How to get incentives right in online qual

Some researchers assume that working online will be a magic bullet to the usual cost of incentivising participants. It’s not. Time is still money.

People’s time needs to be rewarded properly, wherever, and however, they are engaging with your research. Otherwise, they simply won’t give you the depth your project deserves. Put yourself in their shoes – would you treat two hours of your week spent talking online to strangers, any differently to two hours spent in a focus group? In four years of running qualitative research projects on Liveminds, we’ve been very proud to see, again and again, participants’ high activation rates, high engagement rates and high completion rates. If ever we don’t, we follow up to see what participants were paid. Guess what? It’s ALWAYS the problem.

You will make some savings

The good news for the bean counters is that there are some savings to be made. You don’t have to pay travel costs to the venue. You don’t have to pay for refreshments. If you’ve got a big sample, or are running research in a remote location, this can add up.

There are exceptions

Some online projects can be run with low or ‘alternative’ incentives. These are the same projects that can be run with low or ‘alternative’ incentives offline. It has to be a subject or brand that people feel truly passionate about, or a cause that they are willing to give up their time for. Could that be talking about a new shampoo product? No. Might they do it for Comic Relief? Yes. Will it skew your sample if you are wanting to get a representative voice? Yes. Be realistic about the appeal of the research you are undertaking and if you have doubts, err on the safe side. This will ensure that the rest of the money invested in the project is money well spent.

What to pay

So what is the recommended incentive? I'd recommend incentivising participants at a level in line with offline research, based on your expectations of the time they'll need to engage in the project. We would usually suggest £45 as an incentive for 1.5 hours of their time with an additional £5 for each subsequent half hour.

Bonus rewards

An approach which works wonders to get the best out of your participants is to offer a bonus prize for the best responses. Introducing a healthy little bit of competition will make them go the extra mile for you. A good rule of thumb is to offer the ‘same again’ to the best one.

Get creative

If your project has particular requirements then why not get creative and offer some little additional incentives? For example, getting great video content from your participants is not always easy. Some people don’t like talking into a camera. So if video is a key part of your project, you could reward them for each video they upload too.

If you want to ensure you find the best possible people for your research projects with Behavioural Recruitment™ please do get in touch.