Here's how to use the social proof bias in business, unplug from the social conditioning "matrix" and get better at sales and marketing.
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Today I`m going to talk about one of the cognitive biases that we all have as human beings.
So what if I told you that most people are just walking around and they think they are in control, they think they know what are they are doing. They think they make their own decisions, but actually most of the things they do are in autopilot.
It`s like they are in the matrix, they are just walking around and they are doing whatever it is that they are supposed to do, what everyone else is doing.
In fact, this last thing that I said what everyone else is doing is one of the most powerful human cognitive biases. It`s like a bug in your brain. What it means is when people see what everyone else is doing then they are more likely to do it.
You can use this for good or for evil, but in this podcast I`m going to talk about how to use it for marketing business and sales. So, how do you use the cognitive bias of social proof to improve your business to get more sales and so on, whatever you want to do.
Look at random restaurants. You can find the restaurant on amazon. And it is like four or five stars and it is empty, it is 7 pm and it is empty. It is a highly reviewed restaurant and people like it, but they don`t know about the trip advisor score.
So what happens is no one wants to be the first person. I`m like OK, well, I`ll trust the trip advisor. Let me just walk in there and see what happens.
I sit down and five minutes later someone walks past, stops, sits down as well with the whole family. Five more minutes later more people arrive and so on. You can see this cognitive bias.
Once you see other people doing it, suddenly it is a lot more attractive proposition. You can this not only for restaurant, you probably are not running a restaurant, so if you are running online business just having reviews everywhere on internet about your business.
You all think that the reviews are logical decision making, but buyers do not make logical decisions. Buyers make decisions based on emotions, based on the way their brain works. It is not completely, but partly not of their control.
If they see no reviews it`s like “Oh, well, it`s not a very good sign”. Whereas when they see reviews it is a good sign. It is an automatic validation for whatever you are selling.
I see lots of businesses that do not have any reviews, they just have their Facebook page, they have their Google maps and they don`t put reviews on them which is a very bad idea.
I go to easy businesses and I tell them “Hey guys, have you ever thought of putting your stuff online and putting reviews out there?” And they are like “No, we haven`t.” The moment that happens their sales go up, they carefully manage these reviews, they make sure their best customers are going to give their reviews, of course, works like magic.
In fact, I would argue that people make most of their buying decisions now thanks to Amazon, based on reviews, a number of reviews and what kind of reviews have been written.
So, if you look at the guys doing book launches to become new times bestsellers, it`s not because it is the best book necessarily, it could be, it could not be, you never know.
But what they do is they email their list, they say “review my book I`ll give you for free” and they say it to ten millions of people and suddenly they are the new times bestselling author.
Of course, the book is not terrible. So it produces quality, but also cheat the system a little bit.
Some of the biggest names in the industry do it, this is what everyone does as far as I can tell. This works, this social proof buys, it works like magic. It makes people buy from you.