, actually.
Lillie Brown
It is exhausting. And it's also pointless, not only for people like us who are providing that, but for the people, our audiences, right, they're not getting anything of value in it. And I think what I love about the conversations and the training that we run together is that it goes into the how not just why, or the what, the how, and I think so much marketing and business training is missing the how. That's why we can continuously do these webinars to show you the ropes of how to actually do this for yourself.
Mia Fileman
Totally.
Lillie Brown
Shall we get started?
Mia Fileman
Can't wait, this is my favorite topic yet.
Lillie Brown
Let's get into it. So I want to begin by exploring what cognitive biases are. So what are cognitive biases or also known as heuristics? What are they?
Mia Fileman
Yeah, so they are well documented glitches in our brain. Glitches is an is an unflattering term, maybe shortcut is a is a better word. Our brains are asked to do a lot of things like you know, operate our entire body, and, humans being flawed creatures, we look at shortcuts. Cognitive biases are shortcuts that we rely on so that we can get to where we need to go quickly.
These are quite well documented. It's not bro marketing or bro science, this has been studied. This is proper qualitative and quantitative research that we come out and we go, yep, humans, when they're presented with these kinds of situations, or these kinds of scenarios, they tend to do this. What's interesting about cognitive biases or heuristics is that often, we are our own worst enemies.
So what makes a cognitive bias a cognitive bias is that these shortcuts that we rely on aren't always the best. But we do them because they exert a lot less energy and a lot less effort for our brain, but they actually don't always serve us. And so when we're talking about today's topic about social proof, we're going to talk about how this bias can actually work against you.
Lillie Brown
And just to share some examples of cognitive biases in marketing, what are some of the most common cognitive biases that you see in your practice?
Mia Fileman
Super question! Okay, so the first one is the planning fallacy. Humans being optimistic creatures tend to underestimate how long something will take based on false optimism. You know, have you ever said "Yeah, sure! That'll only take five minutes." Based on what data? You know. Especially when it comes to marketing, like if I said to you, oh, how long would it take for you to write an email sequence, you'd be like, I don't know, like, maybe an hour or two. It takes five hours. So the planning fallacy is a really good one.
Then we've got informational social influence, or the bandwagon effect, which is the one that we're going to talk about today, which is that we tend to attribute credibility or value based on what other people are doing in our networks. So that's a really common one. Then we have the framing effect. So if I said to you, this is 90% fat free, or this is 10% fat, which one would you be most likely to resonate with?
Probably the 90% fat free.
And in fact, 90% of people agree. Whereas if you say this product contains 10% fat people are like, "Oh, 10% fat, that sounds like a lot." When you say 90% fat free, they're just like, "Oh, that's fantastic." So that's an example of a cognitive bias where our brain is like, I get that. So that's the framing effect.
But there are literally hundreds of these. So, so, so, so many. There's the cocktail party effect. There are a lot that we use, and knowing them and being able to name them, makes us better at identifying them so that we can be like, hang on a second, hang on. Have I thought this through? Or have I just, you know, jumped into this without actually doing a little bit more digging. Seeing and making sure that I've done a bit more due diligence.
Is it really didn't take five minutes, or is it going to take five hours?
Lillie Brown
Seriously, yeah. This reminds me of something. The book by Daniel Kahneman "Thinking Fast and Slow". He won a nobel prize for this book. But it's not a book about economics or marketing. It's a book about decision making processes. He argues in this book that we have two primary modes of decision making: the fast thinking approach and the slow thinking approach. While most of us like to think that we make most of our important decisions very slowly, carefully weighing up the options doing that due diligence, based on his research, the reality is that a lot of the decisions we make, including what to buy are done very quickly, from what we usually refer to as our gut or intuition. I think that's a really interesting perspective to share as well. Because, you know, if you are thinking that all of your clients are going to be making this really slow, careful, considered decision about you, you may be wrong. So I think that's another confirmation bias, really, that we need to have a look at too.
Mia Fileman
Oh, absolutely. Trusting your intuition is really important, like I am an intuitive marketer. However, you have to have the inputs there in which to draw on. What I mean by inputs is like audience research, audience insights, data, facts, validation, so that then when I say I'm trusting my gut, I'm actually trusting all those years of data and insights. What I see is that we make assumptions, and then we build strategies on assumptions, and not that foundational data and insights.
Lillie Brown
Absolutely. Which can be such a dangerous game, building a strategy on assumption alone is almost a surefire way to make it not work.
Mia Fileman
Yes.
