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Welcome to The Outpost, where customer marketers trade what works.
This is where your peers are sharing their best customer marketing and advocacy plays –– the ones that get their CEO's attention.
Join us every other week for new episodes. And to join one of our sessions live and unlock the content that will define your next best play, mosey on over to userevidence.com/outpost
[00:00:00] Jillian Hoefer: Hello everybody and welcome to Outpost. I am Jillian Hoefer. I run content here at UserEvidence. If this is your first time joining us, Outpost is a place where we kind of all gather to just do more strategic customer marketing and advocacy. So we’re here to create community. We’re here to kind of have a back and forth with practitioners in the space.
[00:00:28] Jillian Hoefer: Today, we are very excited to have, uh, someone joining us who is just, I’ll have to tell you kind of a little bit of background of the story. I got an email a few months back that kind of said, “Hey,” it was from our founder Evan, who said, “Hey, I’ve got this guy Casey, he, you know, he works at this place called DoWhatWorks.
[00:00:47] Jillian Hoefer: They do A/B testing at scale. They have just h- hundreds of thousands of data points of these A/B tests that they’ve run and they help consult other companies on these data points to make sure that they’re creating landing pages that convert really well.” If we combined that with our research that we did for The Evidence Gap, which was we went out and surveyed 800 plus B2B marketers, sellers, and buyers on what proof actually works and what buyers are actually looking for.
[00:01:11] Jillian Hoefer: If we combined all those data sets, I think we’d have a pretty cool narrative here just with all of that data. So that’s exactly what we’re doing here today. So I am thrilled to be welcoming Casey Hill. Um, he is the CMO at DoWhatWorks, like I mentioned, and he’s gonna have a quick convo today with our VP of marketing, Alex Eaton, who if you’ve been, uh, joining us before, you know Alex.
[00:01:31] Jillian Hoefer: The mustache and the mullet are back. We can’t wait to have this convo today.
[00:01:34] Jillian Hoefer: So without further ado, I’m bringing on Casey and Alex to the stage. Casey and Alex, welcome.
[00:01:39] Jillian Hoefer: Thank you for being here.
[00:01:41] Casey Hill: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat.
[00:01:43] Alex Eaton: Good to be back as always.
[00:01:45] Jillian Hoefer: As always. Awesome. Well, we’ll kick over to this quick slide here. Casey, I’ll let you kind of kick us off and I’m gonna take myself off stage here, and Casey and Alex, over to you guys
[00:01:55] Casey Hill: Awesome.
[00:01:56] Casey Hill: Thank you so much, Jillian. Um, excited to be here. I think this is a super intense time to be looking at social proof. I think so much has changed over the last couple years. And really we’re at this point where it’s like, you know, if you go all the way back and you look at websites, when websites first came out, it was this thing where it was super novel, and there was this trust that came with having a website.
[00:02:16] Casey Hill: When you had a website, you were kind of known and you stood out as a vendor. And then everyone got websites, and the meta changed, and the expectations changed. And so I think we’re at this point now where a lot of conventional things that have been done for years and years and years no longer kind of meet the trust standard that they once did.
[00:02:36] Casey Hill: And so what we’re gonna do here is really get deep into the data, look at what are brands actually testing, what are brands saying when you interview them, when you talk to them, when they actually share their data, and we’re gonna get into what that looks like today in 2026. So I’m really excited to have, uh, UserEvidence as a partner.
[00:02:54] Casey Hill: It’s funny, the founder, Evan, actually was my sales manager for the very first job I ever had. So, uh, we go, we go way back. Um, but yeah. So basically, to quickly set the stage, the agenda is we’re gonna look at specifically what brands are testing, we’re gonna look at what the results of those are, and then we’re not only gonna share kind of what’s not working, we’re gonna make sure to share the other side of the coin, which is what is effective, what is actually moving the needle.
[00:03:22] Casey Hill: So super excited to, to kind of get into this conversation.
[00:03:26] Alex Eaton: And what Casey’s saying is that he had a rough start to his career is what he meant there- … working with Evan. And I think this is, o-obviously we work a ton with social proof in all forms, obviously, you know, very focused on enterprise B2B. But beyond just the idea that there’s an inflection point for s- a point for social proof right now, there’s an inflection point for trust that goes outside of even what social proof means right now.
[00:03:49] Alex Eaton: And we’ve seen this word that’s a timeless word that’s always what you’re trying to do with your buyers become way more pushed to the forefront now with what’s happening with AI. And, you know, all of this trust in AI stuff is coming out. The studies are coming out that people don’t trust it as much with hallucinations and all that.
[00:04:06] Alex Eaton: And so this idea of trust in general in, in the market is forefront of people’s minds right now. And so that’s why I think, you know, beyond, again, social proof, having your customers talk for you is a timeless thing that good businesses do well. But There is an inflection point that’s happening right now that makes this even more important just on a broader scale in, in, in general, in any sales process, whether it’s on an e-commerce website, whether it’s in a six-month enterprise sales cycle.
[00:04:37] Alex Eaton: So, uh, that’s why I’m super excited to have this data that Casey has brought along with our evidence gap report. Um, and, and just to start off here, it kind of speaks to the point, right? That two-thirds of folks, uh, rule out vendors due to untrustworthy evidence, and I’ve done this myself. Uh, Casey, I’m not sure if you have a personal experience with it, but I know for a fact that someone, you know, give me an irrelevant case study that doesn’t matter, where my eyes glaze over, and, uh, it’s absolutely a difference maker for me in how I feel about a vendor being able to help me.
[00:05:09] Alex Eaton: Um, and it, it’s something that is so timeless but has been so hard for people to actually get over the line, which is an interesting piece, um, that, that we’ve seen time and time again with folks that come in and talk to us. Um, but yeah, this number is still way too high, frankly, uh for, for how far along we are in the tech world.
[00:05:29] Casey Hill: Yeah. No, I love that. And I, I think, like, an interesting, like, scaffolding or litmus test that I often think about with social proof today is, how hard is it to fake? I was actually on a podcast with a very interesting guy who was a evolutionary biologist turned marketer. That’s not a very, uh, common combination.
[00:05:46] Casey Hill: And he talked about something called cost signaling that happens in the natural world. So basically, antlers grow these, these big, uh, you get these big horns. You have, uh, peacocks that grow these huge tails. And the point is that it’s like, it’s hard to fake. It’s in plain view, right? And so I think there’s this idea today that exists, which is to say that when you just slap on a logo and say, “I work with Walmart, Tesla,” and whatever, and they can’t engage with it, and there’s no scaffolding, and there’s no case studies, um, that’s very easy to fake.
[00:06:15] Casey Hill: And so that’s something that’s trusted less. And the more that it’s contextualized, the harder it is to fake, there’s value and utility there. So anyways, we’ll, we’ll show you some evidence to unpack that, uh, but I just thought that was a pretty interesting, uh, interesting parallel.
[00:06:29] Alex Eaton: 100%. You need to be undeniable at this point, is, like, the word.
[00:06:33] Alex Eaton: That’s the threshold that I think about with this, is y- it needs to be so clear that you can’t really even argue against it. And that’s where you’ve seen a lot of, a lot of stuff coming directly from customers, right? We trust our peers more th- versus corporate accounts. That becomes even more, you know, at the forefront now as well.
[00:06:51] Alex Eaton: So 100%. And, and of course, from, from our side of this, uh, where a lot of the details are coming from today, the evidence gap report, which we updated in late 2025, we’ll be doing it again, uh, this year within a couple months, um, is over 800 buyers, sellers, and marketers. The big thing for us on this report that we wanted to do differently is to cover each of those different sides of the market, right?
[00:07:12] Alex Eaton: What do sellers and marketers expect? What do, how do they think it works? And then how do buyers actually think about it, and what are the mismatches between those two things?
[00:07:21] Casey Hill: That’s awesome. And one of the reasons I’m so excited to have this collaboration of data is they fit together so well. ’Cause essentially what we do is we look at what are brands actually testing.
[00:07:30] Casey Hill: So do they have a logo bar? Do they have testimonials? Do they have a certain header? We look across all the brands that are running tests, and we essentially look at what are the trends, what can we find, you know. We have 7,800 top B2B SaaS brands that test, say, logo bars, and we look at what is actually winning.
[00:07:48] Casey Hill: But one of the big questions that emerges is like, okay, so we can see that 89% of people that test this type of social proof, it loses. That’s a really good data point, but why does it lose? That’s where people like UserEvidence having the actual conversations, talking with people, unpacking it, they bring out that why.
[00:08:06] Casey Hill: So we have this awesome mix between qualitative and quantitative data that we’re gonna bring to you today, um, which is gonna be awesome. So, uh, I wanna start out with just a fun little primer, and I’m gonna ask, can you guess the winner? So all that is being tested is in the top right-hand corner of the second one, it puts the star ratings.
[00:08:27] Casey Hill: So you’ll see in that top right-hand corner, that little, like, 4.4, uh, stars out of, uh, I f- I forget how many reviews. 27 reviews. So 4.4 stars, 27 reviews, uh, versus nothing. They don’t include anything at the top of that product listing. This is from Nike. This is an actual test from Nike, and this is looking at what Nike actually implemented.
[00:08:48] Casey Hill: So what did Nike, they ran an AB test, and what did Nike actually end up running into production is what you’re, you’re guessing on
[00:09:02] Alex Eaton: I would answer, but we practiced, so I’d
[00:09:04] Casey Hill: be cheating. Yeah. A- all right. Anyone?
[00:09:11] Casey Hill: And Michael, this is just basically looking at what one they actually chose, so it could be for a, a confluence of a lot of variables
[00:09:20] Casey Hill: Alright, so it looks like we have about 80% going for the one with the, the social proof 83. It’s growing. Almost 90% of folks. Okay, cool So surprise, that is not the one that won. Uh, that is the one that lost. And so this is something that is super interesting and something that we’re going to really get into and unpack throughout this, which is basically to say, why did this lose?
[00:09:49] Casey Hill: And there’s a couple possible reasons, right? And I’m gonna kind of postulate quickly and then we’re gonna kind of get into a bunch more data. But I think one of the challenges is, one of the things people don’t think about sometimes with social proof is unintended signaling. So for example, when I look at Nike, Nike’s a huge brand.
[00:10:05] Casey Hill: When I see that Nike only has 20 reviews on a pair of shoes, I’m like, “Oh, that’s, that’s a very unpopular shoe,” is my first thought. Also 4.4, it’s kind of a middling. It’s like, is that positive? Is that negative? It’s kind of a little bit unknown, right? And it doesn’t come with any third-party authority.
[00:10:23] Casey Hill: It’s just like a brand pasting something onto their website that they produced from, you know, you don’t quite know. So again, I think what we’re gonna really get to and try to understand is that there’s a lot of nuance. It’s not this cookie cutter, just like put in social proof, social proof is good. I still remember I had this conversation with a big, a big time CMO, someone who works for a 500 million-plus ARR organization, and he said something kind of dismissive.
[00:10:50] Casey Hill: He’s like, “Well, everyone knows social proof works. It just, you just put it on your site.” You know? And I kind of chuckled to myself because looking at the actual data, it’s not that simple. It’s not that binary. Yes, it is essential, but how you present it, what the actual execution profoundly matters. So, um, thought that was a, an in- interesting little test.
[00:11:09] Alex Eaton: Yeah, you hit on some of the stuff that I thought of as well with that one, and Sarah put a good comment in there, “I like those shoes.” And that actually speaks to what I kind of thought of when I first saw this, is on the left one where it didn’t have the rating numbers, that’s where my mind is just like trained to always go now, right?
[00:11:24] Alex Eaton: And yeah, 4.4 is just ki- that’s a tough number. There’s always … If you see that on Amazon, something’s up. You know? It like, you’re just wondering. But actually on the left side is they kind of posture that it’s highly rated. You, without any other data, there’s a bit of trust there with a brand like Nike.
[00:11:41] Alex Eaton: And then I’m more focused on the shoes, whereas on the right side, I am more focused on the ratings. So if the ratings aren’t where I want them to be, then that’s like where more of my attention is going in that experiment. So yeah, that, that nuance of like where my mind and then my eyes are actually going, uh, whether I like the shoes or not, it, it’s pretty interesting from that standpoint.
[00:12:01] Casey Hill: Yeah, 100%. 100%. Um, okay, so we’re gonna get into a bunch of tests. Want to quickly start with a little bit of scaffolding for folks who are thinking about running tests. I don’t know how many people here have run tests around their social proof before or who’ve considered this, but I’m gonna give kind of a brief framework that I use to kind of think about designing that, just as a little bit of a preface as we kind of look at a lot of people that are actually running these tests.
[00:12:29] Casey Hill: So three things that I look at before I run an experiment. The first is it’s really important to understand where does your traffic come from, right? When you think about your social proof and what should it actually say, how much context should it have, how soon should you present that social proof, if it’s coming from a paid retargeting ad or if it’s coming from your social content on LinkedIn, there’s gonna be a different level of awareness, right?
[00:12:53] Casey Hill: And so there’s gonna be a different placement of how soon do you bring in social proof, what type of social proof do you bring in, what pain points does that social proof speak to? Is it, if it’s a paid ad, is it paired to the pain point you’re mentioning? There’s a lot of context there. So you wanna think about that first.
[00:13:09] Casey Hill: What is the head space of someone who is coming into this page, right? The second thing I think that’s really important is are you testing towards a very specific problem, right? So again, putting on kind of our social proof hat, what you actually say in your social proof, the actual context and relevance layer of that matters immensely, right?
[00:13:32] Casey Hill: So if you know that, hey, people are really concerned about the implementation side of this, your social proof should be heavily weighted towards that specifically, right? And I’ve seen this happen tons of time. Someone’s making a move towards enterprise, so the brand makes sure their customer proof is really tailored towards enterprise applications, the integrations they would need, the overall execution that would be.
[00:13:57] Casey Hill: So being really thoughtful to not have social proof that is kind of this generalized, “This is easy to use. This drove me results. This drove me revenue,” these kind of generic outcomes, these generic benefits instead of specific capabilities that are contextualized, right? And then I think the final thing to think about is, like, is the test meaningful?
[00:14:19] Casey Hill: Meaning, like, are you presenting actual new information, or is it like, hey, this social proof is laid out with a bubble around it, and this social proof has, like, a hook around it. There’s nothing materially different that is happening. So this is my first, um, kind of treatise to the people listening, is to try to go through those three checks and understand them.
