With the new regulations now in place, it’s an excellent time to do a health check on your website. Emily Hill, managing director of content agency Write My Site, gives five tips to help put your website in order, both in terms of direct marcomms and those other mechanisms useful to drive traffic and increase trade, such as search engine optimisation (SEO)
A time to worry about extra rules and regulations or a chance to shine? The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) started to regulate marketing communications (marcomms) on websites on 1st March – something which could trouble you or inspire you, depending on the content of your company’s website, blog and social media accounts.
The move means that the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the CAP Code) will apply in full to marketing messages online, including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children.
The truth is that the ASA’s decision to bring online marcomms in line with those that apply to offline media can only be a good thing for both businesses and consumers. With a crackdown on some of the crazy promises and empty opportunities currently promised online by some unscrupulous traders, consumers’ trust in online marketing should increase.
Top tips for your website check up
With the new regulations now in place, it’s an excellent time to do a health check on your website – both in terms of direct marcomms and those other mechanisms that help to drive traffic and increase trade, such as search engine optimisation (SEO).
If your company’s website isn’t doing as well as it could be, don’t worry. It’s possible to spruce up your marcomms in a relatively short space of time. The following tips should help you put your website in order for the new ASA regulations:
1. Understand what’s at stake
The bottom line is that the CAP Code helps to make sure your marcomms are legal, decent, honest and truthful. Who can argue with that? That’s surely the way in which you would want to work, irrespective of any outside regulations. For more detail, do make sure you read a copy of the code in full.
2. Make sure you know exactly what on your site constitutes marcomms
Marcomms contents and ads are always set out to sell something, but in a variety of different ways. It’s not always a case of having a large advert on your site featuring a product, a price next to it and a very obvious call to action. You might, for example, be making a subtle claim about a product, or attributing a quote to a delighted customer. If that subtle claim turns out to be a falsehood, or if that customer wasn’t so delighted after all and complains that you’ve twisted his or her words, then you could be falling foul of the regulations.
3. Make sure your social media output obey the regulation
The rules don’t just apply to your own website but also to your organisation’s communications on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as any other websites on which your brand has non-paid-for space. Does your social media output obey the new rules? If it doesn’t, you need to take a look at your social media strategy. Instead of posting tweets or Facebook status updates like, ‘This cream will change your life!’ – which makes an unsubstantiated claim –, why not use these sites to engage your followers in debate, or invite them to enter legitimate competitions on your site?
4. Keep an eye on your customer forums
If your website has customer forums, then you should already be monitoring them closely for offensive language and the like. You’ll now need to keep an even closer eye on them in case anybody is talking about your product in a way that falls foul of the new regulations. For example, it’s ok to keep a comment up along the lines of ‘This is the best body cream I’ve used in a long time’ as this is subjective and particular to that one customer, but a comment like, ‘This body cream helps you to lose a stone in a week’ – i.e. making a claim that can’t be substantiated – should be deleted.
5. Watch your blog
The blog is often the most informal part of a site and it’s therefore easy to slip up if you’re writing it yourself (because it’s often like talking to a friend). A blog is without doubt one of the most powerful marcomms tools that you have and as such falls directly under the CAP Code’s line of fire. Feel free to talk about your products’ benefits and achievements (after all, your blog is your company’s mouthpiece) but only if they are true and substantiated. If your product has, say, been endorsed by a survey, quote the name and year of the survey properly. If your product has specific benefits, then word them carefully and talk about the tests or research you’ve done to prove them.
A holistic approach to your online marketing channels is what’s needed. Comb through everything you’ve written and make sure it’s truthful, transparent and not likely to mislead or offend.
Find out more on what the new ASA rules mean for B2B marketers
