How Amazon, Airbnb & Hotels.com are using social proof to drive more sales.
It’s a weekend, and you want to dine out with your family.
And, then – You remember how your friend was praising a new fine dining restaurant that has opened in your town. Your friend has a great time there, so you thought, why not try it out.
Now, you have no clue how the restaurant is? It could be good or bad – it’s all mystery. Since you have received social proof from your friend, you are curious to visit it – simple.
Around 92% of consumers trust their friends’ words over traditional media. Through the Word of Mouth concept, you can see how social psychology drives consumers.
What is Social Proof?
Social Proof is a marketing concept explained through ‘Normative Social Proof,’
It defines that people will conform in the products or services accepted by, similar to, or praised by society or influencers.
As the social proof example discussed above –
You are ready to visit a restaurant because you have received social proof from your friend.
If I try to simplify the concept – Social proof is an action based on social assumptions.
If you are wondering that it is new marketing faze, no it is an old and trusted concept.
Solomon Asch‘s conformity experiment of 1951 – explains what social proof is? This decades-old experiment has shown two aspects of social proofing –
- People want to fit into social groups.
- People believe that the group has a better understanding than themselves.
Boost Your Sales & Conversions by 17% By Adding Social Proof To Your Website
Types of Social Proof
Generally, there are six types of social proof available –
1. Expert Opinion –
When an industry leader talks about your brand on the media platforms, it gains a stamp of validation. Almost 91% of people trust online expert reviews before buying anything.
You should not trust these statistics.
2. Celebrity Fame –
The celebrity’s fan following has used to endorse products or services for ages now.
You can ask a celebrity to tweet about your product and check how many bulk orders your influencer tactic has bought you.
According to Harvard Business School research, celebrity endorsements can increase a company’s sales by 4% approximately.
3. User Praise –
When a real buyer sings words of praise online about your brand, it can hike up your sales.
That’s because 97% of consumers consult product reviews before buying. Thus, check your users’ activities through vivid social proof tools and always highlight positive reviews on the top.
4. Mass Opinion –
When a large number of people are talking about your brand, 32% of consumers are likely going to trust it more. So, always keep live user activities notification on to trend your brand online.
5. Words of Friends –
Around 72% of people trust the words coming out of their friends’ and families’ mouths. You should let people talk about your brand more.
6. Certification of Approval –
It is a type of social proof when you have received certification of approval from the authorities. Like, pharmaceutical companies getting certification from the FDA.
But you’re not here to learn about the theory of social proof.
What I want is I want you to see and understand how BIG brands like Airbnb, Amazon & Hotels.com are using social proof to drive more sales and conversions on their business.
Let’s get started on it.
Boost Your Sales & Conversions by 17% By Adding Social Proof To Your Website
Amazon’s & It’s social Proof strategy.
Amazon is a leading eCommerce company – everyone knows that, with 14% of the global market share. Amazon has been using various aspects of social proof to gain the trust of people.
Some of the promising Amazon’s social proof strategies include – 
1. Product Reviews – Reviews have been an amazing social proof strategy for Amazon. They have inserted gold stars beneath all the product images.
It shows users’ top-rated products. Furthermore, real customer reviews are encouraged. Amazon sends an email to every buyer after purchase to share their reviews.
You can even show product reviews using reviews notification on our product. All you have to do is just signup and then launch reviews notification.
2. Affiliate Marketing Program – For the bloggers, YouTubers, and other social media influencers, Amazon has designed an affiliate marketing program.
Here, when third parties talk about Amazon products and share reviews, the word about the brand spread around.
In return, Amazon gives a share of sales to the influencers. If their post has encouraged someone to order from Amazon.
With our live visitor count, you can get to know how many people are watching your website right now.
3. Social Media Actions – Amazon is quite active on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
4. Celebrity Fame – Amazon is paying an average $313 to their brand ambassadors. .
To promote Prime membership, Amazon has tied the knot with various shining stars like Kobe Bryant, Zac Brown, Marshmello, Kristen Bell, JoJo Siwa, Jaden Smith, Amitabh Bachchan, and many more.
Airbnb’s Social Proof Strategy:
Airbnb has been rising pretty fast in the hotel scenes, and we’ve noticed they heavily use social proofing as a strategy to grow their business.
In fact, one of their former head of growth people and current Y combinator has mentioned that:
“Adding live social proof was the #1 driver of increased revenue in all my experiments while at Airbnb.”
And because of this ONE tactic alone, they have been able to get extra sales and conversions.
They use a number of strategies for social proofing on their website.
1. Trust Page – Airbnb is so much focused on trust that it has dedicated a page to it. On the trust page, safety, fairness, and authenticity factors are considered.
You can click here to access it.
2. Free Professional Photographs – In 2017, Airbnb introduced a free professional photograph program for hosts.
This one step has improved the website’s photo quality. You can introduce an interesting program on your site through bulk views and check how your efforts have performed.
3. On-site Review System – Just like all other hotel platforms reviews is a Big thing on Airbnb as well. Reviews really help in boosting trust and enabling sales on the customers’ end and allows them to have sales on
All their listings are driven by reviews.
While this is the lever that Airbnb has pulled off you can see for yourself how you can do the same for your business by using Review notifications and show how people are liking, rating and reviewing your business.
Click here to learn more about how to add reviews on your website and get 10% extra sales and conversions in less than 10 minutes.
It helps hosts to encourage guests to stay in their accommodation. For guests, it is a platform to show themselves as honest and trustworthy.
4. Social Media Approach – Airbnb doesn’t pollute their social media platforms with commercial photos.
No, they encourage guests and hosts to share their experience through photos. And, nothing is better than visual social proof now.
Hotels.com’s Social Proof Strategy
Hotel.com is another travel business that has been accelerating its business with social proof. It is a website where people can book online hotel rooms and earn multiple rewards.
The brand has captured 19.52% of the online hotel booking market in the USA. This website has been using the social proof concept in numerous ways such as – 
1. Reward Program – Hotels.com has gained the trust of consumers with the reward system program. If you book 10 nights through the website, you will earn one free night equal to the average cost of 10 paid nights.
And, you can follow the same route by launching a reward program and keeping track of your program through live count views.
2. Reviews and Ranking – On the site, ratings have been given to all the hotels and destinations. So that the user can pick the top-rated accommodations.
Additionally, the review system is encouraged on the site to gain a public stamp of trust.
3. Active Social Media – Hotels.com often launches trending hashtags. It also encourages guests to share their stay photos and experience on social media platforms.
4. Bulk activity – you’d have seen that hotels.com also shows you small little popups that tell you how many people have booked in that particular hotel.
Like for example if a property has been booked by 500 people. It will tell you that this has been booked by 500 people in the last 5 days.
You can even show bulk activity using Influence by clicking upon the signup link here.
5. Recent Activity – Recent activity basically means who has made the last purchase on your website. Hotels.com basically shows who has been the last purchasing person on your website and shows that as social proof
With the recent activity, you can get customers to convert on your website even more.
If you’re looking to get 10% extra conversions on your website, you can check out and signup with us and see how you can get extra conversions for your landing pages using recent activity.
Boost Your Sales & Conversions by 17% By Adding Social Proof To Your Website
Conclusion
Social proof is a stamp of approval. It talks about the credibility and trustworthiness of your brand. Today, if you want to gain your potential customers’ trust, you have to score good social proof marks.
The social proof reviews of all the big brands have explained the importance of social proofing.
Thus, if you want to correctly use social proof strategy, you should trust the best social proof tool only – Influence!
