In this part we’re looking at more advanced tactics to supercharge your social proof collection.
With social proof the name of the game is overwhelm - we want to be able to show lots and lots of high quality testimonials.
We don’t expect them all to be read.
Instead we use the sheer volume of praise to convince prospects.
This Part will focus on speeding up acquisition so you can overwhelm with positive testimonials!
The fastest way to gain a high volume of positive social proof is to operate at volume.
Think about it - if you sell 10 products you might get 1 testimonial. 10%.
If you sell 1000 products you might get 100 testimonials. Again, the same 10%.
OK great you’re thinking - I just need to sell more? Great, really useful. Not. 😂
What we’re going to do is instead offer something for free but with a “bonus” that we send when someone gives us a testimonial.
This allows us to get volume (by using a free offer) and incentivise testimonials (by using a bonus bump).
You are still getting a testimonial - it’s just for a free product rather than a paid one. That’s fine though because it will still be about you and the valuable stuff you have produced. This gives us a really solid base of testimonials - most importantly: at scale.
First up you need a killer freebie.
Let’s use a prompt here:
Act as a content marketer
My business niche is [business niche]
My customer main problems are [list out problems]
Prepare lead magnet ideas.
The lead magnet ideas should be highly valuable, text based, short and easily consumable, relevant to the main problems my customers have.
Give me 10 alternatives and ask for my decision. Wait for my decision before continuing.
Then for the lead magnet I want to have a bonus offer. This bonus should build on the initial lead magnet and follow the same requirements.
Provide 10 bonus ideas and ask for my decision. Wait for my decision before continuing.
Then write the lead magnet outline and bonus outline in full.
For the example I use these parameters:
My business niche = “helping businesses implement AI for growth”.
main problems = “ lack of understanding about AI, uncertain where to start with AI, lack of technical skill.”
The prompt will first generate 10 ideas.
Here are the first 5 I got:
Tell ChatGPT which you prefer to continue. I’ll go with #2.
ChatGPT will then generate bonuses based on that specific freebie. Here are the first 5 ideas it gave me:
I love the first one, AI project planner, and know that I can easily mock that up. So I make that decision. ChatGPT will now outline both the freebie and its bonus.
These will be outlines only. You can ask ChatGPT to flesh them out in full but personally I’d recommend you work from the outline build the freebie yourself our outsource. It needs to be high quality!
You now have the two parts needed: the freebie and its bonus.
The setup now is:
I personally use DM giveaways on X to do the first steps. I’ll outline this properly in the Premium Prompt below.
Other ways to do this are to set up the freebie in Gumroad as a free product then have “thank you” email mention the testimonial bonus. Then they can either manually email you the testimonial or use Senja.
The exact technical set up depends on your tech stack but this is the basic shape and can be applied using whatever tools you use. Need specifics? Post on X with your current tech tools and tag me in. I’ll see it and answer.
This method works really well alongside an X DM Giveaway.
Earlier this week I dropped a post on this over on X but want to bring it here to make sure you don’t miss it. I know not all of you are on X!
In it I show you how I consistently publish giveaways that lead to 500+ X followers and few hundred newsletter subscribers.
Per post.
Here’s the full thread:
The trick now is to combine this particular strategy with your testimonial incentive campaign as outlined above.
In the DM where you send them the freebie adjust the messaging to include something like this:
“PS. If you find this useful I’d love it if you could write a quick review. Who you are, what you do and why you found this valuable. Send that over to me and I’ll send you a special bonus to say thanks - [add bonus details]”
Then just roll the campaign like usual, get the X followers and lots of great testimonials!
You now have the tools to start pulling in lots of testimonials.
The next step is how we deploy them. In the final two Parts I’ll cover using social proof on social media and on your website.
Here’s a reminder of what we’re covering this week: