What a customer thinks when experiencing the bandwagon effect,

This ’product’ is so appealing……
I had better sign up quick before I miss out on the offers and look “Everybody is doing it!” where do i sign?

Ok so how does this phenomenon occur?

First I will tell you a little story to describe why this occurs. A few months back I was at quite a posh dinner dance party the place was chocked full and everybody was having a great time. Entertainment was provided in the form of a stage hypnotist and local light pop band then a DJ for the rest of the evening. The event was quite formal with full dinner suite and posh frocks for the ladies very la-te-dah.

The night was going very well with polite dinner conversations and the wine began to flow nicely. Inevitably as always happens when wine is provided free by the hosts … people then began to feel the need to relieve themselves more and more regularly.

Unfortunately the venue management appeared to have miss calculated on the number of toilets that would be required for the number of guests and with over 300 people that are now full of wine and food that need to relieve themselves resulted in a backlog …. (I’m getting to the point soon just bear with me!)

As a result a lengthy queue began to form outside the toilet area mainly the woman’s toilets although the gents had also developed a fair sized queue. However the disabled toilets were constantly vacant one brassy woman decided she couldn’t wait anymore and broke free from the que and in an annoyed manor headed straight into the disabled toilets to relieve herself, at a bizarrely similar time a man broke from the rear of the gents que and proclaimed he was going outside to ‘p*** in the bushes’

Now both these actions broke from the realms of social acceptability and was a defiance of the ‘Norm’ but then for the rest of the night all men and women began to use the ‘disabled toilets’ or the ‘bush outside’ thus reducing the que and waiting time for all from this point onward.

So what is this telling us?

This is an example of ‘Social Proof’ or the ‘Bandwagon effect’ essentially it is the psychological principle of doing something or accepting something because others have accepted it or are doing it.

As everybody had been drinking and they all needed to relieve themselves this made this process a ’soft sell’ as it was an easy solution to the problem everybody was now facing. However it was in an environment that this activity was not socially acceptable, posh frocks and dinner suits are not normally associated with peeing in a bush! But the domino effect of one doing it then others seeing no negatives from doing it and only positives caused as nobody objected it was easy for all to accept this as the new ‘norm’ and the que’s were quickly reduced.

Social Proof is one of the most POWERFUL psychological forces in our lives.
So how do we tap into this niche and use it to generate more sales and more money… the most obvious method and widely used is our old friend the ‘TESTIMONIAL’

TESTIMONIALS

Testimonials Influence your Customers Behaviour you should always have testimonials to hand when presenting your product, your website is a good place to have these but they can be more effective when presented in person. Especially if the company you are adressing has heard of or had contact previously with the company providing the testimonial. If all testimonials are from individual customers regional specifics are very important to help generate and an association a bog standard customer Testimonial could look something like this:

 “I tried it and i loved it made such a difference” – Mike Bains, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne

A Potential customer from Gosforth reading this will instantly make the link to themselves.

Here is a list of essentials for compiling your list of Customer Testimonials:-

  1. Credibility – A testimonial builds confidence in your message, offer, product, and company because it offers proof that it has worked for others.
  2. Objectivity – People expect you to say good things about your own product, so your persuasive abilities have a limit. But your argument is multiplied tenfold when other people say good things, especially when those other people have no bias and nothing to gain.
  3. Similarity – The best testimonials are from those similar to your prospective customers. People give more weight to the opinions of those who are like themselves. Doctors trust doctors. Housewives trust housewives. Teenagers trust teenagers.
  4. Expertise – If your product lends itself to testimonials from experts, this can have an effect as great as testimonials from similar people. I’ll listen to a person like me about the high quality of a tire for my car, but I’ll also listen to a mechanic who gives the tire high marks. Imagine a mechanic saying, “The Everlast Tire is the best tire on the road. Actually, it’s a little too good. Because once I put them on a car, I never see that customer again. Those tires could put me out of business.”
  5. Bandwagon Effect – When many testimonials are presented together, they not only engage the social proof Effect, they also trigger the Bandwagon Effect. “Lots of people are doing it, so I have to get in on this and do it too. How can X number of people be wrong?”
  6. Enthusiasm – Excitement breeds excitement. And if you’re aggressive in your testimonial collection, you should be able to gather comments that brim with energy. One testimonial, around which I framed an entire promotion for one of my clients, started with the word “WOW!” Others in the same promotion contained statements such as “What a treat!” and “I love it.”
  7. Benefits – Testimonials also offer an objective means of relaying your most important benefits. And by collecting lots of testimonials, you have the option of organizing them in your copy so the most informative are at the beginning.
  8. Features – Along with benefits, features can surface in your testimonials. Because of the quirky, disorganized wording of real testimonials, they may not cover all the facts. But people are likely to mention the most important or popular features or relate how particular features help in particular situations. It makes features tangible.
  9. The People Factor – On a basic level, communication theory tells us that people are interested in people more than in things. Testimonials represent real people talking about their experiences and sharing their opinions. Anything real people say will be more interesting and relevant than what a copywriter can concoct.
  10. Quotes – Along the same lines, people like to read or hear what others have to say. Readership studies show that anything in quotation marks – even if it’s not a quote – gets high readership. Quotations are also easier to read than running text. That’s why good children’s books are often filled with quoted dialog. It actually encourages reading!
  11. Specifics – And finally, good testimonials allow you to share specifics about your product. And because of the higher readership value of testimonials, they will be absorbed and understood quickly and effortlessly.

The only thing you have to worry about now is collecting your testimonials from your customers.