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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Human Psychology
All projects·From: Cialdini's 6 Principles of Influence
MiniAudit· 25 minutes

Which of the Six Are You Actually Using?

Honasa Consumer (Mamaearth)

Objective: Check your own (or a practice) product page and one email against two of Cialdini's six principles, reciprocity and social proof/authority, verifying each claim is real rather than merely well-written.

You're a growth marketer at Honasa Consumer (Mamaearth), the Indian D2C beauty company, prepping a campaign relaunch and want to know which principles you're already using honestly.

Pull your funnel's reciprocity offer and its social-proof/authority claims into one sheet and verify each against a real source.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets
FreeLog every offer and claim with its verification status

Free, fast for a solo audit

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Reciprocity

The lesson's reciprocity example is HubSpot: free templates, calculators, and its State of Marketing report before ever asking for a demo. The gift has to be genuinely useful, not a thin lead-gen gate.

What do you give away before you ask for an email or a sale, and would a stranger call it genuinely useful on its own?

Google Sheets— List every free-value offer on your site (lead magnet, free tool, free sample, free trial).

Procedure

  1. List every 'free' offer across your homepage, landing pages, and popups
  2. For each, note what the visitor gets immediately, before providing any contact info
  3. Rate each 1-5 for whether it stands alone as useful, or whether it's just a teaser for the paid product
  4. Flag any offer scoring 2 or below
Sample output
Offer                          Gets immediately?      Usefulness (1-5)
Free skin-type quiz + PDF        Yes, before email        4
"Free guide" (email-gated)       No, gated                2

Healthy

Most free offers deliver real value immediately, or clearly earn the small ask they make in return.

Unhealthy

A 'free' offer that's actually a teaser, gated behind an email with nothing useful until after signup.

What this means

Reciprocity only works if the gift feels like a gift. A gated teaser reads as a trade, not a gift, and doesn't trigger the same obligation.

So what do I do about it?

SymptomActionEffort
An offer scores 2 or belowEither ungate the real value or add something genuinely useful before the gate30 min
YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Social Proof and Authority

The lesson cites a Northwestern Spiegel Research Center study showing reviews can lift purchase likelihood up to 270% on higher-priced products, and notes that real 2024 authority claims cite named experts and peer-reviewed studies, not stock-photo doctors.

For every review count and every 'expert-backed' or 'dermatologist-tested' claim on your page, can you name the source?

Google Sheets— List every social-proof and authority claim on your top product page.

Procedure

  1. List every review count, star rating, and expert/authority claim on your top page
  2. For review counts, match against your reviews platform's live dashboard number
  3. For authority claims ('dermatologist-tested', 'clinically proven'), find the named study, lab, or expert behind it
  4. Flag anything you can't name a source for
Sample output
Claim                             Source found?
"4.6 stars, 12,400 reviews"        Yes, matches platform dashboard
"Dermatologist-tested"             No named dermatologist or lab on file

Healthy

Every number matches a live dashboard; every authority claim names a real person, lab, or study.

Unhealthy

An authority claim with no named expert or study behind it, decorative rather than real.

What this means

'Dermatologist-tested' with no name attached is the 2005-style stock-photo-doctor move the lesson warns against, it decays trust the moment a customer asks who.

So what do I do about it?

SymptomActionEffort
An authority claim has no named sourceEither name the real expert/study or remove the claim30 min
YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A two-section audit (reciprocity offers, social-proof/authority claims) with a usefulness score or named source for each, and a fix list for anything under threshold.

See a reference example
Sample output
ThredUp funnel audit (excerpt)

RECIPROCITY
  Free "Clean Out Kit" bag, no email required    5/5, real value before any ask

SOCIAL PROOF / AUTHORITY
  "4.5 stars, 890K reviews"                        matches Trustpilot dashboard (887,412)
  "As seen in Vogue, Forbes"                       real, links to actual coverage on file

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Every reciprocity offer scored 1-5 with a stated reason
  • Every authority claim has either a named source or is flagged for removal