[00:14:40] Casey Hill: So this is an example, um, not necessarily social proof, but just to show you guys, like, a meaningful experiment. When they use reassurance subtext, which by the way, we, we have data that shows that this performs well, and they say something like, “We offer 14-day free plus free migrations,” this is a good test.
[00:15:00] Casey Hill: So Kit actually ran this AB test, and they tested into this version and put it live on their site. One of the things I think that makes this a meaningful test is they’re actually telling you, “We offer free migrations.” That’s a specific major pain point for a lot of people using CRM or email automation tools.
[00:15:15] Casey Hill: So they’re preempting that. They’re putting that out, up out front. So I think that’s a really important head space to kind of have as you’re going.
[00:15:23] Alex Eaton: Casey, I’d love to put you on the spot with a question, if you don’t mind.
[00:15:25] Casey Hill: Yeah, of course,
[00:15:26] Alex Eaton: please. Uh, so let, let’s think about, uh, we have a lot of folks, uh, I think in here who are in enterprise SaaS, let’s say.
[00:15:33] Alex Eaton: Yep. Right? Where, uh, this is a very, uh, you can get started free trial, freemium motion. E-commerce also has a lot of quicker conversions, right? Uh, and you mentioned from your testing on the stage two of the last slide around being clear about what you’re testing. So when you think about something as important as a homepage, right, for maybe a more upmarket software company, uh, maybe some folks you’ve worked with, you know, is looking at just conversions right there a good thing to test, right?
[00:16:02] Alex Eaton: Because there’s so much that goes into a longer sales cycle. Is it truly, is everyone, you know, how often are people gonna be converting right from the page there? Do you look at bounce rate as something with, like, homepage tests? Uh, you know, flow rates, getting down the page further. You know, are there other things beyond just conversions that you like testing, uh, and are worth testing beyond just a conversion?
[00:16:24] Alex Eaton: Again, maybe for a company where, you know, converting is always the number one thing we want, but where it may be a longer journey to it on a website.
[00:16:31] Casey Hill: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think that part of it depends on the, like, hierarchy and the layout of the page. So when someone first lands, if they’re high intent, typically they’re gonna take one of the initial paths.
[00:16:42] Casey Hill: And for most brands, especially larger enterprise at scale brands, we’ve found from tests from Slack and from hundreds of others, double CTA is best because it captures variable levels of intent, someone who wants to take an action right now or someone who wants to learn more. That could be, like, demo versus trial or there’s lots of different iterations.
[00:17:00] Casey Hill: So typically, when you land on the hero section, you wanna capture those highest intent people, and that is often measured by, like, the click or the conversion, so they land there. But there’s a lot of people that are gonna need more education. They’re gonna need more context. And so then to your point, there’s this conversation that flows down of as they continue to scroll, absolutely there’s gonna be things that you’re trying to trigger.
[00:17:23] Casey Hill: There’s gonna be things that you’re trying to get the person to be thinking about, and you’re gonna be educating them down a certain path. And so we’re actually gonna talk about this specifically in the context of, like, logo sections as an example of how you can take something like that, make it more interactive, make it something that kind of, like, leads into a next step, which I think can be really valuable.
[00:17:42] Casey Hill: Do you test all these experiments inside UserEvidence?
[00:17:45] Alex Eaton: Yeah, I can clarify that one. So, you know, the usage of content within UserEvidence, right? When someone’s putting the, the content they have from their library in UserEvidence onto their website, that’s on their own website, so we don’t have direct access to measure those things.
[00:18:01] Alex Eaton: We do have a couple pieces of proof actually from customers though, who have tested conversion and things like this on, for example, the specific demo request page, right? Conversion on those pages within a website, um, are super important for companies, and adding some of the specific evidence that they’ve gathered in UserEvidence has been something that has increased conversions on their website.
[00:18:21] Alex Eaton: So we have some proof in our own library that we’ve gotten some from customers against it, but we’re more about the creation and delivery of the evidence in general. Um, if they’re going as so far to, you know, embed it in own ways or design it up their own ways on the website, then that’s obviously numbers that are more under their control versus it being explicitly tracked.
[00:18:38] Alex Eaton: We have a lot of engagement tracking in our product for your library for the assets that you create. Um, but yeah, again, there’s, there’s a level of separation there, right? Because you can do anything you want with the content, even if you decide not to use the branding tools and things like that that we offer.
[00:18:55] Casey Hill: Awesome. And, and just to kind of close the loop on your question though, so there’s two kind of, uh, main pillars that I would look at, so especially for B2B enterprise SaaS. So the first is, are people fi- following the desired path for your user journey? So what we do is we look at what is the desired path that you want someone to go to.
[00:19:12] Casey Hill: So like, i.e., I see this piece of social proof, I click on this case study, I do this. Like, that’s gonna look different from different brands, but you wanna have that mapped out, and then you wanna see how close people are to that desired user journey, what are they actually doing? And that’s something that you can test that isn’t directly just conversion-based, it’s, it’s path-based.
[00:19:30] Casey Hill: The other thing I’ll say is thinking about GEO or AEO and thinking about citation rates and placement rates is another thing that is really interesting. So we work a lot with our friends over at Clay, and Clay ran a bunch of really interesting experiments where, like, they listed the name of their customer directly in their footer.
[00:19:48] Casey Hill: So, like, they put OpenAI, they put Ramp, Rippling, like these major customers, and they ran that as a test to see how that impacted citation rate. And we did a whole kind of write-up and study on it, but essentially, like, featuring things very prominently in the navigation seemed to be beneficial. Featuring things prominently, like, on your homepage in those places seems to be beneficial.
[00:20:09] Casey Hill: So it’s a big topic, but to the answer your question is, yes, absolutely, there’s things that go beyond direct conversions for B2B enterprise SaaS.
[00:20:17] Alex Eaton: Yeah, and that’s something we’re actually testing on the AEO/GEO front for customer evidence as well, right? There’s a, there’s an easy assumption to make that putting more customer information forwards is going to help in AEO/GEO, right?
[00:20:31] Alex Eaton: It’s more trustworthy type content. It’s really SEO 2.0. So a lot of the stuff that came out… Once white hat took over and the black hat stuff fi- finally got punished, uh, you know, creating better content, having better customer-forward content, uh, we can all assume, yeah, that probably will help. Um, but we’re, you know, it’s still so early in AEO/GEO.
[00:20:52] Alex Eaton: We’re partnered with some of the companies in that space as well. We’re trying to get the testing data there to show that it actually shows up in LLMs, uh, more often. With customer evidence and how it has to be structured and all that, it’s still early days, but, um- If I ha- if, if I was a betting man, I’d bet money that that’s gonna be really important moving forwards.
[00:21:11] Alex Eaton: Um, and, and it kind of leads into this next stat, um, from the evidence gap report. Um, thi- this is what really, I think, signifies that shift that you talked about at the top of this, Casey, which is that you can’t just throw out nice logos anymore. You can’t throw out your huge names that everyone knows and likes.
[00:21:29] Alex Eaton: You can’t just say Salesforce is a customer and everyone’s like, “Wow.” I, I think in the past that was a big trust builder of, okay, a, a big top-tier company trusts them, so at least have this base level of trustworthiness. That might be there still in a sense, but I think the specificity nowadays is really what matters more, right?
