Metaphorical Marketing

Have you ever been in a bar or club and the date of your dreams walked in... with someone else hanging off their arm? You wanted that person so much more when you saw the competition, right?

People are naturally more attracted to the opposite sex when they already have a partner. Some of us can likely recount being accosted from all sides by potential mates while we were in a relationship, but as soon as it ended, so did the stream of interested candidates.

Why does this happen? Its a perfect case of "social proof". If someone else thinks the good looking guy or girl is worth dating, then so do we. If someone's gazing lovingly into another person's eyes,  then we immediately get the feeling that they must be a worthy mate.

How can you use this phenomenon?

Hitch a date to your businesses arm by working testimonials into your marketing communications - get them in your brochures, in your emails, and into your webpages. Testimonials are businesses "social proof", and they work because we aren't tooting our own horn- someone else is doing it for us... they're practically bursting to tell your perfect clients how fantastic your last "date" was and what you did for them.

The principle of social proof also says that the more people are interested, the more interested we are. Look at websites like www.digg.com - digg is the perfect example of how social proof works; as soon as a group of people start "digging" a website, the digging process keeps accelerating on an ever increasing curve. Why? Because hundreds or thousands of people are giving the "dugg" website their thumbs up, and the more people that digg it...  the more people digg it!

The same happens in dating, and the same happens in your business- the more testimonials, and testimonial like marketing you're engaged in, the better.

Here's a quick list of what I call social proof marketing:

1. Testimonials
2. Publicity of any kind
3. Referrals
4. Alignment (with celebrities, gurus, charity groups)
5. Visual proofing (full stores/packed seminar rooms)
6. Scarcity (if there's not much left, everyone else must have it)

The best thing about marketing involving social proof is that its generally cheap, and very effective. The only obvious exception here is celebrity endorsement.

No matter what social proof you use in your business, testimonials and referrals are an absolute, iron-clad, chain yourself to a tree necessity- do it.