Lillie Brown
All right. Let's begin by unpacking the bandwagon effect. The Bandwagon Effect is a psychological phenomenon in which people do something primarily because others are doing it. So those heuristics that you were talking about, those brain shortcuts, really help us make decisions more efficiently. They ease the mental load, because we are making 1000s, if not more decisions every every single day. So one of these shortcuts is looking at what other people are doing. So I'm curious about your perspective on this, does the bandwagon effect actually have an impact on people's purchasing decisions?
Mia Fileman
It absolutely does. The analogy I like to use is thinking about a cafe. So say it's Saturday morning, and you know, you're going out for coffee, you're walking down a bustling street of cafes, and you're in the mood for a delicious brunch. You spot two cafes side by side that you like the look of. One has a handful of people buzzing around, sipping mimosa, avo on toast, and the other one is completely empty. Which one do you choose? And the chances are, or the statistics say, that you choose the one with Mimosa slippers. You have no reason to believe that the other one isn't just as good, other than the fact that other people didn't choose it before you. So it absolutely works.
We can see this play out spectacularly when it comes to Instagram followers. This is probably the main one. As soon as we see an account that has 10, 20, 200,000 followers, we automatically assume that that person is better, more experienced, more qualified, more popular than somebody else. Which is why we have so many people buying followers, so that they can achieve that level of social proof and that level of credibility.
Lillie Brown
Definitely. We've got a comment here from someone saying this is why influencer marketing is so huge. People love to make decisions based on recommendations and reviews. That's very true. I was reading some research last week that said, up to 92% of customers will read reviews and testimonials before actually making a purchase. I think it's really important to note that statistic, that the vast majority of your potential audience are going to be doing this kind of research, the due diligence, to check whether or not you're the right fit for whatever it is that they need right now.
Mia Fileman
Oh absolutely. Since the world became digital, and we saw the rise of comparison sites and review sites like TripAdvisor, and even like Facebook reviews, Google reviews, Smart Choice I think they're called. Because of that it has shifted purchasing behavior and now, since that information is available, whereas before it wasn't. You would watch a television commercial, and you would say, yeah, that car looks really good. I think I might go and test drive it, and you had no way of knowing whether other car purchasers of that car had a good experience. But now that we know that that exists, now that we know that there are TripAdvisor reviews, and Google reviews, we absolutely read them.
The other thing that's happening Lillie, is that we are becoming distrusting of traditional advertising. So 92% of people no longer trust traditional advertising, because they've been lied to that many times by advertisers, you know, there's "this product is going to change your life". Just by using our laundry detergent, you're going to be happier. It's like absolutely bogus. This mascara is going to make your lashes 30% longer, just absolute rubbish that advertisers have gotten away with saying for years, that customers are like, Okay, well, I don't trust advertising anymore. So what do I trust? We trust friends and our family and our peers. With social media making it so easy to access that information, then that's what we're relying upon.
Think about your behavior in a Facebook group. If you're part of a community, someone will go in there. And they will say, Hey, I'm looking for a marketing strategist. Can anyone recommend someone? That is where the search starts. It's like, let's start with recommendations, let's start with reviews. Before we even consider, that's how we come up with our consideration set.
Lillie Brown
Absolutely. So, what is social proof? In your perspective? What is it and why is it so important?
Mia Fileman
Social proof is just a signal. It is a signal that somebody before you or a group of people before you have made this choice. As a result, this choice is popular. Or that this is a reliable choice. Without any social proof, there's that ambiguity about: Does anyone like this? Does this work? What has been other people's experience? But literally it is just a signal.
Lillie Brown
What types of forms can social proof take? I think we've spoken about reviews and testimonials, what are some of the other options?
Mia Fileman
You've got things like number of followers, you've got social proof meters on websites. I'm not a huge fan of them, but when you log on to some websites, you can see a little widget that has been applied to the website that would say Mia has just downloaded 10 Tips for Smarter Marketing and Lillie has just purchased Nail Your Email Marketing Strategy, so that you can see that it's just rotating through past purchases or past actions, but it feels like it's happening in real time.
You mentioned user generated content, which is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Because it is somebody else advocating or evangelizing on your behalf. So it speaks to that statistic of rather than me talking about myself and how good I am. If someone who is unpaid, who is going to go to the effort to advocate on my behalf and create that content. For me it's so much more believable and authentic.
