Social proof is evidence that people and companies use your product – or more importantly, they trust it. These displays of social influence reduce friction in the funnel by scaling the concept of recommendations.
Here are six of the most common types of social proof.
- Customer case studies - writeups of how customers use your product and the benefits they receive
- Customer testimonials - snippets of customer quotes displayed on your website
- Customer logos - a carousel of logos on your home page
- Customer/user quantity metrics - representation of scale – displays of
- Awards and badges - most common are G2 badges, Garner quadrants, and SOC2 compliance
- Number of integrations - trust through association, displays of partners, and integrations
Customer testimonials are essential elements of any SaaS website.
But before you start reaching out to customers for quotes, consider tailoring the formats of your testimonials to match your industry.
- Feature different buyer personas – attract your champions and decision-makers
- Showcase real tweets from customers – a popular format for prosumer companies
- Create dedicated landing pages for customers in a specific vertical – think ABM strategies
- Use customer videos as testimonials – high lift, but offers more intimacy
Social proof isn't just for your website, you can also use it in your email flows for new users.
Here's a quick tip. Use customer success stories, notable endorsements, and user metrics within your onboarding flows to reinforce the value of your product. This tactic showcases credibility and aligns your users’ expectations and needs.
G2 has a crazy business model! Not only has the company found a way to monetize social proof, G2 uses it to accelerate growth.
G2 badges have become a symbol of social status in the SaaS space. As a result, companies are encouraged to promote and display their badges on their website. This act does two things for G2.
👉 Customer marketing – While these badges offer social proof, they also help G2 extend its awareness by tapping into a company’s audience.
👉 Domain authority – Plus, these badges become backlinks that help G2 rank higher in search (further increasing its awareness).
Not a pure-play SaaS model, but this company’s display of social proof is impressive – to say the least. ShipBob, an e-commerce fulfillment platform, found the ingredients to maximize its social influence.
👉 Strategically place your testimonials across key customer touchpoints – homepage, product, and pricing pages.
👉 Use multiple forms of social proof tailored to different funnel stages – videos for engagement, use cases for depth, and quick quotes for high-traffic areas.
👉 Tailor testimonials to speak directly to specific industries - use data and real examples to resonate with buyers.
One of the best visuals I’ve seen on how the demand gen workflow ties with lead gen activities.
At its core, demand gen is an orchestration of marketing and sales tactics to drive awareness.
These cross-functional efforts occur at the top of the funnel to build an audience around your product and problem space.
- Outbound marketing emails
- Inbound marketing efforts (organic, paid, referrals)
- Retargeting ads and email nurtures
- Top-of-funnel programs (webinars and events)
Thought leadership and brand awareness go hand in hand when it comes to demand gen.
I often say that building trust is the battle that comes before adoption. And the quickest way to earn trust is to provide value consistently.
Here are three Thought Leadership campaign types to help you build trust.
👉 Newsletter-led / Blog-led (optimizes for a subscriber base, but has a long ramp time to stand out)
👉 Podcast / Interviews-led (optimizes for building intimacy, but difficult to measure attribution)
👉 Events-led (optimizes for building community, but time intensive)
A masterclass on building, testing, and optimizing campaigns!
Whether you’re building demand gen or lead gen, running campaigns is core to your GTM initiatives. And to run them well, three layers need to work together. Here are a few questions to ask to set yourself up for success.
👉 What funnel stage are you using to define your success criteria – moving MQLs into first calls?
👉 What segments are you targeting – is it a new market or are there specific criteria?
👉 What channels are you using to engage with prospects – how are you reinforcing your messaging across mediums?
Follow this playbook to grow your company’s LinkedIn page to 200K followers.
Through a combination of company, employee, and paid social posts, Gong layered different mindshare tactics to drive brand awareness.
Here’s the breakdown.
👉 Encourage employee takeovers – share new hires, personal milestones, and regular updates to drive engagement and visibility
👉 Build a brand voice for your company page – use “edutainment” to personalize your content – your posts should read like a human, not a corporation
👉 Compliment your posts with thought leader ads – use specific persona targeting to boost organic posts through LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads
Community building is an essential accelerator for the demand-gen flywheel.
A great example is Kong Inc., an API management platform. The company used three community tactics to capture the attention and engage with the developer community (not an easy segment to build rapport with).
👉 Highlight top contributors on your community page and through social media shout-outs
👉 Regularly host events such as technical webinars, workshops, local meetups, and hackathons
👉 Gather feedback from your community through forums, surveys, and direct customer calls
The short answer is – Yes, buyers still respond to great emails. However, it’s true that the traditional playbook where dedicated SDRs send mass generic emails doesn’t work today.
Instead, sales teams need to revisit the primary reason we send outbound emails – to add value to the reader. Here’s a tip, subscribe to your company’s outbound emails. Would you find them valuable or do they read like spam?
Traditional GTM motions started by buying target account lists, adding them to your CRM, and sequencing them. The accounts are cold and the messaging is the same. Generic.
However, there’s a new way to sell into markets today. Start by prioritizing companies that have expressed some signal that they could be a customer. There are two types of intent signals.
- First-party signals – the company takes actions directly on your website, blog, or free tier
- Third-party signals – the company has a recent event or announcement that's related to your value-prop (e.g., hiring for a new role, launching a new product, posting about a topic)
Once an intent signal takes place, the account is immediately sequenced in an outbound campaign.
The modern outbound tech stack has these three layers.
- Intent Signal Provider/ Account builder (e.g., Koala OR Keyplay)
- Data Orchestrator (e.g., Clay)
- Email Sequencer (e.g., Outreach)
With these three tools, your sales team can scale outbound emails – all without an SDR team. This is exactly what Thenam, an AI-powered customer success platform, did to revamp its GTM motion.
Here’s a quick rundown.
👉 Thena used a tool like Keyplay to continuously refresh and prioritize account lists for the sales team
👉 Then, with a data orchestrator like Clay, the company sent targeted outbound emails on behalf of AEs (replacing SDRs)
👉 At the same time, the AEs would send custom personalized emails to high-priority accounts
A successful growth motion extends beyond just PLG plays but relies on the right culture and team setup to enable it.
Here’s a breakdown of the Growth team at Dropbox and the metrics they track.
- Acquisition – total sign-ups
- Activation – number of sign-ups that reach set up/ reach the first habit loop
- Monetization – conversions from free to paid + retention + sales-handoff
- Engagement – weekly active users + 12 month retention
The multi-channel playbook that helped AppsFlyer, a marketing analytics platform, scale. Here’s the rundown of the different channels.
- LinkedIn – the main channel, posts slideshows, and frequent long-form text
- Facebook/Meta – not a priority channel, posts infrequent videos
- Instagram – multiple handles, posts images and short videos multiple times a week
- Twitter/X – cross-promotion posts from LinkedIn, emphasizes comments and replies
- YouTube – saw some success with commercial-type videos
- Medium – caters to a technical audience, the main channel for DevRel
