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I wanted to share today’s topic about social proof with you because it has been an ongoing conversation with our clients recently. [Excuse any weird typos as this is a direct transcription we had created for you.]I know that many of you will be thinking about leveraging your marketing as you move towards the end of the year.
What are you missing; possibly this piece?
I wanted to talk about social proof and how critical it is today, as this could well be a gap for you.
A reminder if you haven’t downloaded our audit checklist, then please do so. It is a simple but incredibly powerful checklist that will help to give you some sense of where you’re at with your marketing and where the gaps might be.
When it comes to social proof, let’s talk about the convincer triad.
Social Proof is All About The Convincer Triad
The convincer triad fundamentally is three convincers that you can use from your current clients and candidates to let new prospects know why working with you would be a good idea. Those three things are:
- Case studies (I have recorded a podcast about this before, which you can find here)
- Testimonials (which we’re going to cover next week)
- Customer reviews (which is the easiest thing to get into place and the easiest things for your candidates and clients to do).
So, starting with the easiest thing to get: reviews.
Reviews Inform our Purchase Decisions
We now live in a review society. I don’t know about you, but normally, before buying anything, even if it’s a book on Amazon, I tend to go and look at the reviews.
Here is a recent personal example.
We have many trees at our new home, and I know this is a first-world problem, but we’ve been looking at leaf blowers and hoovers. I’ve been on a few websites, looking at the customer reviews. It was interesting because I looked around and thought, oh, this one has only got a three-star review. I don’t think I’m going to bother with that one.
Then I looked at another and thought, wow, that has almost a five-star review. Yes, a bit more expensive, but, ooh, let’s dive a little bit deeper into that.
Sound familiar?
Hopefully, by looking at reviews, we cannot make a mistake in our purchase. One of our human drivers is to avoid pain and to make the right decisions. Of course, reviews help us do this.
Review Data You Can’t Ignore
There are some fascinating stats around the power of reviews that I wanted to share with you because if you’re not convinced about getting customer reviews for you and your organisation, then I’m sure you will be when you listen to some of these facts.
- According to Inc, 91% of people check reviews on products and services before purchasing.
- Now, 84% of people will trust an online review as much as trusting their friends.
- 87% of people are so convinced about reviews that they won’t consider buying something with a low rating. I’ve just given you the example of the leaf blower that we’re about to purchase; because we saw one with a low review rating, we thought, “Mmm,” not sure that we want to do that.
Using Reviews in your Marketing
When you look at that data, you get an appreciation of how important it is for reviews to be present in your marketing collateral and how you can use them with your consultants as you’re talking to candidates and clients. We look at many of our client’s websites, and something I noticed is that one of the most viewed pages is often their testimonial, case study or a “Why work with us” page.
In today’s environment, we can check people out so we DON’T waste time and money.
When it comes to you and your staffing and recruitment organisation, where would it be an idea to have your reviews? Let me give you a few places to consider.
Depending on where you are on the globe, there are key places where you want your reviews posted, which I’ll give you. You can, of course, use your reviews on your own website as well by getting screen grabs and captures of them.
1. Google My Business
The first one is Google My Business. When people Google your organisation, if you have claimed your Google listing, you’ll have all your links to your website on the left-hand side and on the right-hand side, you’ll have your Google My Business information. You will also have your Google review there.
People can go and check you out. Now, that’s a great piece of marketing collateral online that you want to leverage.
2. Facebook
Secondly, Facebook, it’s one of the biggest social networks on the planet. It’s easy to direct people to give you a review, and that can make a really good brand impression for you too.
3. Yelp
Yelp – probably not quite as relevant in the recruitment space. It tends to be used for restaurants, smaller tradespeople and things like that. If you have got a Yelp page or are a local recruiter, that could help you.
4. LinkedIn
Get recommendations on LinkedIn. Recommendations are aligned to reviews and will do a similar job. Now, on LinkedIn, it’s not a review; it’s called a recommendation. It does the same thing. Often it’s a very reciprocal process. If you or your consultants have had a good experience working with a client or candidate, there sometimes can be a synergy around that. You give them a recommendation, and they provide you with one. Remember that LinkedIn is the key social platform for many of you, so if you haven’t automatically got reviews on LinkedIn, then I’d strongly encourage you to do that.
5. Feefo and Trustpilot
Then the other two you want to be thinking about are feefo and Trustpilot. Both of these have free and paid-for-services.
You will see them used by a lot of bigger organisations. If you use them to it creates something called a brand halo effect.
If you’re using them too, people assume you are a bigger organisation. You’re a bigger player in the market.
The fact that you can use their reviews in pay-per-click adverts and can even increase your conversion by well over 300% if you’ve got a feefo review, that’s all part of your pay-per-click campaigns.
We’ve got Google My Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, feefo, Trustpilot, all pretty impactful places online that you can get you and your brand out and the level of service that you offer.
Requesting Reviews From Candidates and Clients
Then the final part of the equation is asking people for reviews. Where a lot of people fall down here is, they forget to ask because this part of the process isn’t dialled in as a system in their business.
We were chatting with some of our Superfast Circle members the other day about different things that they were missing, and then they realised, oh, we’ve stopped doing that, we should be asking for referrals.
We should be doing this. We should be doing that.
I think what happens is we’re so busy as business owners and as leaders of our organisation that we can forget to do those small things that can be big leverage in the business.
Asking for reviews is one of them because it’s very easy for people to give you a review. All you need to do is make sure that it’s part of your process. It could be that in your system, CRM or activities, whichever way you structure your day or your week with the consultants, part of their objectives is that when someone’s been in place for a month, you have a conversation with them. Part of that conversation would be, are you happy? Would you be willing to give us a review?
Then you can create some great email templates that you can send out to people. You can have a script that people can use. If this is done consistently and regularly, you will get more and more people who say yes and are willing to give you a review.
Now, the data around that is quite interesting. Again, I was looking online, and on the Search Engine Land blog, they shared that of the people who are asked for reviews, almost 50% of them are willing to give you a review.
Use Your Reviews in Different Scenarios
Remember, let me take you back to the start of this podcast and the impact you can make with positive reviews because they can be used everywhere. You can create memes from them and share them on different social channels consistently. You can have a whole list of them in a PDF that you then send to a candidate you’re thinking of working with or with a client you’re working with.
We have a thank you page that people are directed to once they have registered. They can then be taken to a page with a video, and underneath is hundreds of reviews that people have given you on different platforms across the internet. That’s a great convincer for people that you are the person to work with.
A task list then to be getting on with this week?
Next time, I will take it one step further and share a little more about testimonials.
How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see if we can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.
Thanks,
Denise
