How to Increase Online Course Sales with Social Proof: Proven Strategies That Work

Credibility and authenticity are the two key factors that turn a potential student into a loyal one. Selling online courses is difficult enough with the high competitor rate and innumerable options–how do you stand out from your competitors then?

The answer is simple: Social Proof.

Social proof is the psychological phenomenon that encourages viewers to do what other people are already doing. Using social proof in different ways, you can easily convince potential customers to sign up for your online course.

In this blog, we’ll explore how social proof and course testimonials can amplify your sales with different strategies.

Let’s begin.

1. Understanding Social Proof for Course Creators

What is social proof?

It’s a question asked by innumerable marketers. Marketers utilize social proof to encourage potential customers to successfully convert. Modern marketing makes the maximum use of social proof in multiple ways–from ecommerce businesses, B2B marketers and even education institutions–all of them leverage social proof as a powerful tool.

Social proof is a phenomenon where people get influenced to make buying decisions based on the behaviour of others that came before them. When we consider online courses, a student will be more likely to sign up if they see other students who are similar to them.

Social proof validates their choice of signing up for your course and ultimately results in increased signups for you as a company.

There are different types of social proof that you can leverage. You can collect reviews, testimonials (yes, reviews and testimonials are different!), case studies, social media reviews, and a lot more.

In fact, celebrity endorsements and influencer collaborations also fall under the category of social proof for your company. Even when you proudly display the number of people that have signed up for a course, it can be considered as social proof.

It can look something like this:

2. Collecting and Showcasing Course Testimonials

Online course marketing requires strategy, planning and execution of each fundamental step effortlessly. If you wish to showcase testimonials from your previous students, you must know how to collect and showcase them on your platform.

What are the Best Ways to Request Testimonials From Students?

The very first step you must take is to request testimonials from your students. Knowing when to ask for a testimonial is just as important as knowing what to ask.

But to start off, you must have clearly defined the goals you wish to achieve with the testimonials you collect. Decide whether you want to put them on different platforms? Is it a marketing campaign that you wish to execute using the collected testimonials? Or something else entirely.

Based on where you want to reach, you can take the first step. The best way to ask for a testimonial involves being genuine, clear and direct about your approach. Here are some factors to consider:

Using Video Testimonials to Boost Authenticity

Do you know the basic tenets to appear authentic in front of your audiences are:

These three factors (and many more) largely determine how authentic you appear to the masses. However, an important detail that many miss out on, is how you communicate these factors to your audience.

How you show (not tell) your potential students that your course is legit is extremely vital. This is where video testimonials come in.

If you try to convey your courses’ value via text, there is a very high chance that your audience will only retain 10% of it, as compared to using a video testimonial which increases that number to 90%.

Additionally, you might find it surprising that businesses that utilized video testimonials, generated almost 1.5X the revenue and clicks went up nearly 3X.

There’s a really simple explanation for this: humans.

When a viewer reads a text and sees a face next to it (in a textual review) they might end up thinking that the review was faked. On the other hand, if they see a person actively appreciating the course and sharing what they learnt from it in a video format, they’ll be more than likely to think that what the person is stating is 100% true.

All in all, video testimonials are the ultimate form of social proof especially when considering authenticity.

Displaying Testimonials Effectively on the Landing Page

The testimonials and reviews you collect can be used on Landing pages and sales pages too. Using a tool like Feedspace can allow you to create a widget that you can embed in your website in minimal steps. Put them in places on your landing page where it is immediately visible. Don’t add too many testimonials to avoid overwhelming the visitor, but do ensure that it stands out.

Testimonials that show a student’s name, their role in the industry, and other relevant details are important elements when showcasing a testimonial to build credibility. Incorporate various testimonial types on your landing page. These are the ones that perform the best:

3. Leveraging User-Generated Content & Reviews

Our next-in-line strategy is leveraging user-generated content and reviews.

What is user-generated content?
Content that is developed by your students. Content derived when students post about how your course impacted their career positively is titled as ‘user-generated content (UGC)’ i.e., content generated by someone who has experienced the particular business.

