Have you scrolled through your Facebook feed and had a good product review catch your eye? Maybe you even ended up buying a product because you were swayed by a positive review from a friend, a relative, or even other online users you don’t really know.
That, my friend, is a result of social proof!
Social proof is social influence derived from the same principle as “word of mouth.” It generally inspires trust between your potential customer and users who leave testimonials about a certain product or service you offer.
Social proof doesn’t just rely on reviews or feedback — it’s also about what people see in your public social engagement such as the number of reactions, comments, and shares your ad receives.
If your ad gained around 1,000 likes whether organically or not, a customer’s natural reaction is to find out why. All thanks to a social phenomenon called FOMO or “fear of missing out,” people always want to know what the next big thing is.
Social proof is part of almost every successful social media marketing campaign and can negatively or positively impact customer’s purchase behavior.
When a customer is in a brick and mortar store, they have full capacity to weigh out options and directly see which product is the best for them. Things are a lot more complicated when shopping online.
Your potential customer needs an external factor to rely on to make a decision — and this is where social proof steps in.
The key to having effective social proof is using specific and authentic user-generated content (such as reviews) in your ads that are targeted to warm audiences. Your warm audiences are people who are already familiar with your products and just need a bit of a nudge to make that purchase.
Your Facebook campaigns can contain reviews that are not too in-your-face or too dry and unexciting. Although reviews are not exactly reactions or shares on your actual ad, they still showcase how other people love your brand and your products.
You can fit these testimonials into your ad copy or creative image into your actual ad depending on the length. Here are 4 stunning social proof examples used in Facebook ads.
Review in headline:
Review in ad:
Review in ad text:
Yup, you read that right — Facebook has ad text rules that you need to be wary of before running your campaign.
Facebook’s advertising guidelines include a 20 percent text rule. This specifically means that your image text cannot take up more than 20 percent of the photo. Facebook typically suggests no more than 500 characters and an image that is 400x400 pixels for News Feed ads, simply because they perform and drive results better.
Keep in mind that you can test your ad photos with Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool and see if they fit the standards before officially running your Facebook ads.
How will you use social proof to engage audiences?