[00:21:48] Alex Eaton: I need the logos that are like me, that are the ones that I want to be in the group with, that are exciting. Uh, you know, it, it’d be like someone saying, you know, they’re a big scale-up and it’s like saying that, you know, comparing a Salesforce to like a Clay, right? Where they’re both those exciting companies in very different ways right now, and you might relate to one way more than the other, and that might mean a lot something different to you.
[00:22:12] Alex Eaton: Or you might have one of those small startups that’s really just starting to hit, that’s under 5 million ARR, but, uh, that speaks more to the journey that you’re on. Um, but yeah, thi- this number is crazy low to me, uh, that You know, I think my assumption going in was there still was more of that base of trust than there used to be for the past five, 10 years, and this really shows that that’s going away, frankly.
[00:22:36] Casey Hill: Yeah, 100%. And what’s fascinating is that I- I did this study a while back, and I want to say it was, like, 80-something percent of people still using, of, like, top SaaS companies, if you, if you go pull, like, the top 250 SaaS companies, um, still using just, like, a generic bar. Um, and no surprise, the majority of them aren’t testing it.
[00:22:56] Casey Hill: So they’re not actually running A/B tests to know whether an alternative could be effective. And so this kind of jumps into one of our next tests. This is from Dropbox. So you see Dropbox in the losing version, this is on a pricing page for context, guys, um, is basically including all of their top logos, right?
[00:23:14] Casey Hill: So Figma, all these others. And you’ll see the version with no logos. So just logos versus no logos, right? No logos won, uh, for Dropbox, right? And so I think the idea here i- is a couple-fold. Number one, I think that there’s this idea of affinity, right? So what percentage of a company like Dropbox or, you know, insert placement is big enterprise brands that relate to these top logos, and what percentage is, like, the small introductory customer?
[00:23:44] Casey Hill: If 96% are the small customer, you might find that there’s that disconnect component. The second thing is kind of to our point of, like, validation, right? Anyone can post these logos, so it’s hard. There’s not context, and there’s not a lot of validation. So you’re missing on a couple points. So I’m gonna propose a, a better way, a way that I think has shown more results.
[00:24:06] Casey Hill: And again, because we work with Clay a lot, we have seen some of their, their data and presentation here. This section from Clay drove over 20,000 clicks in the last 12 months. And basically what they’re doing is they’re combining their logos with case studies, right? So they’re saying, “Hey, we’re not just gonna say we work with OpenAI.
[00:24:25] Casey Hill: We’ll show you. We’re not just gonna say we worked with Google or Vanta. We’ll show you,” right? So what we’re doing here is we’re taking something that was static, and we’re actually allowing there to be an engagement layer. Another company that I really like is Linear. If anyone’s heard of Linear, what Linear does is Linear has a table where you can search by your industry.
[00:24:47] Casey Hill: So I can go in and I can say, like, enterprise SaaS, or I can say e-commerce, or I can say government. It’ll show me the logos laid out, and then it will show me case studies on the right-hand side. So now we have the affinity component And we also, in addition to affinity, have the ability to validate. So we see this importance of like validation trust as well as something that’s relatable.
[00:25:10] Casey Hill: One last thing I’ll say about this is the headers that you put also can be really impactful. So for example, if you guys know, uh, check out a website called Gorgias, G-O-R-G-I-A-S. They say trusted by 40% or used by 40% of Shopify brands. So that’s their market, Shopify brands, right? And so they’re very clearly making a move to signal that they’re tied to this group.
[00:25:34] Casey Hill: Asana is a very interesting company. Asana tested out of a logo bar completely, then they had a very concerted revamp to go all after enterprise, and then they re-implemented it and said, “Trusted by 85% of Fortune 100 logos.” Again, they’re trying in that header to focus on a very specific archetype that matches.
[00:25:57] Casey Hill: I strongly believe that the people who are just saying, “Trusted by startups to enterprise, trusted by 100,000 brands,” I think that feels like filler today. That doesn’t build affinity. I know people are trying to signal big numbers, but I don’t think that builds affinity in a meaningful way. I think that the brands that have clear association, clear affinity, and the ability for you to validate, that’s what we see winning when it comes to logos.
[00:26:23] Casey Hill: And what’s funny, as a final note on this, since Clay did this like eight months ago, you can now see hundreds of brands zoom in, but like across… When they, when they launched this thing… And it’s funny, I wrote a post that got like two million views. I don’t know if that reached anyone or impacted anyone as well about this, this move, but now tons of brands do it.
[00:26:43] Casey Hill: And we have a lot of that first-hand data kind of reinforcing the efficiency of this, this move.
[00:26:48] Alex Eaton: Yeah, I, I remember I posted about that when it first came out, and now it’s everywhere. And those two brands you, you talked about, Clay and Linear, are two brands that everyone has copied in a lot of ways, right?
[00:26:59] Alex Eaton: There was a time where everyone’s website was doing the gradients and the flow that Linear did when they first came out with their new website. Uh, I think it was a couple years ago now. And, and then it, it got like overused to the point where everyone’s like, “Oh, it’s another Linear site.” But it was because they led the charge.
[00:27:15] Alex Eaton: And then Clay obviously leading the charge with that engagement layer on the logos. We’ve done the same thing. If you look on our homepage logo, we started to implement, you know, those case studies and that engagement layer with it. And man, I think that thing is that it There’s a higher level issue here with specificity that I think is interesting, right?
[00:27:32] Alex Eaton: Because they’re– we’re absolutely leaning towards that. It’s the classic issue that startups and, and companies in general deal with of niching down, of choosing a lane, right? Instead of trying to be for everyone. And I think now it’s gonna be even more important because as it gets easier to build with AI in general, it, it feels like the more specific companies are gonna be the ones that even have a market now because everything else is just getting eaten up.
[00:27:58] Alex Eaton: People are trying to just build their own mini solutions. Uh, the bigger companies are getting hammered right now. They’re trying to figure out how to still serve everyone in this new world. But the companies that are doing well have that very, very specific, very tailored solution that’s very good for a very specific set of people.
[00:28:16] Alex Eaton: And that’s what feels more defensible right now. That applies to product, not just to the proof. And so companies who are choosing to go all in on one very specific thing, uh, I, I think are gonna have a leg up even more so. And that’s not a new idea. I’m not claiming that as a new idea at all. Uh, I just feel like that niche idea gets even more important now
[00:28:36] Casey Hill: Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s spot on.
[00:28:38] Casey Hill: I think that, like, the relevance, the specificity, the context, I think we’re gonna see those all as, like, common themes throughout. And what I’ve found, uh, looking at a lot of the testimonials, for example, that I find are, like, most impactful, they just take someone through, like, a relatable journey, right?
[00:28:55] Casey Hill: They’re like, “Hey, my organization was trying to transition from PLG to SLG or to focus on enterprise. We had this problem. This is what our numbers look like. We did a thing, then this is what our numbers look like after we did a thing.” And someone reading that who’s in a similar role, who has a similar responsibility, they really kind of connect to that.
[00:29:13] Casey Hill: Um, so I think that, I think that totally resonates. So I’m just gonna share a couple more tests, and I’ll kind of go through these. but they kind of paint a similar picture. It’s just interesting to bring in more kind of validation. So this one’s from Freshdesk.