The brand that does this, I think better than anybody else, is Mecca, the beauty brand. They have an entire Facebook group called Mecca Chit Chat. It has hundreds of 1000s of people in this Facebook group. They run regular challenges with their super fans to create user generated content and they'll say to them "Hey guys. If you buy the brand new mascara that we've just launched into stores and you go and create a how-to video you'll go into the running to win a prize" and then you see all the Mecca devotees jump onto their socials and create Get Ready With Me videos featuring the products. It is just so much more compelling than traditional advertising.
What else are examples of social proof? Podcasts! Being invited onto a podcast or being invited to do a guest masterclass like this one is a social proof signal. Creative Plus Business have invited me, and the loyalty and respect and credibility that Creative Plus Business enjoys, has a halo effect onto me, which Lillie, is a another cognitive bias. The halo effect.
The halo effect is basically, who we associate with can rub off on us. So a podcast host, or a masterclass host, enjoys a lot of loyalty and credibility with their audience. And then when their guests come off, they can enjoy that same level of credibility. It's like you saying, yes, I anoint Mia as beingn in my sphere of influence.
Lillie Brown
Amazing. Do you count things like PR as social proof?
Mia Fileman
Yes, it is. It is technically earned media for sure. But yeah, absolutely it ticks the box of the definition of it signals credibility and authority. Definitely ticks that box in the fact that, hey, if SmartCompany is willing to publish an article written by Lillie, then they deem her to be credible and authoritative enough to publish her work. She's not just a bro marketer. She's obviously credible enough to appear. Because even though we distrust advertising, we still actually have quite a bit of trust in media. Which surprises me, considering I think they are the absolute worst. Not all media outlets. We don't trust news.com and The Daily Mail, but we do trust, The Age and The Financial Review, The ABC, there's a lot. Australians absolutely love the ABC. So, certain media outlets are considered very, very credible. So then if you can get featured on these media outlets, then absolutely, that would count as social proof.
Lillie Brown
Do you think some forms of social proof are more valuable than others?
Mia Fileman
Definitely. I think user generated content, especially if it's a video testimonial, that's probably the ducks nuts. It doesn't get better than that. It's a past customer, going to the trouble to make a 60 or 90- second video all about shouting your praises. We have quite a few of those. We actually run them as Facebook ads. That's how compelling they are. They are our Facebook ads. Our previous student, talking about how much they enjoyed one of our programs. So that's probably number one. Number two would be PR mentions by credible media outlets.
Lillie Brown
Emphasis on the credible, there.
Mia Fileman
Exactly. Definitely do your research. I hope we're going to talk about this Lillie, but you should never pay for social proof. If you are paying to be featured, then that is paid advertising. So I really want to get into that because a lot of people are like, yeah, I want this, I want this so bad, that I'm just willing to do a little bit of a dirty, and click on that, you know, DM that you get that's been going around for the last couple of years. It's saying, Oh, Mia, do you want to be featured as the top entrepreneur in Forbes, Australia? However it costs 1000 Australian dollars to make the list. Social proof should be earned, it should be not bought and paid for and if it is, then you need to disclose that. So that's really, really important.
Then I would say, after PR mentions, written testimonials, and reviews are really high up there. The other kind of social proof that we haven't spoken about is qualifications, accreditations credentials, all of that. That's also pretty high up there as well. For instance, I'm a fellow with the Australian Marketing Institute, I am considered what's called a certified practicing marketer. So just like there are CPA accountants, there are CPA marketers, and I'm one of those. So that is a give you a little logo that you can use on your website. So we've put that there. That is also a really, I think, quite a good marker of social proof. If it's from somebody like the Australian Marketing Institute. If it's from an organization no one's heard about, then maybe like reconsider that. Even awards, but the way that awards are going at the moment with so many vanity awards that are you know, pay to win. That is considered to be less credible than some of the other social proof markers that we've spoken about. Then right at the bottom Lily, the number of Instagram followers is probably that the shallowest form of social proof.
Lillie Brown
The bottom of the barrel, bottom of the pyramid, the quantity of Instagram followers.
Mia Fileman
Yeah. If we're going to judge somebody by the number of social media followers, then Donald Trump is the most credible, fantastic person on the planet.
Lillie Brown
Case and point. Due diligence people. Don't believe vanity metrics.
Mia Fileman
Yeah, I mean, Andrew Tate has a lot of social media followers.
Lillie Brown
Just on that note of social media followers, you talk about, obviously you're a huge advocate for email marketing and the power of it. Something you talk about quite often is that one email subscriber is equivalent to 100 social media followers. Can you give us a little explainer on why that is?
