The Secret Behind My Best Ad Ever: Raw Social Proof (Micro-Lesson)

Summary

Summary of "The Secret Behind My Best Ad Ever: Raw Social Proof (Micro-Lesson)"

Podcast: B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt
Host: Dave Gerhardt
Episode Title: The Secret Behind My Best Ad Ever: Raw Social Proof (Micro-Lesson)
Release Date: December 11, 2024

Introduction

In this episode, Dave Gerhardt delves into the creation and success of his most effective advertisement, which significantly boosted his company's Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). Far from traditional ad strategies focusing on budgeting or targeting, Dave emphasizes the pivotal role of raw social proof in driving marketing success.

The Best Ad Experience

Timestamp [01:37]

Dave begins by recounting the performance of his best ad, which generated an impressive $77,822 in MRR over two years. Targeting the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market, each deal averaged approximately $200, resulting in numerous successful transactions. This ad not only transformed the business's revenue streams but also elevated the marketing department's standing within the company.

“If you have enough social proof and use it in the right way, you will see results.” — Dave Gerhardt [02:45]

Creation Process

Timestamp [02:00]

Recalling back to 2019, Dave describes his transition from sales to marketing at a company offering review generation software for local businesses, such as plumbers. Faced with unremarkable results from initial Facebook ad experiments, the CEO introduced an unconventional ad example: a SaaS growth consultant showcasing dashboard screenshots that illustrated real revenue growth for various companies.

Inspired by this, Dave took a hands-on approach to craft a similar ad. He collaborated with the customer success and product teams to identify the top 10 most successful customers. For each, he captured before-and-after screenshots of Google business listings, highlighting the increase in reviews—from as few as 5 to over 300. The ad featured a lo-fi Loom video with minimal production quality, focusing solely on authentic success stories.

“We ran the ad the next day and it was an instant success.” — Dave Gerhardt [04:20]

Key Lessons

Timestamp [05:15]

Dave distills the success of his ad into a fundamental marketing principle: social proof is paramount. He contrasts raw social proof with more polished but less effective alternatives such as:

• Logos: Simply displaying a company's logo (e.g., Salesforce) often lacks meaningful impact.
• Engineered Testimonials: Highly produced video or text testimonials can appear inauthentic and biased.
• Case Studies: Typically written by the company, these can seem one-sided and untrustworthy.

Instead, Dave champions raw social proof, which includes:

• Screenshots or Embeds of Online Reviews: Authentic feedback directly from platforms like Google or social media.
• Results Screenshots: Real-time data from dashboards showcasing tangible outcomes.
• Positive Email Sentiments: Unfiltered customer communications highlighting product benefits.

“Raw social proof. Some examples are screenshots or embeds of online reviews.” — Dave Gerhardt [06:50]

He emphasizes that raw social proof provides undeniable proof of a product's efficacy, making it a powerful tool in any marketer's arsenal. By integrating genuine customer feedback and real results into marketing materials, businesses can build trust and drive conversions more effectively.

Conclusion

Timestamp [07:55]

Concluding the episode, Dave reiterates the importance of leveraging raw social proof in marketing strategies. By prioritizing authentic customer experiences and transparent results, marketers can create compelling advertisements that resonate deeply with their target audience.

“Gather raw social proof, put it in the right places, use it the right way, and you will win.” — Dave Gerhardt [08:10]

Dave's insights underscore the value of authenticity in marketing, demonstrating that genuine customer success stories can surpass traditional ad strategies in effectiveness and impact.

Key Takeaways

• Social Proof Over Strategy: Authentic customer feedback can outperform sophisticated ad strategies.
• Raw Over Polished: Unfiltered testimonials and real results build more trust than engineered or visually polished alternatives.
• Implementation: Incorporate raw social proof through screenshots, embeds, and real-time data to enhance marketing materials.
• Simplicity Wins: Even low-production ads can achieve significant results if they effectively showcase genuine success.

By embracing raw social proof, marketers can tap into a powerful tool that not only validates their offerings but also fosters deeper connections with their audience.

Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Revenue Hero. Our friends at Revenue Hero recently did a lead response test of over a thousand B2B sales teams. And this is crazy to me still. I did a study like this seven, eight years ago when I was working at Drift. It's taking too long still to this day to follow up with leads. On average, it took one day, five hours and 17 minutes to hear back from those companies on the website. It's 2024. Look, your buyer has probably already moved on to an alternative. A few minutes of not hearing from you, let alone 29 hours. What those companies need is automated scheduling for qualified leads. And that's where Revenue Hero comes in. Their platform is the fastest way for qualified leads to schedule a meeting with your sales team. Plus, they have the most sophisticated matching algorithm, so all of your leads get booked with the right rep. Whether they're a new account or already a customer, hundreds of businesses automate their request. A demo workflow today with revenue hero, including Freshworks, Nooks, Sendoso, Seamless AI and and Customer IO. If you're in B2B marketing with an inbound sales motion, Revenue Hero is a must have tool. You can check out this full lead response report, the latest version of it, which has plenty of other takeaways you should really know about so you can help your team drive more revenue with the people that are already visiting your website, the most valuable audience that you have. Go check it out. It's RevenueHero IO Exit 5. You can find the report and learn more about Revenue Hero there. It's RevenueHero IO exit 5.