[00:29:27] Casey Hill: You see in the losing version they have the s- third par- like, the Capterra, the standard kind of star, external type of reviews. I think there’s a couple challenges with these. So one is what we keep repeating over and over again, but again, I’ll belabor it. It’s, it’s context and specificity. Lots of people just, like, can slap on and say, like, “XYZ stars from Capterra,” or “XYZ stars from this other company,” but it lacks specificity when it’s just done in isolation.
[00:29:57] Casey Hill: The second thing I’ll say is you wanna be really careful with the third-party environments like G2 and Capterra, and this is also, I’ll say, this is a touchy subject in, in, in B2B, and I recognize it is. Been in this world for a long time, and I know a lot of brands, including companies that I’ve worked with, who invest very heavily in platforms like G2 don’t want someone coming out there and saying like, “Don’t trust G2.”
[00:30:22] Casey Hill: I’m not necessarily saying don’t trust G2, but what I’m saying is there’s a couple things you wanna be cognizant of. Number one, I recently was working with a very large brand who they had a thing that was like, “Check out our G2.” When you click on it, because they were not, like, a paying person in that environment, the first thing I saw was like, “Here’s three alternatives.”
[00:30:41] Casey Hill: They were literally telling me about other companies to go check out that I hadn’t even heard of right up front. So be really cognizant of the pathing on your website. If you’re gonna include G2, I’d probably recommend you to not link directly out to it, especially if it’s gonna push competitors. Also, I would always encourage people, whenever you bring in stars, whenever you bring in social proof, provide context, provide specificity.
[00:31:04] Casey Hill: Guide me in a meaningful way. So I think that’s, that’s one example wh- where it fell short. Here’s Gorgias, who I mentioned before. They tested out of, again, having that star rating up there at the top, which you guys can see. So 4.7 on 433 reviews, um, through Shopify. I think again, there’s a number of reasons.
[00:31:25] Casey Hill: I think number one, it’s, it’s what we talked about is, is, is the numbers right? Is the placement of this right? I actually like, and I don’t know if they have changed this since, but fairly recently there was a company named Synthesia, and they do basically like the, they’re like a, the video-oriented company.
[00:31:41] Casey Hill: And they had a thing at the top that was like a very specific, like enterprise testimonial. So when you hovered on the eyebrow, it like popped up a testimonial that was like tied to an enterprise customer archetype. I like that a lot better because of everything we’re saying. Like it’s still social proof, but it’s social proof with a very specific focus that they’re trying to accomplish instead of just the generic test that you see, um, right here.
[00:32:07] Casey Hill: So this is one where again, you had this company Jobber, and they kind of have two versions. They have like the third-party badge and then testimonials, the text testimonials, or just this like higher contrast bar that’s like third party, here’s how we’re doing in App Store and Capterra. And the one that had a little bit more context, a little bit more text with the testimonials, that one performed better.
[00:32:29] Casey Hill: So again, one of the things that I want to be really clear on in this presentation is there is no enemy in terms of logos, testimonials, case studies, third party. None of these are inherently bad. A lot of this is about presentation, a lot of this is about context, and a lot of this is about opportunity cost.
[00:32:47] Casey Hill: Everything you do on your website is what is the alternative thing you can be plugging in? So that is an important part. When you think about this, it says like, hey, in this case, the badges plus those testimonial pieces was more persuasive than just having the third party, uh, notations right there
[00:33:06] Alex Eaton: Yeah.
[00:33:07] Alex Eaton: I think the, the Gorgeous and the Jobber ones here are two of the most interesting ones to me. I think the Gorgeous one is the most counterintuitive one for me actually, because to me, it is a high rating. There’s a lot of reviews, and it’s specific for Shopify, which we talked about with their messaging is a good thing for them.
[00:33:23] Alex Eaton: So that’s one where I was like, huh, like I feel like that would be a pretty strong signal of just general trust right off the bat. But I think it, it goes to show just how important relevance is and where sh- social proof needs relevance in context for what someone is thinking about and looking for on that specific portion of the website, right?
[00:33:44] Alex Eaton: That rating might work a lot better somewhere else. And then on the, on the Jobber one, that is the type of example we’ve seen with our customers work really well actually, where they have tested higher conversions on a specific conversion page like this, where specific relevant testimonials, uh, for again, the exact type of people are looking for, the use cases they serve best, builds a lot of trust on these pages for that final like, “Okay, I’m not backing out,” versus just a general star rating that doesn’t give you, again, a lot of context.
[00:34:12] Alex Eaton: So yeah, it, it’s really interesting to see how much nuance goes into things like this when even from the outside, my mind will tell me something like the Gorgeous test would be like, “Oh, really? Like that? That didn’t work?” ’Cause my mind as a marketer immediately goes to what they did on the right, honestly.
[00:34:28] Alex Eaton: And I think that’s what a lot of people would assume is best practice. So, uh, it, it’s really worth digging into the nuance and the relevance of where you’re at on the site and getting into the head of like, what is each page actually doing when someone is there? So.
[00:34:42] Casey Hill: 100%. And I think that’s one of the things that’s been so eye-opening working at DoWhatWorks, is to see the actual test data.
[00:34:49] Casey Hill: So I came from a company, Bonjoro, that did video emails and also video testimonials. So I came from a company that was literally helping people gather video testimonials. So I was very deep in that like social proof world and the value and importance of social proof. And so then I got in and I was like, whoa, like 88% of people testing this thing, it’s losing.
[00:35:07] Casey Hill: Like, that’s wild. And that’s also not what I would expect. But I think that to everything we’ve been talking about today, it’s an evolution of the expectation. It’s an evolution of the standard, and it’s showing that when people do things that are generic, part of it is we just kind of gloss over a lot of this stuff.
[00:35:23] Casey Hill: It’s like you almost like see it and you gloss over. And with social proof- You don’t necessarily need them to do something instantly all the time, but you do want to always leave an impression. The point of the social proof is to leave an impression, is to speak to a pain point, absolve that concern or worry, to make someone relate more, to build trust in a meaningful way.
[00:35:43] Casey Hill: So that’s, I think, what is important in what we’re doing. And, and it kind of speaks to why something like this from this company, uh, was not very effective. Again, in the losing version, you see the testimonial and the testimonial says, “Easy to l- d- easy to use and delivers powerful results,” right? It’s almost like…
[00:36:01] Casey Hill: I’m laughing ‘cause it’s almost like something if you just, like, had AI insert like, a random snippet, right? Like, zero context, zero specificity. It’s just like saying like, “This thing is good.” Um, I think that really is not something that meets a standard, uh, today that inspires people. And I’ve even seen very established B2B brands that what’s really common is they’ll be like, “We’re the everything AI app,” or, “This is the everything AI app.
[00:36:26] Casey Hill: Like, do anything you want in AI.” Like, these like, super sweeping generic statements. Um, I don’t think those work, right? I, I think that is someone deciding to slap that on for reasons outside of effectiveness, like, because maybe that’s like the positioning that they want to try to get out to the market.
[00:36:44] Casey Hill: But I think when you talk like that, it’s not like people see that and suddenly are like, “Oh, epiphany.” Like, absolutely you are. No, you want to show them how comprehensive your AI functionality is by getting into what does that materially mean, right? And so the, the testimonial where someone talks about, “Hey, we were using these three applications.
[00:37:03] Casey Hill: We got rid of the three applications. We didn’t do it right away. It took a two-month transition process because we had to make sure…” Like, when you talk like that, someone reading is like, “Oh, they actually replaced those tools.” Like, the, the, the specificity and the timeframes you gave and letting people know it didn’t happen immediately, that’s like a real conversation that someone would have.