Mia Fileman
Who wants to do some marketing math? Oh. All right. According to the latest Instagram report from HubSpot, and mentioned. Two very, very credible organizations. The average reach of a post on Instagram is 1.42%. So if you've got 1000 followers, and you just post organically 1.42% of them, on average, are going to see that post. The average open rate of an email for all industries, professional services, but also product based and E-commerce, sits at 20%. Okay, so then imagine we have 2000 Instagram followers based on 1.42% of them, seeing your post 40, people are going to see your post. Imagine you have 2000 email subscribers, with an average open rate of 20%. 242 people are going to open your email. So, more people are just going to be able to see it, and if people can see it, then they can consider it. But if they don't even see it, then there's no opportunity to purchase from you. So, it's a really simple equation in the way that these metrics work, I would take the 242 people opening my email versus the 40 people seeing my post.
Lillie Brown
Hands down, hands down. I think another element of this is that people who are on your mailing list are there because they want to be. I think people are increasingly protective of their precious inbox, we know how many emails we receive per day. And so if somebody has handed over their email address, they do actually want to hear from you. Whereas a lot of the time, people on Instagram, for example, just love soaking up the free content. So I think that's a really important element of that equation, too.
Mia Fileman
Not all channels are created equal, and we don't talk about this enough. Social media, being a borrowed platform, being an environment that is just full of distractions and shiny objects. It's important, it's so important, especially for the top of funnel. But getting people off social media and onto your email list deepens the relationship with that person. It automatically feels very different. You know, like, I don't consider a social media follower, a lead, whereas I consider an email subscriber a lead. We can have a one to one discussion, I've got their first name, I've got their last name, I've got their email, I've got their email signature, I've got their business name. All of a sudden, we are deepening this relationship. So even if it wasn't for open rates, and reach, there is just something so much more elevated about moving the conversation off social media and onto your email list, which is an owned channel. It's a brand control channel. I can post whatever links wherever I want. I can send as many emails as I want. I don't have character limits. I don't have to work within the confines of social media platforms, I don't compete with algorithms. So it makes it very, very different from a marketing perspective in terms of what levers you're able to pull.
Lillie Brown
Absolutely. We've got a question here from Tanya saying, "do you think that means focus less on social media posts and more on EDMS?"
Mia Fileman
100% yes! This is an easy one. This is one of those ones where it's like, you know, most times you ask a marketing strategist a question and she'll say "it depends". This does not depend. The best way to use social media is to drive people to your email list. But the best way that I think to explain this to smaller brands, is I want you to start from the point of purchase and move backwards.
The purchase is going to be made on an owned channel, your website and your emails. So start there, because that's where you are the closest to the purchase. Make sure you optimize that, make sure you're really proud of your website and of your emails and you're consistent, and you've given that 110% there, before we move down the customer journey. Since social media is predominantly a top of funnel platform, it helps you build your audience so that they can start the customer journey. Social media, to me is the last marketing priority for me. I will focus on everything, and then I literally write my social media posts 15 minutes before I post them. Because I know that if I can get them off social media onto my email list. I've got them.
Lillie Brown
Absolutely. That's the hard legwork. So we've got a follow up here from Tanya, saying, I get so stressed about doing social media posts. Some of the marketing courses I've done before say you need to be posting every day on socials. Mia, you and I are very aligned on this view of really warning people against this over reliance on social media for myriad reasons. But I think looking at that marketing equation that you shared with us a little earlier, it's a no brainer to invest more time into your email marketing and other tactics. Things that are actually going to move the needle in your business, because maybe having 40 people view your latest social media post isn't generally the highest return on investment.
Mia Fileman
Absolutely. I take a lot of issue with this advice, that you should be posting on social media every day, because it's not sustainable.
Lillie Brown
And also, the algorithm has changed so much. A few years ago, posting every day was a great strategy to build your account and get on the Explore page. But nowadays, it's not. So we're seeing the half life of posts extended for two, sometimes three days, depending on your audience. So if you're posting every day, people aren't going to be seeing it. And you could be getting more bang for your buck out of content that you've already shared.
Mia Fileman
Correct. I want to pick up on that, because I've got a really great example. Repetition and consistency in marketing are everything. I don't think marketing is that hard. But that's easy for me to say, because I've been doing it for 20 years. Literally repetition and consistency. So advice that is so hard to follow, because it doesn't allow you to be consistent is bad advice, because you're you're just not going to be able to post every single day. I mean, unless Tanya has a full time social media coordinator working for her business, which, like 1% of small businesses will have. So I just take a real issue with that.