Top Pick : User-Generated Content Examples: How Brands Are Winning & How You Can Too 🔥

Here’s two ways you can utilize content generated by your students:

#1 Social media:

Motivate students to share their experience on social media. They can share a review or you can make it engaging and fun by creating a hashtag or a contest. Social media can be a great way to showcase your course content, engage with students and establish an identity for yourself.

Many course creators utilize tools to search for creative content that has already been posted by students and reach out to them to ask for permission to reuse the content as social proof for their marketing.

Industry: Arts and crafts, DIY tutorials, marketing and media courses, photography courses.

#2 Success stories:

Highlight student’s success stories in your marketing campaigns. Show your potential students how your course has impacted students that have enrolled for your course. You can get your student’s insights about how the course helped them achieve their goals.

You can create a case-study type testimonial (varying in format like text or video) too. These stories can be shared on platforms like reddit, X (formerly twitter) or even Facebook and Instagram pages. Celebrating your student’s success story fosters a sense of community among your students and attracts new students to your course.

Industry: Finance, marketing, IT courses, courses based on skill learning and development.

4. Using Social Media & Community Engagement as Social Proof

Social media marketing is incredibly important when it comes to selling courses online. In fact, to accurately depict the value of your course, social media is the best course. It allows you to set the tone for the course, reach out to vast audiences and promote engagement.

Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are excellent ways to reach audiences your ads might not reach.

Like we mentioned above, you can even utilize branded hashtags to create excitement around achievements. You can incentivize it by hosting giveaways or offering prizes (ensure you remain ethical though!).

Using social media to boost engagement creates a sense of community. This allows you to stay in touch with your past students and even creates a sense of loyalty and belonging amongst different batches.

Additionally, you can use platforms like Quora and Reddit to participate in community events and discussions. These will help you stay up to date with the current market sentiments. These platforms give you a space to establish yourself as a community leader and thus an expert on your subject matter.

5. Featuring Industry Endorsements & Influencers

As a course creator, partnering with influencers or featuring industry experts is an excellent way to establish yourself as a mogul in the course-creators industry.

However, when choosing someone to work with, you must keep these factors in mind:

Industry experts will boost your courses’ awareness and visibility. It can boost the credibility and legitimacy of your couse–especially when a well known celebrity in the industry with a large and engaged audience does it.

An underlying benefit of collaborating with a famous personality is that the audience forms a connection between your brand and the celebrity–which follows long after the contract has expired.

The audience's perception becomes positively influenced and continues to remain the same for a long time, since they associate it with the expert’s positive brand image (think Nike’s Air Jordan 1s and Micheal Jordan).

6. Integrating Social Proof in Email & Paid Marketing

The next strategy on our list is email and paid marketing.

Blending social proof into your email marketing campaign might be the sure shot way of bringing in increased enrollments for your course. Statistics show that for every $1 spent on email marketing, ROI is nearly worth $38.

Periodically sending an email to your students is a great way to ensure that your students remember you without being too nosy and interruptive. The idea of setting up an email marketing strategy is to turn first-time website visitors into students and first-time enrollers into full-time loyal students.

Adding testimonials in your email’s content is a great way to guarantee enrollments. Using an excerpt of a testimonial left behind by your student in the body of your email or integrating a review catchphrase into the subject line can highlight the value of your course.

If you wish to use media or social media posts in your emails–turn them into GIFs! GIFs are easy to embed and convey the same message without taking up too much space and time.

On the other hand, social proof in paid advertisements can play a pivotal role in raising conversions. Research indicates that while 40% of people trust a paid advertisement to deliver the desired results, the number goes up to 70% when paid ads feature reviews.

Social proof in Meta or Google ads can skyrocket your enrollments. Here are a few ways social proof can be used in paid advertising:

7. Creating a 'Wall of Love' for Your Course

Imagine a dedicated space on the internet that displays all the ‘love’ you have received for your course. That is exactly what ‘Wall of Love’ is. A wall of love is where a visitor can view real student feedback that you have received.