[00:37:24] Casey Hill: And the people are smart. Your buyers are smart. They read that, and that’s so much different than just saying, “We replaced all of our tech Right? It’s profoundly different.
[00:37:33] Alex Eaton: Especially after such a cool visual in their hero with a lot of specific information. It’s just, it’s so clear it’s just a waste of real estate, right, in this specific example.
[00:37:42] Alex Eaton: And that’s actually to speak to a very specific point about testimonials, which is a bit of an aside, but super relevant here. What you just mentioned about that specificity of, like, time to value implementation, being honest about that, I cannot stress enough how important that is actually in being honest.
[00:37:58] Alex Eaton: Even if the number feels higher than you would like it to. Everyone likes to say immediate results, right? Results within 30 days, blah, blah, blah. Especially in enterprise software, that is just not the case, period. That’s not how it goes. That’s not how it works internally to get stuff done, regardless of how easy to use your software is.
[00:38:17] Alex Eaton: But setting expectations with specifics really helps the sales process. We’ve seen this in our own sales process. It also prevents a lot of people getting upset if you can’t meet that standard. Um, so even if it feels a little longer than necessary, there is an appreciation of honesty in setting proper expectations that makes people feel like you are actually being honest and there to work with them and help them through that process.
[00:38:42] Alex Eaton: And then of course, you can talk about how you make that process easier, how you show up in it. Uh, but yeah, that is something we have found clearly both in our own sales process and with our customers, uh, and their evidence through us, is that that specificity, even if it feels below optimal, let’s say, is actually extremely effective.
[00:38:59] Casey Hill: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. It’s so funny, even just using a micro example of this. I saw a post from someone on your team, I think it was maybe Jillian, who was talking about you guys working with some, some partners and sharing SEO as well as, like, AEO results, right? And it was like, you see the SEO going up and AEO was, like, a little bit up and down, and it was like, hey, this is kind of like we’ve seen some promising signals, but we don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen.
[00:39:22] Casey Hill: When I read something like that, as an actual practitioner, as someone who’s actually in the execution side of marketing, I’m like, “Oh, this is someone being honest.” Like, whatever they share next, I am, like, eagerly anticipating looking at those results. If someone just shares a hockey graph of like, you know, “Hey, this is…
[00:39:38] Casey Hill: We implemented this thing and immediately one month later everything took off,” it’s like, hmm, I’m gonna immediately be skeptical, ‘cause I know that’s not how SEO, AEO, these different things work. And so there’s just something to the long-term commitment that you make to folks with that too. So couldn’t agree more.
[00:39:54] Casey Hill: Um- This next one’s interesting. Again, I apologize guys, some of this text is kind of small, so if you’re having to zoom in occasionally, uh, my bad on that. This is an e-commerce brand, but actually there’s a number of companies, Saastr, Ahrefs, others, that have experimented with different types of this. This is like this live social proof thing, and this actually used to be a lot more common.
[00:40:14] Casey Hill: There was like tons of companies and widgets that did this, that were like, “There’s 24 companies that are currently looking at this thing.” And in fact, a lot of companies, Buffer, a handful of others, had these widgets on their websites, uh, for periods of time. So basically what you’re seeing is, is it valuable to tell people X number of people are doing this thing right now?
[00:40:34] Casey Hill: So what I’ll say is, it’s actually a really good segue to the conversation around truth. The first thing is, is it legitimate? Many people assume it’s not, and I’ll tell you, I did a little test on this company. I’ll tell you what doesn’t build trust is when you log on at midnight and the number’s the exact same.
[00:40:49] Casey Hill: There’s 22 people still looking at it just like they were at 11. Suddenly trust just shattered, and it’s like, oh, that’s a marketing gimmick, right? So when you look at something like live proof, this many people have bought it, this many people have done a thing, you wanna ask like, is there a way for someone to validate that?
[00:41:06] Casey Hill: Is there any kind of third-party authority that you’re calling on, or is this company just kind of making this claim out there, right? And a lot of stuff that people just put onto their site with no kind of call to outside authority and no ability to validate, that’s kind of one of the enemies that we’re talking about when it comes to social proof.
[00:41:25] Casey Hill: ‘Cause people see that and it just kind of like falls on deaf ears. And if you’re gonna put in… Like a good example, again, to this like hard to fake, if I go put in a video of me getting a testimonial from OpenAI’s head of product, that’s pretty compelling, right? Like, that’s a pretty hard thing to fake.
[00:41:44] Casey Hill: Like, you know, unless you really go the extra mile to deep fake um, you know, their head of product, as soon as you see that, someone’s like, “Okay, wow, that’s, that’s legit,” right? Like, that’s something that is gonna carry power and proof because of that context. So just again, something to consider. Don’t be dishonest with people.
[00:42:02] Casey Hill: Most of the times we see these like live types of triggers, they’re not effective, uh, for the reason that they don’t kind of rise above that trust barrier.
[00:42:10] Alex Eaton: Yeah. Y- y- scarcity is always something we’re going for, right? That’s, that’s what everyone is trying to push with these types of things, and I’ve, I’ve many experiences with some of my favorite brands where it’s a brand experience over time now where I know if I miss the sale or if they say stuff is running out, it’s gonna run out.
[00:42:28] Alex Eaton: If I see that sales email three hours after it was sent, I’m screwed. Uh, Huckberry is one of my favorite clothing brands, men- men’s clothing retailer, and I know if stuff is running out on there and they have a great sale on like- So now I know to hawk it. But it’s, that’s in a brand experience and a tr- that I have over time that I know happens, right?
[00:42:50] Alex Eaton: And I, I think it’s important to know how much goes into brand experience here, right? We’re thinking of this as just a marketing moment. This flows through into everything, whether it’s in a product experience if you’re in software, whether it’s in items being sold out on the website. When you say they’re gonna be sold out or that number actually going down.
[00:43:08] Alex Eaton: You know, people use inventory as a lot of scarcity. Uh, it’s important to understand as marketers how much the full cycle of brand experience impacts everything that we do moving forward. So I think it’s important to not lose the forest for the trees when you’re trying to run little conversion tests like this.
[00:43:25] Alex Eaton: And like you said, just to be honest, because you need to understand the bigger picture of what you’re actually trying to build here, even if you’re trying to get that button conversion up that extra percent or two.
[00:43:34] Casey Hill: Yeah. Spot on. So this next one’s interesting because I think… So it’s a testimonial, right?
[00:43:41] Casey Hill: There’s three versions of this. The one with the testimonial did not win, and I think it has two kind of components. The first one that I wanna talk about is placement. So I wanna be clear that this brand tested into a version that didn’t have the testimonial in this position at the top. Didn’t mean they didn’t use testimonials.
[00:43:58] Casey Hill: It means that they didn’t have it at the top of their page. So when you think about the flow, going back to where’s your traffic coming from? What is their expectation, right? If you haven’t had time to establish the core components of your value pitch or even, like, what is this thing, hitting them with social proof.
[00:44:15] Casey Hill: Social proof is like, “Okay, this seems really valuable, but can I trust you?” And then the social proof says yes, and it validates that. If they don’t have the initial context, if they don’t have any of the, like, what is this thing and how does it work, hitting them with the social proof at that stage is probably gonna have diminishing returns.