Also just want to illustrate this as a cautionary tale. We outsource our Facebook and Instagram paid advertising to an agency, and they recently lost their Instagram account, they were shut down. They just got a message one day from Facebook saying that they had broken some sort of rule from Meta, and for three weeks. She's an agency, that literally her entire business is running Facebook ads, for three weeks, she didn't have access to her Instagram account. She's also running ads for other brands. So imagine how bad that this looks for her. Luckily, she had purchased my email marketing program and I got messages say me, I just binged the whole program over the weekend, and this was, this was the thing that I needed, the push I needed to finally get serious about this.
What you were saying Lil, about posting every day. So, we have recently changed our social media content strategy, and I don't believe in gatekeeping. So I'm just going to tell you exactly what it is. So our content strategy on social media is fewer, bigger, better. This is the rule that we follow. Okay, so what does that mean? We do fewer posts, we do better posts, and we make them bigger. What does bigger mean? If you go to Instagram, you will see we do these really meaty carousel posts, which basically is a blog that I have put in a carousel, and I will use all 10 frames that I'm allowed. And I will really like unpack the whole thing. It's quite meaty. Those posts are incredibly high performing for us, we could have 100 people save them.
Because they're so high performing, we see that they have a shelf life that is much longer than a typical social media post. So even after two or three days, we're still seeing engagement and saves and interactions on those those posts. Me posting the next day is only going to cannibalize that reach because the algorithm will always prioritize the most recent content. So I'm absolutely shooting myself in the foot, if I've got a post that is actually gaining traction, and then I go on post the next day. So fewer, bigger, better means that I can post three to four times a week max, get even better results than posting eek content five to seven times a week.
Lillie Brown
Just for the sake of it.
Tenai I'm sorry about your Instagram account but I'm happy to hear that you're on the email marketing train. Beautiful. So I'm really interested about why you think social proof is such a underrated and underutilized marketing tactic?
Mia Fileman
Because people won't purchase without it these days. So it comes down to that. You can have the best messaging, the best graphic design, the most beautiful photography, you can have the most gorgeous logo. But ultimately people are looking for that social proof before they're actually willing to take the plunge. Which is why every website now has testimonials on it, or it has some sort of plugin for reviews because the people just won't take that. And we see that in the online business environment, which is where I'm part of, where if you're launching a new course or a new product, and you don't have that social proof, it is so hard your first launch or even your second launch. Whereas I'm three years in to my courses. And I just have all this bank of social proof that now selling those online products is so much easier. The first year Lillie, it was like taking needles and sticking it into my eyeballs.
Lillie Brown
I can't imagine.
Mia Fileman
Because it's the cost of doing business.
Lillie Brown
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that. So I'm really interested in practice, in practicality. You know this, I know you're equally invested. So in practical terms, how do people actually collect social proof?
Mia Fileman
So this is why I frickin love talking to you, because you're just like, Alright, great. This is what you need to do. But now, I want the brass tacks, how does this work practically in the scope of a small business environment. Okay, so your marketing is only as good as your systems, and you should absolutely be automating your collection for social proof. Okay, so say you're selling an online program, like we do. I want to see an email at the end of the program that is automated on a schedule, to ask people for a Google review, or to ask people to leave a testimonial through whatever review site that you want them to do. Because if you don't ask, you don't get.
This is a very repetitive task, asking every single customer to leave you a review. So as a result of that it should absolutely be automated. So let's take an example, we have our nail your email marketing strategy online program, we find that typically, it takes about two months to complete that program. So at 60 days, I have an email that is scheduled, that basically says 60 days after purchase, send this email, and you know, we say hey, we would really, really appreciate that you leave us our review, and here's the link to do so. So make it really easy, automate it, we also, of course, send an anonymous survey. So that's actually the first step first, I want to hear what they thought. And then then we can say, if you're feeling generous, after completing the survey, could you please also leave us a review? But we also say in the survey, are you happy for us to use any of your survey responses as social proof? And most people say say yes.
So that would be the first thing. Definitely start with reviews and testimonials. Then think about systemising user generated content. So just like Mecca does, can you run challenges with your community? I have a Facebook group for my community. So it's a captive audience. And I can say, all right, anyone that does testimonial in the month of October goes into to the running to win a strategy call with me valued at $595. People can do that. You know, say you have a podcast, making sure that every single podcast episode, you're asking people to subscribe and to leave your review. Like that is that is commonplace in the podcasting world.
I send a regular e-newsletter, at the bottom of every newsletter, so it's now a template, I don't have to remember to do this every time. It says share this email, refer a friend and follow us on Instagram. From the minute you decide that social proof is important, then I want you to go back through everything and think about okay, where are there opportunities to keep asking. Please don't ask once okay, it's not enough. So I bought a mattress from an Australian brand called Koala, that does the mattress in the box.