A wall of love is an excellent way to collectively showcase the reviews and testimonials you collected from your students. It is commonly used by innumerable e-commerce businesses that function primarily through online platforms.

Using a wall of love can help your potential students realize how your course has impacted the lives of your students in a positive way. It is also known as a testimonial wall. Not only does it create a sense of community using your brand, but it also elevates your online presence and improves your brand image in the industry.

Want to see real results? Check out this case study on how they used reviews as social proof.🔥

Businesses like ‘Buy me a coffee’ effectively leverage their Wall of Love to enhance customer’s trust in the brand. They have combined multi-media testimonials that they received from creators and users alike from platforms like YouTube, X (Twitter) and TikTok.

Their wall of love showcases genuine appreciation, has a culmination of different testimonials and experiences and can boost authentic connections.

It is incredibly important to integrate testimonials in different media formats to keep your wall of love engaging and communicative. Integrate audio reviews, reviews from social media platforms, and especially video reviews.

Stressing about the excess workload that multi-media testimonial collection brings?

Don’t worry–we’ve got your back.

The simplest way to do this is using a testimonial collection tool like Feedspace. Not only does Feedspace help you collect testimonials in video, audio or text format using a single link, but also simplifies the process of creating a Wall of Love for your website that you can easily embed (without needing technical knowledge).

Additionally, if you don’t have a website, you can still create a 'Wall of Love' page to showcase testimonials. You can also add a button for users to register for your course.Give it a shot–its simple, easy-to-understand UI can elevate testimonial collection while minimizing your effort.

8. The Role of Third-Party Review Platforms

Third-party review platforms are the most powerful way to mitigate hesitation in your students. Seeing reviews on platforms like Udemy, Coursera or Skillshare informs the viewer that the reviews are unbiased and authentic.

While testimonials on your website influence the final stage of the decision-making process, testimonials on a third-party platform are a stronger form of social proof since these platforms are more likely to have unbiased, credible reviews.

You must encourage your students to leave ratings on platforms like Udemy, Coursera and other course marketplaces to ensure a well-rounded course (brand) identity is established. Moreover, using external validation for authority will strengthen your credibility and over time bring in more enrollments.

One thing to keep in mind is that when you get a review, you must respond. Even if it is a negative review, or a review tainted with criticism for your course, you must professionally respond and take notes as to what can be improved.

Testimonials are not just to proudly display how far you’ve come, rather they are great tools to learn what your students really think about your course. Since online course creators are rarely able to interact with students in person, feedback and reviews are the only ways which can allow you to peep inside a student’s mind.

9. Measuring the Impact of Social Proof on Course Sales

Our last and most important strategy is to measure the impact of all the strategies above.

You must have considered altering different strategies to fit your particular niche, or you want to use them in conjunction with another strategy–but none of it would mean anything if you are not able to accurately analyse what works best for you and what does not.

Strategizing and implementation are two continual steps that you must keep on improving based on the audience's feedback, changing market conditions and even your own course’s growth.

Here are a few metrics you must track:

On your website

These metrics can help you assess where the most traffic comes from and which channel of marketing you should improve in.

These metrics are useful in assessing the impact that simply displaying testimonials have on enrollments.

From Email marketing

These metrics allow you to determine how effectively your target audience is engaging, clicking on and enrolling for your course; directly from email marketing.

Paid marketing

These metrics help you clearly define your current position for paid advertising channels. Deeper analysis of these metrics can help you make informed decisions in the future.

Retention, Engagement and Satisfaction.

These metrics are crucial in determining how satisfied your students are with your course, contents and teaching methods. Based on these metrics you can identify the problem areas in your course structure and plan for improvement.

Conclusion

We hope that these 9 effective strategies for increasing sales with social proof prove to be incredibly useful for your online courses. Course testimonials (in video, audio and text format) are your best bet at increasing enrollments and helping students achieve their goals.

To simplify collecting testimonials and proudly displaying them on your website, consider a tool like Feedspace. It’s simple navigation makes collecting testimonials from students feel like a walk in the park. Import reviews from top 20+ websites and create your Wall of Love to show off your success!