Social Proof Theory

In response to these discerning customers, firms began to adopt the marketing concept, which involves:

• Focusing on customer needs before developing the product

• Aligning all functions of the company to focus on those needs

• Realizing a profit by successfully satisfying customer needs over the long-term

When firms first began to adopt the marketing concept, they typically set up separate marketing departments whose objective it was to satisfy customer needs. Often these departments were sales departments with expanded responsibilities. While this expanded sales department structure can be found in some companies today, many firms have structured themselves into marketing organizations having a company-wide customer focus. Since the entire

In many circles, this is known as the ‘me too affect’, and it all boils down to the fact that us humans love to follow the behaviour of others. How else would you explain the violent eruption of some horrific fashion trends and the proliferation of contemporary subcultures like ‘hipsters’?

How do you apply the social proof theory to content marketing?

There are many ways you can use social proof to improve your business’ content marketing. For example, adding social plugins and sharing buttons to your blog will display the number of shares a piece of content has generated. If readers can see that some people have shared your post already, they are a lot more likely to follow suit themselves.

Moreover, user-generated content like reviews, testimonials and social media mentions each offer fantastic avenues for leveraging social proof. This is because they all highlight the positive experiences of your happy customers and signal to others your business or product is trustworthy. Therefore, if you are lucky enough to boast these or any other forms of social proof, you should do everything you can in your power to promote

Or in others words, when it comes to confirming their pre-conceptions or self-hypothesis, many people are biased in their selection of supporting evidence.

How do you apply the confirmation bias theory to content marketing?

Find out about the positive perceptions that your customers hold about your business and produce content that reinforces them. Furthermore, making an effort to understand confirmation bias within your customer segments can help you produce more relevant content for specific and targeted niches.

Conversely, if you are trying to combat negative confirmation bias about your business, you will need to support all claims made within your content with cold hard facts and concrete research. If you use untested opinion or hearsay to try and reverse negative confirmation bias, you will struggle to get your customers to believe in your content.

5. Paradox Of Choice

Above: Shall I go left or right? The paradox of choice theory suggests you should limit the range of choice provided to customers. Image by