Lillie Brown
Mm.
Mia Fileman
Have a guess how many times they asked me to leave a group or review?
Lillie Brown
Seven?
Mia Fileman
Yes.
Lillie Brown
What?!
Mia Fileman
Seven times. I loved the mattress. But I'm busy. I've got two kids, I run a business, I'm a defense spouse. I'm busy. Then I got curious. I was like, hang on, this was another reminder. That was another reminder. Oh, my God, they have sent seven emails to ask me for a Google review. Because why? Because they're so important. Because Koala has literally built it's brand on Google reviews. I was so happy to leave a review. I was just busy. So if you ask once, it's not going to happen. That's, that's for sure. I don't think seven is the right number. I think that that's maybe a bit high.
Lillie Brown
I think that may be a little steep. But you're so right. Repetition is everything in every facet of marketing. And that extends to asking for social proof. If you don't ask you won't receive. And the reality is that most of your customers would probably be very likely and willing to write a review for you. But they're busy just like you with a mattress. So send a couple of follow ups. And you don't need to be embarrassed about doing that. Because that is what is happening in the world of business. This is how we get that precious social proof.
Mia Fileman
Yeah, exactly. Couldn't have said it better.
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Lillie Brown
So what do you think is the best way to showcase social proof to potential clients? So now that we've actually collected it, we've got some reviews in the bank, we've got some user generated content, maybe a PR mention or two, how do we showcase this to potential clients?
Mia Fileman
I would put it on your website, primarily, because that is where the purchase decision is being made. We have video testimonials on our sales pages. We have, on our homepage, we mention that we have a top 40 Marketing podcast in Australia. So really optimizing that there as a primary place. LinkedIn, a lot of people now searching entrepreneurs, strategists, professionals like me, they're going to LinkedIn to suss out their credibility. Are they who they say they are? Did she really work for L'Oreal? Did she really work on the Vegemite campaign? Making sure that your LinkedIn profile is optimized for that, you've got your career history there. You get quite a long bio on LinkedIn. So put it in there. One of the things that we've got is, you know, Mia is a marketing strategist and the founder of Campaign Del Mar, she has written for some of the leading business publications including SmartCompany, Mumbrella, and Social Media Examiner. So really, like, everything should be ingested with social proof, absolutely everything. But definitely start at the point of conversion.
Lillie Brown
Yeah, okay. Yeah. So what about repurposing social proof for social media? Do you have to share it too?
Mia Fileman
Absolutely. Definitely share testimonials as posts, as stories. What I urge you to do is to do it creatively. I'm a creative marketer. So how can you do it in a way that's different to how everybody else has done it? Again, I'm going to tell you exactly how the sausage is made at Campaign Del Mar. But in two days time, I'm sending an email out to everyone to share some social proof about past students that have done our email marketing program. Instead of like, doing really pretty Canva testimonials with the person's face, and their name, and it all is on brand colors, I've literally taken screenshots, and some of them are like really messy and scrappy. I've got a text message from someone going "giddy up. These are my email marketing results. I thought you might like these bad boys" or something like that, and it looks hodgepodge and that's the whole email. It's just this hodgepodge of screenshots, but I feel like no one else is doing that, and it's like it's even more authentic because you can tell that I didn't fake these testimonials know what, who else who's got the time to sit there and go giddy up? You can't fake this shit. And that's the thing really, which we haven't really spoken about yet is just the lengths of people are going to these days to fake it.
Lillie Brown
Okay, let's talk about that.
Mia Fileman
It just drives me crazy, absolutely drives me up the wall. From buying followers, to either completely inventing testimonials or rewriting them, or writing them on behalf of a customer and then sending it to someone and saying: Oh, hey, are you happy for me to share this? So, you know, there's a lot of doctoring, that is happening. From people winning awards, but they were the sponsor of those awards, or they self nominated and then spent hundreds of dollars to apply for that award, and at no point during the application process where they asked for detail. Okay, so you say that you've helped 100 people, write conversion copy, show me the results. Show me some case studies. A lot of these awards, don't even ask for case studies. They don't ask for bank statements, they don't ask for anything. They're just like, tell me why you should win. It's all, it's all based on how compelling and nourishing if you can write without any proof,
Lillie Brown
Any person would be able to bluff their way to an award like that.
