Advertise your popularity

People are always more likely to follow the crowd than take a big risk. If you are popular, let people know. If potential customers see that other people like you, they will too. If you want to be successful with your marketing, it helps to make your popularity known. Just as you are more likely to leave a tip in a tip jar if you see other money in it, your potential customers are more likely to interact, comment, and click through purchase things if they see others doing it.

So, how do you advertise your popularity? Consider the following:

Place download counters on your site: If you offer a download counter for your potential customers to see, they will be able to view, in real time, how many times other people have downloaded a file, and will thus be more interested in downloading it themselves. They may note that certain files are more popular than others. This will spur them to click through to download. It also gives you some incentive to create content worth downloading.

Place comment counts in prominent places on your site: This is a useful tool, especially if you have a blog. Make sure that visitors to your site know that other people on your site are taking the time to read your content, and interact with you by commenting on it. This invites more comments, and will help your visitors feel apart of something that is happening. If they see others doing it, they will too. This is not to say your potential customers are going to be lemmings, blindly following, they may offer unique and insightful comments. However, they will find it easier to leap if they see others doing it.

Put subscriber numbers where they can be seen: This is the same idea again, the fact is, if you let other people see how many subscribers you have, they will want to be part of something. If you are on Twitter, and have thousands of followers, people will see that and think that there must be a reason to follow you. Thus, be more willing to do so themselves. Having a following shows that other people you are worth following. So, make it possible for people to see you are popular.

Just make sure the stats are high enough to warrant a little bragging. If not, you are effectively advertising that you aren't popular. This means that you need to use this in conjunction with other marketing strategies. However, when you have a product or service that people like, help sway other people by showing them how much everyone else likes you. Do not ever underestimate the power of suggestion when it comes to marketing. Suggest that you are popular, back it up with some stats, and potential customers will feel more inclined to believe you are indeed worth their time.Then give them value to show them that you are.