[B]

All right, today I want to talk to you about the best ad that I've ever created. It's one that generated $77,822 in MRR in about two years time. And this is for a product that was for the SMB market. So the average MRR of a deal was approximately $200. So a lot of deals came from that. It completely changed the business and really put marketing on the map in the company. Now, before I get into it, this episode is not about ad strategy. I won't be talking about budgeting, targeting, bidding tactics, etc. It's about the actual ad itself and what made it great. Now, I know that ad strategy is a big part of the success, but that's not the purpose of this lesson. And at the time, our ad strategy wasn't even that sophisticated. I mean, we were literally just running one ad to one audience, no retargeting. So it was very Amateur. So the difference maker here was the ad creative. So I'm going to rewind back to 2019. I was working for a company that sold review generation software to local businesses. So think of your local plumber. It would help them get more reviews online. And I had just made the move from sales to marketing. I spent about six months in sales, went to marketing and the marketing team. At the time it was just me and someone else, and we are experimenting with Facebook ads. But at the time, we weren't seeing a lot of success. So the CEO called me and the other marketer over to his desk and showed us this ad that he got on Facebook. It was a video of some SaaS growth consultant taking two to three minutes, showing endless stories of how he's helped other SaaS founders grow their revenue. And all he was doing was literally going screenshot by screenshot showing dashboards of actual dollar amounts going up. It was like, you know, stripe dashboards and literally just showing revenue going up and to the right for all these companies that he's helped. It was a brilliant ad, super compelling. And our CEO asked us to create something like this and run it on Facebook. So since I had just come from sales and had experience pitching our product, the task fell on me. So over the next couple days, I spoke with our customer success team and product team to find our 10 most successful customers. And as I mentioned, we sold review generation software to local businesses. So for each business, I pulled up a graph of how many reviews they were at when they started with us. Verse now. And you know, for some of them and a lot of them, it was something like 5 reviews all the way to 300 reviews. So it was a really big jump. And I also took a screenshot of their Google business listing. You know, when you look up a business up on Google, you see all the reviews, and then I literally just did a loom video going through a slide deck, just talking about each success story super quick and about how many reviews they were able to get. It was super lo fi. I used my MacBook camera, which sucks. No ring light, no microphone. The background was literally just like a white brick wall. I use Loom and Google Slides. That's it. We ran the ad the next day and it was an instant success. It was our bread and butter ad for two years. Nothing even came close. And even after I left the company, they were still using the ad because I used to see it. So what's the lesson here? The lesson is that social proof trumps all. If you have enough social proof and use it in the right way, you will see results. If you need to spruce up your landing page, your website, ad copy, email, whatever it is, add social proof. That's the trump card. Personally, I don't think that just adding some logos is enough. I don't think logos are that compelling. I mean, seeing the Salesforce logo on a website doesn't really tell me much. Just tells me that maybe one small team within Salesforce had used your product and they got the okay to let you put their logo on the site. Like, that's not. That doesn't really do much for me. I also don't think that having highly manicured video or text testimonials are convincing. I mean, you just found your couple of happiest customers and then, you know, literally put a camera in their face and are telling them to speak positively about you. To me, it's so obvious that those are engineered, that they're not that convincing. And I'm also not a big fan of case studies, which may be controversial, I don't know, but the reason is because most of them suck. They're not that good and are a biased review of results written by you, the company. So you, the company, are writing this positive story. So it's. It's such a biased piece of writing. That's why I prefer raw social proof. So raw social proof. Some examples are screenshots or embeds of online reviews. So if somebody writes positively about you on social media, you're literally just screenshotting that or embedding it on your site or wherever, before and after pictures, whatever that means for you. Screenshots of results. Right. So it could be a screenshot of a result you've generated. It could be from your dashboard, back end or wherever results are shown. Screenshots of a positive testimonial, online screenshots of positive sentiment in an email. Right. Think of a customer success manager checking in with a customer, saying, how are things going? And the customer said, awesome. I've gotten 10 new leads from your product today. Right. That would be something you would want to screenshot and use. And even graphs, just showing graphs of the real thing. To me, that's the stuff that really gets people I know. It always gets me when I visit a site and they have it. It's that undeniable proof. And if you can generate more of that, you have marketing gold. So the lesson here is gather raw social proof, put it in the right places, use it the right way, and you will win. All right, that's all for today. Peace.

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Revenue Hero. Our friends at Revenue Hero recently did a lead response test of over a thousand B2B sales teams. And this is crazy to me still. I did a study like this seven, eight years ago when I was working at Drift. It's taking too long still to this day to follow up with leads. On average, it took one day, five hours and 17 minutes to hear back from those companies on the website. It's 2024. Look, your buyer has probably already moved on to an alternative after a few minutes of not hearing from you, let alone 29 hours. What those companies need is automated scheduling for qualified leads. And that's where Revenue Hero comes in. Their platform is the fastest way for qualified leads to schedule a meeting with your sales team. Plus, they have the most sophisticated matching algorithm so all of your leads get booked with the right rep. Whether they're a new account or already a customer, hundreds of businesses automate their request a demo workflow today with revenue hero, including Freshworks, Nooks, Sendoso, Seamless AI and Customer IO. If you're in B2B marketing with an inbound sales motion, Revenue Hero is a must have tool. You can check out this full lead response report, the latest version of it, which has plenty of other takeaways you should really know about so you can help your team drive more revenue. With the people that are already visiting your website, the most valuable audience that you have. Go check it out. It's RevenueHero IO Exit 5. You can find the report and learn more about Revenue hero there. It's RevenueHero IO exit 5.