Paul Hancox from Internet Influence Magic has posted a contest to run an experiment to prove the “Social Proof” of Cialdini. Paul wrote me to comment on his blog social proof but I decided to write blog post about it. If you have not read my blog post with the discussion on “social proof” and other principles, please take some time to read my article - “Principles of persuasion in marketing“.

We are all social human beings, live and always love to connect to others. We can not live without connecting to others. Experiments and evidences have proved that we are highly susceptible to being influenced by others. Dr. Robert Cialdini observed this phenomenon and coined this phenomenon as ‘social proof’.

Social proof (also called Informational social influence) is extensively being used by many marketers as an extremely powerful tool to influence the target audience. Whenever we can convince our target market that they should buy our product because “everyone else is doing it”, you have a significantly higher probability of closing the sale.

Dr. Robert Cialdini presents the principle of social proof in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials): “One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct…We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it”.

As with the other “weapons of influence,” social proof seems a shortcut that usually works well for marketers.

Social proof mostly occurs when:

• situation is so ambiguous that we have choices but do not know which to select
• we are in decision crisis when we have no time to think and confirm, but you have to make decision quickly
• you feel others are experts and you feel you should accept the authority of others because they must know better than yourself.

Cialdini called it the “Power of consensus” or the popularity. In internet business, if you go to the online marketplaces like alibaba or ebay, or elance, if one service provider has got 5 stars rating or many buyers are buying from the service provider/seller, you will automatically assume that the service provider must be good (cost effective or prompt or whatever). In other words, my blog articles must be worth reading because many people are reading it. People always want the hottest thing and popular things. If you can provide proof that your product is in demand by a large number of people, it will induce potential buyers to say YES more easily.

Seth Godin is promoting his September 6 Seminar fully using Cialdini’s “Social proof” and also other principles like “Scarcity”. Read one of his recent blog posts:

Last chance for September 6 seminar

The seminar on 9/6 in New York City is 85% sold out. Details are here. Thanks.

He is telling you “See, so many people already bought the tickets. Left only few. If you don’t act now, you will lose the chance to participate in the seminar”. Seth Godin, selling his authority, wisely using “Social proof” and warning you about the “scarcity” of seat in seminar. Great!

Similarly, look at the marketing of iPod, marketing fashion products, increase in members of social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Hi5, Ryze, LinkedIn and many other sites) and most of the marketing campaigns of products and services these days - Persuasion marketing is doing pretty well.

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