Relevance & Authority in Social Proof

Most of your prospects/clients harbor doubts about buying from you.

Most business owners don’t know how to make them feel safe and completely confident about buying from you.

This results in lost sales/failed conversions.

Here's 2 things you need to get right to fix that:

#1 - Get your signals of Relevance right.

#2 - Get your signals of Authority right.

One of the biggest reasons prospects and customers disengage from you during the sales process despite all the social proof (case studies, testimonials, logos of your current users) you throw at them is because they lack sufficient Relevance and Authority.

In other words, it’s not as simple as throwing any random testimonial, case study or logo on your landing page.

Instead, Relevance and Authority supercharge social proof to validate these 3 types of choices for prospects/customers.

These 3 types of choices are those they:

• Have already made
• Currently are in the process of making
• Hope to make

Why?

Because validating with Relevant and Authoritative social proof means the following:

• Validating past choices = gets them to buy again
• Validating current and upcoming choices = accelerates the buying process AND increases the chances they will choose you over competitors

Relevancy and Authority not only amplify social proof’s power, but also determine its overall effectiveness.

• Relevance = Do your case studies, testimonials and logos precisely answer these 2 relevancy questions:

   (a.) Can you can solve your prospect/buyer’s pain points?

   (b.) Can you can create desired benefits for them?

• Authority = Do the people or companies behind the testimonials, case studies or logos have sufficient credibility and standing with your prospect/buyer?

Here’s 3 examples:

• JUST Relevance: If you’re selling billing software to global law firms, using a testimonial from an entry-level billing coordinator at a top-10 firm saying how much time your product saved compared to their prior solution.

There’s relevance (a peer or near-peer organization in the same industry), but   not enough authority (testimonial from a junior)

• JUST Authority: If you’re selling cloud storage to small software development agencies, using logos from McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

There’s authority (all elite firms) but no relevance (completely different    industries and organizational sizes)

Instead, you need both relevance and authority:

• BOTH Relevance + Authority: A testimonial from a law firm senior partner from a top-10 firm saying how your product helped them increase cash flow because you made it much easier to track and collect accounts receivable.

In the cloud storage example, that's by using logos from similarly-sized peer,   near-peer or more elite software development agencies serving the same client niche.

In summary:

• Lost sales and failed conversions happen despite all the social proof (case studies, testimonials, logos) companies throw at them because prospects don’t feel certain
• To solve this, make sure prospects and customers feel certain by validating (using social proof with Relevance and Authority) their past choices, and current + upcoming choices.
• Validating past choices = gets them to buy again
• Validating current and upcoming choices = accelerates the buying process and increases the chances they will choose you over competitors