Mia Fileman
Yeah, as opposed to the Telstra Business Awards, where you need to supply P&L, and it's absolutely free to apply. Then you need to get testimonials from customers. You have to provide case studies. And you know, you spent 90 days pulling together the application for a Telstra Business Award, and you're like, you know what, I worked frickin hard. Then when you when you're just like, I deserved to win, you know, as opposed to, I was able to put together a clever narrative.
Going all the way back to the beginning of this discussion. The problem with cognitive biases, is that because they're shortcuts, sometimes they work against us, they're not in our in our own best interests. So we see an account with 200,000 followers, and we go, oh, my god, she must be amazing. And then we don't ask any more questions. And what I want people to do, the thing that I want people to take away from today, is that that's not enough, right? I want you to go and read their reviews, I want you to go and ask them a question. Hey, can I book a call with you to see if we're a good fit? How many people have requested a refund from you? What are your online course completion rates? If they're not even willing to have a conversation with you, and they fob you off to some sort of VA, then is that the right person for you to to work with? Go past the vanity metrics and ask better questions. How long will it take me to complete this program? Am I going to need to invest in expensive course software as part of this program? I know that there's a course creator in Australia, and she makes every single person that does her program, join Kajabi, which is 200 US dollars a month. That's fine. If you love Kajabi, I love Kajabi. I use Kajabi. I love it so much. But if if that is a condition, to doing your program and seeing the results, and I need to know upfront, that's all. Just tell me upfront that, hey, you're going to need to do the program, and you're also going to need a Kajabi subscription, which is 200 US dollars a month, and then people can go into it eyes wide open. It's when we are misleading and deceiving them that I take issue with. Yeah,
Lillie Brown
Absolutely. And I think that's why this whole conversation we've had today around social proof and the weight it holds is so critical at this juncture in time. Yeah, as we were discussing earlier on in this conversation, people are incredibly distrusting of traditional advertising and marketing because they've been misled, manipulated, lied to for decades. And so, social proof is such an incredible way to demonstrate your point of difference. No, I'm not a shady practitioner who's using these false scarcity tactics and, omitting details, like a 200 US dollar a month subscription. That is so important, right?
I think the more transparency that we can include about our businesses and the offerings that we are trying to sell in the world, the better off we will be as business owners, because our clients are going to be able to feel like they can trust us, right? Just like you've shared throughout this conversation so far, you very clearly don't gatekeep, you tell us how the sausage is made in explicit detail which is amazing. And I think because you do that that's why you have such a loyal following, and people who are so invested in your business and programs, because that helps them take that step forward into trust.
Mia Fileman
Thank you, I really appreciate you saying that. I mean, trust is the ball game. It's everything in business. Like, that's the business that we play in. So if you betray someone's trust, you've lost them forever. It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one negative experience, and no one is going to give you 12 goes no one. I've worked very hard to build relationships with my customers and my audience so that they do trust me so that when I say to them, Hey, guys, you are leaving money on the table by not investing in email marketing, they believe me, because I haven't lied to them about anything else.
Lillie Brown
Yeah, absolutely. Which is so contrary to what we see a lot of marketing gurus and educators sharing.
Mia Fileman
No, and it can be really frustrating. I'm sure there's people here watching this going. You know, it's so frustrating. I'm trying to do business ethically, I'm trying to do it the right way. I'm not misleading my audience. I'm showing up, I'm telling them the truth. I'm not just telling them what they want to hear. But then you've got people coming in with their, you know, vanity metrics and their shiny objects and people are going to them, I feel like that. I've had massive accounts, just completely rip off my content and claim it as their own. And, and then I look like, I plagiarized them instead of the other way around, because they've got 200,000 followers, and I've got 4000 followers.
All I will say to that, is that you do you, you stick to your guns. And I've built a very successful and profitable business from doing business this way. And I get to sleep really well at night, you know, on top of that. So they're like, I'm not riddled with self doubt, waiting to be caught out, waiting for people to realize that I am actually the fraud, because I have misled and deceived. You know, it's so obvious when someone has bought Instagram followers, you just have to look at the comments on their post. And it's like, you've got 20,000 followers and zero comments.
No, the jig is up.
Lillie Brown
Well and truly. I want to wrap this conversation by exploring how to maximize social proof. It's clear that social proof is golden content. What advice do you have for people to get the most bang for their buck out of the social proof that they collect?
