I figured since reviews can be considered a form of marketing, this would be the best forum for this. Please feel free to relocate as needed Boss, I just wanted to convey something that happened recently and get a little philosophical discussion going about it. Maybe some of the reviewers here can chime in with their thoughts too - I'm curious as to what everyone thinks.
My take as both a hot sauce maker and as a hot sauce consumer who has purchased dozens of kinds of hot sauce based on reviews is that reviews are both helpful to the consumer and are also a form of marketing to the product manufacturer.
Let's face it - it's hard to sell food to people who've not tasted it. As such, reviews are excellent for informing the general public what [some guy] though of your product, in this case, hot sauce. It's better than a testimonial that everyone thinks is BS anyway, and it can answer a lot of questions the reader/viewer has in a somewhat neutral but educated voice who has no stake in the outcome. It could be a great review or a terrible review or anything in between. The risk is entirely on the product producer who submitted their sauce for review.
So I guess the question for everyone here (sauce makers, reviewers, consumers) is this: Does it matter to you whether the sauce in the review was purchased by the reviewer, or provided to them for free?
I ask because for one I’m kinda new to this whole business (as a business), but also based on two experiences that I just had:
1. Reviewer who does food truck reviews thought he might have an angle to do a hot sauce review. Contacted me for info. I said “cool – I’ll send you a bottle” – his response was that “at [thatdudesfoodreviews.com] we purchase everything that we review. Otherwise it might run the risk of giving an implication that because we received free product, it might impact our perspective and influence us to give more favorable reviews than we would have ordinarily.”
2. (came in through my website contact-us mail)
“my man has a youtube channel an i want to do a review on your sauces ,will you send me a few bottles for free , free advertising
,if so contact me thanks [name redacted].”
My take is that either should be fine.
When credibility matters, reviewers have their own skin in the game. Meaning, if they make an exaggeratedly good review, then that will only reflect poorly on them if the general public finds those reviews to be grossly inaccurate.
As such it shouldn’t matter whether the sauce was purchased independently or sent for free.
When it comes to the free sauce, as a hot sauce company I feel like a reviewer is doing work and taking time to produce a quality review – sending them the sauce for free isn’t very expensive and if they do like your product and produce a quality review it can and does generate sales. Likewise, if they don’t like the product it can equally hurt your sales potential for anyone who sees it. The risk is on the mfgr of the sauce, so why should the reviewer have to incur the expense? I’d think the “free sauce” would be the lone perk for sticking your neck out and writing something people may or may not appreciate.
That said, I also prefer to see people’s review style and samples of their work prior to blindly shipping out free sauce to anyone who emails me, as in the 2nd example above (I mean, seriously, right?). In case you’re wondering, my response to the above was an extremely polite explanation that “I’d want to see her man’s [sic] style of review and get a sense of their following to determine potential exposure, so please send me links to reviews and/or blog”. Of course my inner voice was saying “you’ve gotta be f-in with me here with that request lady!” -
So yeah – my bottom line is that what matters more is the baseline credibility of the reviewer. If they’ve been reviewing for a while and present a well thought out and well supported review, I don’t particularly care where they got the sauce. The content is the most important thing, and credibility is easily established. For example, when I read Heataddicts review of tearjerker I immediately purchased some. While all people have varying tastes & tolerances, I'd say Jarret's review was within 5% of my experience - a high degree of accuracy. Likewise with JayT here at THP - prior to sending him sauce I checked out several of his reviews, and for sauces I'd had myself. Same thing - really accurate as compared to my own tastes. That, to me, is what establishes credibility in a review.
Anyway, it all got me to thinking about it and I thought I see how others felt.
What do you think – free Vs paid for sauce by reviewers – does it do anything to impact credibility of the reviewer or give you any less confidence in their reviews?
My take as both a hot sauce maker and as a hot sauce consumer who has purchased dozens of kinds of hot sauce based on reviews is that reviews are both helpful to the consumer and are also a form of marketing to the product manufacturer.
Let's face it - it's hard to sell food to people who've not tasted it. As such, reviews are excellent for informing the general public what [some guy] though of your product, in this case, hot sauce. It's better than a testimonial that everyone thinks is BS anyway, and it can answer a lot of questions the reader/viewer has in a somewhat neutral but educated voice who has no stake in the outcome. It could be a great review or a terrible review or anything in between. The risk is entirely on the product producer who submitted their sauce for review.
So I guess the question for everyone here (sauce makers, reviewers, consumers) is this: Does it matter to you whether the sauce in the review was purchased by the reviewer, or provided to them for free?
I ask because for one I’m kinda new to this whole business (as a business), but also based on two experiences that I just had:
1. Reviewer who does food truck reviews thought he might have an angle to do a hot sauce review. Contacted me for info. I said “cool – I’ll send you a bottle” – his response was that “at [thatdudesfoodreviews.com] we purchase everything that we review. Otherwise it might run the risk of giving an implication that because we received free product, it might impact our perspective and influence us to give more favorable reviews than we would have ordinarily.”
2. (came in through my website contact-us mail)
“my man has a youtube channel an i want to do a review on your sauces ,will you send me a few bottles for free , free advertising
,if so contact me thanks [name redacted].”My take is that either should be fine.
When credibility matters, reviewers have their own skin in the game. Meaning, if they make an exaggeratedly good review, then that will only reflect poorly on them if the general public finds those reviews to be grossly inaccurate.
As such it shouldn’t matter whether the sauce was purchased independently or sent for free.
When it comes to the free sauce, as a hot sauce company I feel like a reviewer is doing work and taking time to produce a quality review – sending them the sauce for free isn’t very expensive and if they do like your product and produce a quality review it can and does generate sales. Likewise, if they don’t like the product it can equally hurt your sales potential for anyone who sees it. The risk is on the mfgr of the sauce, so why should the reviewer have to incur the expense? I’d think the “free sauce” would be the lone perk for sticking your neck out and writing something people may or may not appreciate.
That said, I also prefer to see people’s review style and samples of their work prior to blindly shipping out free sauce to anyone who emails me, as in the 2nd example above (I mean, seriously, right?). In case you’re wondering, my response to the above was an extremely polite explanation that “I’d want to see her man’s [sic] style of review and get a sense of their following to determine potential exposure, so please send me links to reviews and/or blog”. Of course my inner voice was saying “you’ve gotta be f-in with me here with that request lady!” -
So yeah – my bottom line is that what matters more is the baseline credibility of the reviewer. If they’ve been reviewing for a while and present a well thought out and well supported review, I don’t particularly care where they got the sauce. The content is the most important thing, and credibility is easily established. For example, when I read Heataddicts review of tearjerker I immediately purchased some. While all people have varying tastes & tolerances, I'd say Jarret's review was within 5% of my experience - a high degree of accuracy. Likewise with JayT here at THP - prior to sending him sauce I checked out several of his reviews, and for sauces I'd had myself. Same thing - really accurate as compared to my own tastes. That, to me, is what establishes credibility in a review.
Anyway, it all got me to thinking about it and I thought I see how others felt.
What do you think – free Vs paid for sauce by reviewers – does it do anything to impact credibility of the reviewer or give you any less confidence in their reviews?
