Hey, I’m Into Social Validation, Too

Marketing Follows the Masses

Back in 1944, my Dad and Grandfather were enjoying a Ringling Brothers Circus when they looked up at a growing hole in the tent roof. The Big Top, an acre and a half of canvas waterproofed with paraffin wax and 6000 gallons of gasoline, had caught fire. They should have been running, but they weren’t. Why not? Because they were taking their cues from their neighbors in the stands—who were all looking at each other and not doing much.

This was the Law of Social Validation in action. We look at what others are doing as a way of validating our own actions. This is how we decide what is “correct” behavior. The more others are doing it, the more correct we believe it is. When the majority stays seated, we decide to keep sitting, too.

Call it conformity, peer pressure, or whatever, but we all practice social validation all the time. It plays a huge role in marketing. The more socially validated your product or service, the more people are likely to use it or buy it. We are always busy measuring ourselves against others. What is everybody else doing? The more popular something is, the more people flock to it.

Kurt Mortensen in Maximum Influence writes about Professor Kirk Hansen of the Stanford Business School who provides a good example of the power of social validation. He boosted downloads for Web files by repeatedly downloading those files so the counter was artificially high. The result was that these files were downloaded more frequently than before.

These are some ways that social validation can translate into marketing:

1. Advertise: the more you are seen, the more you are seen as popular.

2. Bigger is Better: the larger your perceived group of followers, the better.

3. Testimonials: I’m more likely to buy into something that I see/hear others are using

4. Know your audience(s): testimonials are strongest when they come from people we consider like ourselves

5. Play up the law of social validation: talk about your popularity, your growth, how you fit into a trend, or how you are an industry standard.

My Dad and Grandfather escaped, though Dad did sprint back in to retrieve his program (above). 168 people didn’t make it. Social validation is powerful, and it can cut a lot of different ways.