the bossbabe podcast - 40. Using Social Proof to Increase Sales This Holiday Season with Ellen Coule

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

We’re now introducing mini episodes, which are shorter episodes that are super actionable and feature Team BossBabe. BossBabe’s Head of Marketing, Kay Snels, will be your host for this episode where we interview our very own Head of Sales, Ellen Coule. Kay and Ellen dive into how you can use social proof to increase sales this holiday season, which social proof strategies you can implement for your product or service-based business, and how to ask for social proof assets. Ellen shares how to create social proof content, how to ask for tangible testimonials, and how to best utilize these assets to create sales.  If you’d love to learn from the BossBabe team about how to grow your audience on Instagram by 10,000 ideal clients in 30 days, register for a free spot in the next training at: https://bossbabe.com/growthatinsta This episode is sponsored by the Insta Growth Accelerator. A 12-week accelerator designed to show you how to grow and monetize your Instagram account. www.instagrowthaccelerator.com Get more actionable tips on our blog at: https://bossbabe.com/9-ways-to-increase-e-commerce-sales-this-holiday-season/ https://bossbabe.com/how-to-prepare-your-online-shop-for-cyber-monday-2018/

By posting regularly about happy customers using your products and enjoying them, other customers or potential customers are going to take notice and realize that they too need your product. Once you get those testimonials, you'll be able to make up for any discount you gave in way more increased sales. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to balance it all.

I'm Kaye Snells, head of marketing at Boss Babe and your host for this week's mini episode. These mini episodes are designed with you in mind. Each episode, a member of Team Boss Babe will dive into one topic, whether that's product, sales, marketing, community, or leadership. So consider it your weekly mini training that's super actionable so you can implement it right away. In today's episode, we interview Ellen Kuhl. Ellen serves as the head of sales at Boss Babe. She has a wealth of experience in product launches, content strategy, user experience, and organic sales. And I'm so excited to tap into her experience today. So today we'll chat about how you can use social proof to increase sales this holiday season. As always, screenshot yourself listening to this podcast, share it on

your Instagram stories, along with your biggest takeaway tagging at bossbabe.inc and hashtag the Boss Babe podcast. This episode is brought to you by the Boss Babe Insta Growth Accelerator, a 12-week program designed to help you grow and monetize your Instagram account. If you're ready to grow your audience with your absolute ideal clients who are throwing their credit cards at you, then listen up. Our CEO, Natalie, has created a completely free 90-minute training to do exactly that. We'll take you through the step-by-step strategy to attracting 10,000 ideal clients as followers over the next 30 days. If you know that growing your audience with ideal clients who can't wait to buy

from you with completely changed the game, then this training is for you. Visit boss babe.com slash grow that in stuff. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success.

Welcome Ellen to the Boss Babe podcast. Hi, Kate. Thanks so much for having me. So before we dive in, tell us a little bit more about yourself and joining Boss Babe. Absolutely. So I was a client and customer of Boss Babe long before I joined the team. And I was actually one of the first founding members of the society back when we first launched. So I was an instant convert to Boss Babe. I always loved the quotes, the motivation. It was always something that I looked forward to on Instagram. And as soon as Natalie and Danielle started talking about the society, I knew I had to be in it. After that,

I joined their accelerator, their VIP program, and then soon after IGA, as soon as that launched too. So you could definitely say I bring a lot of the customer experience side into my role at Boss Babe. That's amazing. And so now you're working as the head of sales. So tell us a little bit more about what people can take away from this episode with your experience in sales. is particularly important as we come up to the holiday season. And we use this all the time at Boss Babe. We like to say that our community actually shares more about Boss Babe than we do. And it's absolutely true. Because we have so many loyal followers, customers, and clients, we're able to pull from their testimonials, their reviews, and create amazing word of mouth marketing that we can then use to increase sales as we wish. I love that. And I also wanted to just quickly touch on before we dive in

into all the good stuff. What exactly is social proof for those of us listening who aren't as familiar? So social proof is essentially when customers or clients have different assets that they've created that show that they love your product or service. This usually looks like testimonials, reviews, photos, and other user-generated content. That could be social media posts, blog posts, reviewing your product, anything like that. It could even include Instagram stories where people are talking about how much they love your product. And the benefit of social proof is that new customers or potential customers who are on

the fence and not really sure if they trust your brand yet or if the product is going to be right for them, they're able to point to the social proof that you as a brand are sharing, showing how much other people just like them are loving your product or service. And it gives potential customers a really high level of trust and it allows them to put themselves in your other customers' shoes. A big example that you'll see on Instagram are different photos and videos of people creating lifestyle content. That's really, really big for the influencer market. People like to show themselves using the product because it's such a great way for the viewer to see themselves using that same product in their daily life and picture themselves having it. It's an easy way

for people to understand what the product is used for, how it might look in their own life, and it makes them really hungry to buy. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know,