Mia Fileman
Yeah, so don't focus on making it perfect, and pretty. Screenshot everything and then have a system for collating it. So we have a folder in my emails, which is called social proof, Lil, no joke. If I get an email from someone going, you know, I've just been working through the content, it's so good, screenshot that baby straight in the folder. Then we have a Google Drive folder, that, you know, if it comes through another way, like if I need to screenshot something in a DM, it goes straight in there. So we're just collating it. Because, you know, if we don't collate it, we'll never use it. The scrappier, the better. Making sure that we're systemising the requests for social proof always, you know, it should just be part of your standard operating procedures. The minute you finish a project with someone, the very next thing is, especially if you finish that project on a high, and you've just delivered this amazing piece of work to a client, a new website, a new logo, a new piece of graphic design. Hey, this would be a really great time, if you could leave me a review. Make it so easy for them to do it. Like literally click this link and write a review. Don't make them go hunting for it. Don't say if you don't mind going to my Facebook page and leaving a review. And then people are like, hang on, what's your handle? Just make it so easy for them to do it. And then just reuse every square inch of your social proof. I don't care if you got it two years ago, two days ago, you can reuse it. Absolutely
Lillie Brown
Amazing. You can use it in so many different places. We've discussed having it on your website, because if you're using a something like Google reviews, that's amazing as well. Share it on your socials. You can even share this kind of stuff in sales calls or onboarding calls. Some practitioners do that really well. Of course, it can be done terribly. But again, it's coming back to these ethics and principles that we've been talking about so far. You know, being aware of these cognitive biases, not engaging in these shady sales and plug and play marketing tactics that we see So much help online because they're not going to make you rich, they're probably just going to make the Creator rich of your lack of knowledge, which is why we do these trainings because we want to avoid that at all costs.
Mia Fileman
Agree. Should we answer Kat's question? Do we have time?
Lillie Brown
Let's wrap by answering this. So Kat has just shared, I've been having trouble getting happy clients to write my bakery business a review, they emailed me about how yummy it is, and all that happy customer vibes that they never actually leave a review. I asked a few times prior and after with a review link, but sadly, after they've got the order, they don't follow through. Any advice on what I'm doing wrong?
Mia Fileman
You're not doing anything wrong. Definitely. This is really common, I guess we haven't spoken about that like getting reviews is hard, because it's work. But the fact that they're emailing you, you that is the review. Just screenshot that. In terms of using the customer's name, I would just use their first name without approval to use their full name. So I would just say, Lillie or Sarah, and just say, this is what she did. If you really are finding that, because specifically Google reviews also helps with your google ranking, your search engine optimization. So that's a big thing. So if you want to, like do a little bit of a mini campaign to specifically get Google reviews, you may need to look at an incentive. So can they go into the running to win a free, you know, hamper of bread? A local yoga studio here in Darwin has said, every person that leaves us an honest Google review, you can't ask for a positive one, because that's disingenuous. But as long as you leave us a positive review, you get a free class to yoga, which is valued at $24. And it's like, absolutely. So and then it's easy, because the studio owner can go on to Google and say, Oh, Mia has left a review. Next time I go into the studio, here's your free class pass. So think about incentives to to get that system going.
The other thing I didn't mention, just quickly, sorry, I know we can we can talk for hours Lillie, is that the more you share user generated content and social proof, the more likely your customers are to give it to you. This goes back to another cognitive bias. Because they're just like, oh, but you know, I'll give her a review. But like, she might not even use it, she might not even share it. So the more you actually share that, the more you're telling your audience, if you give me a review, I will share it. And then they're like, great, I'll go to the effort to do that. So we need to, we need to lead from the front here, we need to lead by example. And you're like, Oh, they're just shared Lillie's video testimonial. I wonder if Mia would like me to leave a video testimonial? Of course she would. So that's a really great way of encouraging more user generated content.
Lillie Brown
Absolutely incentivize from many angles. Freebies are great. Also sharing your existing social proof. Like you said, there are a couple of different ways to attack it. I hope this has been helpful. Thank you so much, Mia, today has been a treat, as always. And yeah, we could continue chatting for hours and hours. I know.
Mia Fileman
Thank you so much for having me, and for the fabulous questions. If anyone has any follow up questions. I'm super friendly, you can reach out and we can take it offline.
Lillie Brown
Perfect. Thank you so much for being here, everyone. I hope this has been helpful to give you a bit of a better understanding about some of the psychology behind marketing and how to elevate your marketing practice. Thank you for being here. Enjoy the rest of your day. And we'll see you soon. Bye.
Mia Fileman
Thank you. You listened right up until the end. So why not hit that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling. Podcast reviews are like warm hugs. And they're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, Mia Fileman on Instagram or LinkedIn and feel free to send me a message. I'm super friendly.