[00:44:32] Casey Hill: So one component is, is understanding the placement of where you put this proof works. The second thing is to the kind of like scaffolding, right? What is the context of the section that it exists in, and is that moving them for… Is it answering something meaningful to progress them in that direction, yes or no?
[00:44:56] Casey Hill: And if it’s too generic, if it’s too generalized, then sometimes the answer to that is no. So just a, just kind of a note to think about your placement. Again, I’m not gonna say you shouldn’t have a piece of co- of social proof directly below the hero, yes or no, because that’s not a, it, that’s too binary of a question.
[00:45:18] Casey Hill: But what I do think is a meaningful question is when they get to your customer proof section, what is their context and knowledge based on your understanding of where your traffic comes from? And if you’re in a situation where you’re like, “Hey, people have very little context,” like, they don’t really know.
[00:45:34] Casey Hill: They’re coming from social posts. They don’t really know what we’re about, and you’re hitting that right off the bat, I think you’re gonna see diminished returns because people aren’t in a head space to contextualize it if they don’t have that core information first.
[00:45:47] Alex Eaton: Broader question on this one for you, Casey, because we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about thinking about the context of the traffic coming to your website, right?
[00:45:54] Alex Eaton: Um, and if you have a larger brand that has a lot of traffic, then you’re in good shape to test stuff, right? But what do you think about the amount of traffic? Is there a typical number you’ve seen? Let’s say if there is a smaller cust- uh, company or just a company that doesn’t have as much … You know, like they’re not getting hundreds of thousands of hits, right?
[00:46:11] Alex Eaton: Mm-hmm. Is there a typical amount of traffic or amount that you think of to try and get to st- statistical significance with tests like this?
[00:46:20] Casey Hill: Yeah, super common question, and what I would say is it’s less … There could be like very, very baseline, like for example, if you’re getting less than 1,000 total hits a month.
[00:46:31] Casey Hill: But in general, what I find is much more important is to look at consistency of source of your traffic. So when I get asked this question, people ask me this question a lot, I say, “If you drive traffic from a very consistent source,” let’s say that you drive 3,000 hits to your website every month from paid ads.
[00:46:46] Casey Hill: That’s your baseline, right? So even though 3,000 is not like a crazy high number, you have a consistent number. Mm-hmm. Versus business number two, whenever they run webinars, whenever they run live events, whenever they run whatever, you see these big spikes in traffic, and then it comes down to a baseline of like 400 hits per month.
[00:47:05] Casey Hill: That’s a little bit of a trickier situation, ‘cause you have a lot of noise in your data. If you implement a change in the exact same m- month that you do a once-a-year event, you need to understand there’s gonna be a lot of muddiness in that, in, in … Like, there’s people that are coming from a very specific source acutely, right?
[00:47:24] Casey Hill: And that can kind of muddy the data. So what I would say is focus less on your total traffic and ask yourself, “Do I have a consistent baseline?” If I do have a consistent baseline month over month, then I think you can go in and get meaningful signal from those. ‘Cause if I’m like 1,000 every single month, and then I run a test and I get to 1,200, I actually think that’s still totally a relevant signal.
[00:47:47] Casey Hill: Even though your total volume was small, you can still see that change when you have that baseline. That’s how I’d, I’d advise folks to think about it.
[00:47:54] Alex Eaton: Makes perfect sense. That’s helpful. So let’s talk about, this is an interesting one for us especially. We work with a lot of regulated industries where proof can be difficult, um, and There’s, you know, marketers are liars, right?
[00:48:11] Alex Eaton: This is where this all comes back to. It’s trust. And people, you know, not that we would ever make anything up, right? No one in this room would ever make anything up or dare to. But, uh, this is actually something that we’re seeing more and more, um, especially in these regulated industries, but I think it’s helpful just when it’s tough to get folks to talk in general, right?
[00:48:30] Alex Eaton: So blind, but verified essentially means it’s, it’s kind of what you’ve seen with G2, right? Where folks don’t wanna put their information, where it’s marketing manager from a Fortune 500 enterprise software company. They’ll just put some identifiers behind it, but they’ll actually anonymize the testimonial.
[00:48:45] Alex Eaton: And, uh, you know, initially you might think in general that that’s like, ah, I don’t know, like we don’t really know who that is. That’s where the verified p- piece comes in, right? So if it’s on a third-party source, we do it in UserEvidence like it is on G2, wherever else, um, that actually provides that verification of like, “Hey, this is a real thing from a real customer.
[00:49:04] Alex Eaton: Don’t worry about it.” Um, but the fact that it was only four points below name testimonials was actually a much closer gap than I expected. And especially in industries like that where it’s tougher to talk or even not just regulated industries, a lot of folks, it’s interesting, competitive is so… Co- competition is so tight nowadays that folks don’t wanna say they use a product because they don’t wanna risk their competitors finding out they use it and their competitors possibly using it as well.
[00:49:31] Alex Eaton: Like, every little piece of competitive, uh, advantage folks are looking for, they’re going so far as to not even wanna be named so that folks don’t find out they use a tool, because it might be helping them and giving them an inch over their competitors. So whatever the reason is, um, this is becoming more and more important and, you know, more helpful.
[00:49:50] Alex Eaton: And also, frankly, it takes away some of the barriers to just get the proof you need. Um, I do think we’re still in a phase, outside of regulated industries where it’s much more accepted already, I do think we’re in a phase where there’s still a turning point happening with trust around this, but this number to me showed it’s already a lot further along than I would’ve even expected.
[00:50:10] Casey Hill: Yeah, this, I love to see this. So we work with a lot of like Fortune 500 organizations, and I, I’ve been through this. As a marketer, I, I’ve definitely been through this thing where like you have a great conversation with your practitioner, and then they pass it on to legal, and there’s all these steps, and then suddenly, you know, it gets kapooshed at the very last minute.
[00:50:27] Casey Hill: Um, it’s tough. It’s tricky. So I think something like this, uh, blind but verified, is super valuable and allows you to get some of those insights out, um, without having some of those, the same pitfalls that can come from, uh, teams that are very guarded, I will say. Uh, just have, have very personal experience, uh, on that note, too.
[00:50:45] Casey Hill: So that’s, that’s cool to see. Um, I wanna wrap up by just giving you guys a couple radical ideas. Uh, I’m gonna do one, and then Alex is gonna give you one, too. Um, I just thought this was really interesting and fun. So the Warmly team under their logo bar has a thing that actually says, “Talk to a customer.”
[00:51:04] Casey Hill: So what they tested, and I actually ran a variant of this test myself at, at my last organization, Active Campaign, is basically to say, “Look, um, talk to one of our actual customers. Talk to someone like you,” and, and they use that as validation mechanism. So, uh, Warmly basically described that they had a simple system they set up.
[00:51:22] Casey Hill: They pay $100 per time that someone on their list of customer peoples takes the call, and that’s their incentive, incentive to these customers, and then they let people basically book directly on the calendar of actual customers and have a conversation. Obviously not applicable for every type of business, uh, especially in this B2B enterprise world.
[00:51:40] Casey Hill: But for companies that have the option, I thought that was really clever. The way that I implemented this, and it was a really successful campaign, is I did it as an email campaign, and I basically had a personalization, so it was like for trials that were in our pipeline, it was like, talk to a SaaS customer, talk to an e-commerce customer, talk to a nonprofit customer.