get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. That's really, really interesting. So imagine I'm a boss babe, I have my own business and I just want to get started right away, but I don't have any social proof yet. Where would you recommend someone get started? Absolutely. So if you do have current customers or clients, the best thing that you can do is ask for testimonials. People who are happy and love your product and love your experience that

you've given them through your brand will be really happy to share their review. Most people will prefer to give a testimonial by text or in writing, but other people may be willing to hop on video. And if you can get that, that is just gold. People really love to connect with other people and to have that option of having the audio, the video, and being able to convert that into text as well is really, really great so that you as a brand can use that asset in multiple places. And for people who are just getting started, maybe you're getting ready to launch a product and you have zero sales at this point, or you're starting to launch a service and

you don't have any clients, I absolutely recommend either giving your product or service away for free or at a really great discount for the first few people. That way you can start to build up that social proof and you can use that then to create more sales. That's interesting. Like so many takeaways there. So basically what I'm hearing is like, if you just want to get started, the best thing to do is to ask for testimonials and use those to then build that social proof so that you can kind of gather more clients. And if you have zero sales at this point, then you can kind of offer your product either for free or just a little bit discounted. So you can start building that social proof and those testimonials. Absolutely. Having those testimonials is so important. So even if it

means having to give a bit of a discount at first, Once you get those testimonials, you'll be able to make up for any discount you gave in way more increased sales. Another really great thing to ask for, especially if you're a product-based business, is photos of your customers using your product in their real life. A lot of people love to post unboxing photos. So when they get their product, it arrives at their door. They love to either video or photograph them opening it and using it. That is a really great opportunity for you as a brand to use that content to show people loving and enjoying your product. Amazing. And do you have any other examples of social proof? Absolutely. So especially for people who sell products online, you'll need to have an SSL certificate in order to take payments via your website. So whatever your SSL certificate,

whoever it's provided by, they should also provide a trust badge that you can put on the corner of your site. That badge shows website visitors that they can trust your website, that you're going to keep their information private, and that their purchase is going to be safe and trustworthy. There are also third-party websites that can help you as a brand collect reviews from customers. Two very popular ones are Resller ratings and trust pilot. And those third parties will help you to capture testimonials. They will keep all of their testimonials on their site. And they'll also provide you with a badge that you can put on your website to show customers that, for example, you have a four or five star rating from all of the customers

who have reviewed your products and services. So if you're able to do that, those trust badges and seals will give people a high level of confidence. Another trust badge would be if you accept payments with PayPal or different popular credit cards, those can all be put on your website and they serve as social proof to let customers know that your website is legitimate. Basically that you're legit. Yes. Okay. Well, I think that's really cool. And I want to kind of shift gears a little bit. And now that we know what social proof is and how we can implement it into our business,

I want to tie it to the holiday season that's coming up. So how can we increase our sales this holiday season with social proof? We'd love to hear that from you. Absolutely. So once you've gathered your testimonials, user-generated content, such as photos or videos of your happy customers using your product, I recommend using these in every place possible. So that can be different places on your website, on individual product pages, or maybe if you're a service-based business owner,

you can have it on a work with me page, such as video testimonials that you've sourced from your clients. You can also reuse this content on all of your social media. And by posting regularly about happy customers using your products and enjoying them, other customers or potential customers are going to take notice and realize that they too need your product. I definitely recommend when you're asking for testimonials, especially if you're a service-based business and you're getting any're asking for testimonials, especially if you're a service-based business and you're getting any written or video testimonials, ask your clients very specific

questions so that they don't just give very fluffy answers, but they give very specific answers about what they loved about your brand, about your service, and the transformation or the benefits that they got. All of that content can be used in various places such as your social media, your website, your email marketing campaigns, and even can be recycled when you're creating messaging on your website. For example, you can take the language that those clients used and use that to help target and speak to your ideal client. I think that's so key. And I think that you have also kind of revealed a little bit how we do it behind the scenes at Boss Bay, because that's exactly how we ask people for testimonials. We want them to be tangible. We want to make sure we collect the results. And it's not just fluffy language so that when someone is kind of on the edge to make that sale, they know with full confidence, like all these women have had these results. And I think what you just shared is going to help so many women in their businesses make more sales. So I wanted to thank you today for sharing this information and where can they find you? Absolutely. So on Instagram, my name is at Ellen Kuhl. That's E-L-L-E-N-C-O-U-L-E.

And I also wanted to add that in our show notes, we're going to include a few links with even more tips to help you increase sales this holiday season. So be sure to check those out. If you love this episode, please subscribe, download a few other ones, and be sure to leave us a review. I want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also really want to know which topics you'd like us to cover next. To thank you for leaving a review, we'll send you to Boss Babe 25, which includes the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks. So if you want a copy leave us a review screenshot your review and email it to

podcast at bossbabe.com we'll send you a copy over asap and since we love instagram you can go to the hashtag the boss babe podcast and ask your question on the most recent pictures that pop up we'd love reading through all the comments and use them as inspiration for next episodes. So yeah, thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next week.