I have an educational program for homeschoolers and I invite parents to write a review of my program in exchange for a free month of the program. There are no strings attached on their review and they receive the free month prior to writing their review. Any thoughts on credibility or disclosure issues that it raises?
Hi John,
This is an interesting idea and I'd like to learn more about how people respond to your incentive (for example, how many people have taken you up on it so far, and what were their motivations for doing so?). Regarding disclosure I have the following question for you: do the people who write their own reviews disclose that the they received the free month for writing the review? If there's no disclosure (meaning the people reading the review don't know the reviewers received a free month for it), then the program seems problematic.
But I see no reason why you would want them to be undercover because it seems like your incentive program is legitimate and on the up-and-up. For example, you openly acknowledge that they can write a negative review if they want.
If you don't do so already I would suggest that you require all of your reviewers to include a link back to the page where you explain the program. This has three benefits: 1) it provides full disclosure, 2) provides another link to your site, 3) and it allows people to learn more about the program so they can participate in it. Further, I would include a page that shows all the reviews that have been written to date (maybe you have this already but I didn't see it on the pages that you sent me).
As I mentioned in my "To Tell Or Not To Tell?" report on disclosure a way that you can determine whether or not a WOM marketing program is effective and ethical is to see if it fulfills the three bedrock principles of WOM: trustworthiness (that is, being genuine and ethical), caring/goodwill (that is, a perception that the other has one's best interests at heart), and relevance (the perception that information is helpful and valuable to a person). By including a link to the terms of your WOM incentive I think you would fulfill all three.
Thanks for your comment!
Walter
I thought I'd follow up with a few examples of how people treat the "free review" freedom. I do not insist on anything in the reviews other than I ask them to not mention price and to try and get our name and url right.
Some people mention the free month - http://relaxedhomeskool.com/cate...tegory/reviews/
. Others don't: http://www.vccpraise.com/
time4le...4learningreview .
My pet personal ethical peeve at this point are "review" sites where to purchase your spot on the "top choices list". And the purchase is not disclosed to the viewing public.
Walter
An update: I continue to run this program and now I mention as a request that they include back to program description for reviewers - http://www.time4learning.com/hom...um-
review.shtml.
I tried keeping a list of the reviews and making it available but it turned out to be one more operational item which was not absolutely necessary so I didn't keep it up. The list was being kept at http://www.iKeepBookmarks.com/
On...ineKidsLearning but its a hodge-podge.
The reality is that the bulk of the people who take up this reviewer program are on private email groups so I never actually see their review.
I've also started a forum where parents can openly discuss the program. I only supervise that by removing spam: I leave up comments critical of us and comments where they compare us unfavorably with alternatives. I'm not sure its commercially savvy but so far, so good.
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