[00:51:59] Casey Hill: Um, and that was kind of like my connective tissue, and we got really, really good activation rates on people just having candid conversations with a business like theirs. So it goes back to this like just trust. How do you, how do you beat the trust of talking with someone who’s in your shoes, right? Like, if you’re, um, a nonprofit and you talk to a nonprofit that roughly is the same size trying to accomplish the same things, that’s hugely powerful.
[00:52:22] Casey Hill: So anyways, uh, this is just fun and you guys can check it out at, uh, warmly.ai if you’re, if you’re curious on seeing that in action.
[00:52:29] Alex Eaton: I, I love that idea. You know, one of our taglines on our website for a long time was, “Your customers are your best sellers.” And we’ve actually been thinking a lot through that when it comes to references in general as just a type of reference, right?
[00:52:41] Alex Eaton: When you’re building an advocacy program, uh, which is what we do in a lot of, uh, with a lot of our customers, that’s a core piece of the sales process. If you can move that up in the sales process, it gets even more interesting. So the, the mechanics of making that happen, having the happy customers to do it, um- I see that idea becoming much more prevalent, frankly, as we move forward.
[00:53:02] Alex Eaton: So that feels like something that’s early. It’s, it can be hard to mechanize, right? And you don’t wanna burn out your advocates. That’s where the whole, like, back end of that comes into play. At the beginning here, folks have to be very willing, and the folks who are willing to, that’s great. You can incentivize them enough that it’s worth it.
[00:53:18] Alex Eaton: That $100 probably pays itself off in spades over time. Um, but I think that’s something that’s gonna become more easily mechanized, uh, with software on the back end. It’s something we’re looking at and is gonna be an idea that’s even more important. Um, and, and it kind of goes into ungating proof in general.
[00:53:35] Alex Eaton: That’s a type of proof, right? Customer proof is a very broad term that includes your customers having a conversation in the no-vendor Slack channel in the industry group about you, right? That’s a type of proof. Um, we’ve seen ungating your proof, and man, this plays into a lot of different aspects of this conversation today, be super effective.
[00:53:53] Alex Eaton: So for example, uh, Gong, one of our longtime customers, took their entire customer evidence library, which has over 3,000 assets, by the way, of all types. That’s stats, case studies, testimonials, et cetera, research with charts, things like that. Um, it’s a huge library, and they just put it all on their website, period, um, and put it front and center that you can sift through and go through, uh, and just have all the customers essentially speak for themselves alongside the more polished case studies and videos and things like that.
[00:54:23] Alex Eaton: Um, that’s something I think, you know, it relates to the AEO/GEO conversation. That’s what we’re starting to test is doing things like this. Does that help serve what happens in an AI search? Uh, that’s something we’re testing on. It’s still early days, as I mentioned, but that’s the type of idea we’re testing.
[00:54:40] Alex Eaton: And then again, it’s that willingness to just put everything up there and say, “Here we are. Like, check us out. We have the specific stories for you in particular, um, and you can see what customers are actually saying about us.” So, uh, we’ve seen a few customers do this with, you know, pieces of their library, full libraries on the website.
[00:54:59] Alex Eaton: We’re always looking at ways to make this more customizable as well, obviously, from the design aspect. But, uh, I real- I really think we’re in a phase of, you know, specificity is most important, um, but more is also better on this front in terms of making it visible. You want everything you’ve got to be visible, uh, because having that, that one testimonial that says easy to use, no results, uh, does not cut it anymore.
[00:55:24] Alex Eaton: So, um, frankly, we’re in a point where more and better is necessary now to stand out
[00:55:31] Casey Hill: Yeah, 100%. And I think if you make it easy for folks, like this is an awesome example. I know Intercom as an example on their like proof section has the ability where you can put like not only your industry but use case and it like sorts the things for that.
[00:55:44] Casey Hill: So you can start to help make it easy for both people and machines to index. The other thing I think is really cool is you mentioned like charts or different types of representations of data. So a good example of this is Ramp actually ran a test recently where in their social proof section they started including these specific graphs, these specific visualizations, and they attributed that to a trusted source.
[00:56:07] Casey Hill: Like they had trusted sources linked and connected to those visuals, and they tested that as the winning iteration that if you go to Ramp’s website today and you look at that first logo section, you’ll see that report that they compiled there. And so I think there’s also this value not only in the information, but different representations, different types of multimedia that feed into that, um, I think can be really valuable.
[00:56:29] Casey Hill: So this is super cool to see. If you have questions around you’re about to do a test on your website, we’re gonna implement some social proof, and you have a specific question for your business type, for your organization, for your page type, what is the data saying around this thing?
[00:56:44] Casey Hill: We have tools and a research team that can help you with that problem. So feel free to scan that, chat with our team and we’ll, we’re happy to let you know if, uh, we can be of help.
[00:56:54] Alex Eaton: And then yeah, for us, we’ve talked a lot about, right, the actual proof that goes into these tests and what goes into that, and that’s what we help do at UserEvidence here.
[00:57:02] Alex Eaton: So full customer evidence programs, advocacy references we talked about, and community as well. Um, that’s where we really serve marketers to help, mostly focused on enterprise B2B, uh, to again, help you stand out in that sales process. I am fully convinced it’s a timeless problem that’s having a moment right now, that your customers are your best differentiator nowadays, and that’s gonna get even more important.
[00:57:25] Alex Eaton: I think these tests have shown how you can deploy those customers well, and our job is to also help you wrangle all of those customers and get those stories actually out the door in a way that helps you.
[00:57:36] Casey Hill: And, and to put them into one place. So when I worked at Bonjoro, I was a beta customer. I was actually one of the first 10 customers of UserEvidence, and they helped compile.
[00:57:44] Casey Hill: They did, did interviews, had conversations, compiled this social proof. And one of the things that was a challenge we had is, like, stuff just lived in so many places. I think this is a very relatable problem, right? You have things across, like, so many different channels, and it’s all kind of disconnected.
[00:57:59] Casey Hill: And so the consolidation of that is hugely valuable as a reference point to send to people. And also, again, to this AEO conversation, having it where it can be indexed and seen in one spot, I think makes a lot of intuitive sense. So, um, big fan of UserEvidence personally as well.
[00:58:14] Casey Hill: All right. Well, um, this was a lot of fun.
[00:58:17] Casey Hill: Alex, thank you so much for, for taking the time and, and walking through and, um, I think it’s really a, a cool time to, to be in this space, and the burden might be higher, but it also means that if you go that extra mile, you’re gonna really be differentiated. You’re gonna really stand out. So there’s also this upside benefit, this disproportionate benefit to be the type of company that has that real, say, verifi- verification, validation layer in that world where trust is harder and harder to earn.
[00:58:47] Alex Eaton: 100%. It’s harder for your product teams to stand out right now, folks. And so the opportunity is actually there more than ever for us as marketers to be where we stand out. And yeah, I think you nailed that, Casey. Um, and it’s great to see all this data back up what that can actually look like in practice.
[00:59:04] Alex Eaton: So I hope y’all go put that into practice and become that strength point for your companies.
[00:59:11] Casey Hill: Awesome. All right. Thanks so much, guys.
[00:59:13] Alex Eaton: Thanks, y’all. Have a good one.