Over the past few weeks we’ve already seen many examples of social proof on this blog, but so far most of them have been about improving perception. Now let’s tackle a more direct question for marketers and bloggers: Can social proof be used to boost your sales?

The answer is a loud and bold YES. And if you think I’m going to ramble on about testimonials, you’re wrong. Surely you’ve come to know me better than that?

Here’s two great techniques to generate more sales of your products, at least partly involving the principle of social proof (I think you’ll love the second one!):

Studies on Ebay have shown that people often get carried away in bidding frenzies, to the point where 40-50% of bidders end up paying more than the “buy it now” price! The Romans had a name for this - they called it calor licitantis, or bidder’s heat.

The researchers also suggested a low starting price, because this tended to result in more bids - and when choosing between identical items, buyers seemed to favour whichever auction had the most bids.

This, of course, makes sense to the many readers of Internet Influence Magic (that’s you!), because it’s the principle of social proof in action. With the limited information available to us in an auction, we often have to rely on shortcuts, such as noticing what other people are doing. Whether it’s actually true or not, the shortcut that tends to runs through our mind is: more people are bidding on X than Y, so it’s probably the better auction.

Here’s another great technique I’ve seen used to great effect quite recently:

Back in 2003 I sold a script that could automatically increase your price by a certain amount every time X units were sold. So you could sell 10 units of your product at $29.95, and then the script would automatically increase the price by, say, $5 for the next 10 items… and so on. It had other features like split testing, but I eventually withdrew the script when better testing methods became available. (But that’s another story you can follow on my blog at The Smart Web Letter.)

Anyway, Robert Plank is a fellow programmer who wrote a PHP script that worked with Paypal and that could increase a price by a certain amount every time a person brought an item. So, for instance, you could start at a price like $7, and increase the price by $0.07 a time. (He calls them “dime sales”.)

That’s exactly what Robert did with one of his own products. He started at $7, and the script automatically raised the price by $0.07 after each sale. The price increased rapidly and he made 100 sales overnight.

If I remember rightly, he also did one where his starting price was $0.05 and it increased by $0.05 a pop. I don’t know the exact figures for this one, but I’m pretty sure he sold even more than the one that started at $7.

One crucial factor that made it work so well was where he chose to make this offer. In this case, it was in the Warrior Special Offer section of the Warrior Forum. This area of the forum is where members can make offers for their products and services that are not supposed to be available to the general public - although, ironically, the forum is publicly available. And with over 50,000 members of the forum, the Warrior Special Offer area is a marketplace of hungry buyers.

Plus, the forum enables people to leave feedback on their purchases, on the same post as the original offer.

Now hopefully, as regular readers of this blog, you can appreciate exactly why Robert’s technique worked so well…

(a) At a low price of $0.05 or even $0.50, people could jump on board with very little risk. Plus, Robert was already well-known to the forum members, so the trust was already there.

(b) As more sales rolled in, people would leave their positive feedback on the product, which would spur on the people who needed that extra bit of assurance. (Few people like to go first. Can you remember the last time you were first on the dance floor?)

(c) The continual price increase acted as a scarcity mechanism - something we’ll discuss another time, because it’s another weapon of influence! In this instance, the product itself wasn’t scarce, but the low price was!

(d) Since this had similarities with an auction, I believe there was a kind of “bidder’s heat” effect, but without a “buy it now” price. People who might otherwise have been hesitant may have jumped on board, simply because so many others were doing it. After all, when you see 20, then 50, then 100 people buy something you’re interested in, it becomes just that little bit more irresistible! (Have you heard of the term social proof?)

Incidentally, the PHP script that can do this is found in Volume 3 of Robert’s Sales Page Tactics. Since I’m not an affiliate, I don’t get any credits (apart, maybe, from good karma) for mentioning this, so if you feel like doing something for me as a thanks for sharing this awesome technique with you… hit up those Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc buttons at the bottom! (In other words, help spread the word about this blog.)

I mentioned the concept of scarcity in this post. Since it’s another “weapon of influence”, let’s discuss it next! We’re all familiar with it, I’m sure… yet perhaps you’ll be surprised at just how much it’s used to influence what you buy, and when you buy.

Photo credit: gallery nucleus by superfantastico

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