When you are in an unfamiliar city, looking for a place to eat, how do you choose? I'm looking for a place with lots of people inside, all having fun. A deserted patio, empty tables, and bored staff are red flags. Locals eat elsewhere, and I want to find it. Of course, there can be any number of reasons why a restaurant is empty. It could be an off night, poor marketing, or just a brand new restaurant that has yet to be discovered. If I did some research, I could probably find out. But as a human, I'm programmed to follow the herd. This natural human tendency is precisely why social proof is so powerful in marketing and why it can create increased conversions and sales if you put it to good use. But you need to make sure your social proof stands out from the crowd. Here's how to use strategically worded surveys to do just that. Social proof is everywhere Social proof is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to confirm their choices by looking around to see what others are doing. It is based on the (not always correct) assumption that other people know more about the situation. “Without a doubt, when people are uncertain, they are more likely to use the actions of others to decide for themselves how they should act. Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion It feels good to choose what others have already chosen. We can't help it. When social proof is used in marketing, it's often in the form of testimonials. Everything we create as marketers, from landing pages to sales pitches, has one goal: conversions. Whether it's joining an email list or buying a product, social proof in the form of testimonials makes it easier for people to employee email database take action. In fact, customer testimonials are so powerful that they are now considered essential for any sales page. The problem is that testimonials have become ubiquitous and therefore easy to ignore. Especially the generic one-dimensional version of the testimonials that we receive so often. Because customer testimonials are too important to your business to ignore, let's talk about a better way to leverage social proof to your advantage. How to Get Quality Customer Testimonials: Ask Better Questions, Get Better AnswersWhen you ask a customer for a testimonial, they assume you want a small statement about the quality of your product. If they received value from their purchase, they will be happy to give you exactly that. Text containing words such as awesome, fantastic, or wonderful! Enthusiastic, yes. Useful, no. Instead, what we do at Hack the Entrepreneur is ask our customers to guide us through their mental journeys, from deciding to buy, to receiving the benefits, and then recommending to their friends. In the process, we get testimonials that give much more than product endorsement. We get detail, emotion and credibility. Use simple surveys to capture important details To get testimonials from clients doing their job, providing social proof that real people are getting real benefits from our programs, we needed a simple, well-designed questionnaire that our clients would love to fill out. So we created one using Typeform .