What Being Compliant Means Now

Being compliant online is more important now than ever before.I Just spent a riveting hour or so listening to a training broadcast by Jay Kubassek about compliance. Yes my tongue is my cheek of course. Like Health and Safety, compliance is kind of dull but very necessary. My ears perked up when Jay talked about a Guitar playing website that was recently slapped with a huge fine for breaching compliance.

They were claiming (or implying) in their advertising that their teaching product could have you playing guitar in days. A hefty lawsuit followed because being compliant online these days means being very careful about what you promise.

Jay is the co-founder of Digital Experts Academy – a very successful internet marketing training company which also has a huge, worldwide affiliate base. Being compliant online then is something he, his staff and affiliates need to be clued up on – as does anyone plying their trade on the Internet.

Although this makes the marketers job harder in some ways than it was in “the good old days” it’s a very good thing for everyone – buyers and sellers alike. Here’s a good example:

The stereotypical image of a young guy standing beside a supercar/mansion/yacht/private jet has been used to promote the Internet business lifestyle since it first appeared. That includes genuine businesses who can walk the talk and the pedlars of Get rich Quick schemes who can’t. It has obvious appeal doesn’t it.

Now though, if Government decides to have a look at the business that image is promoting things can get tricky. If you’re the guy in picture that better actually be your car/boat/house/jet because the view now is that even if you are not directly saying – you can have all this if you buy my product – you are inferring it. That’s not being compliant.

Being Compliant – Is That Your Car Dude?

No doubt about it fortunes have been made with images and claims (inferred or otherwise) like this. It’s also true to say that the big internet players like Google and Facebook who never started out as advertising platforms, have become that and have made billions from it. It’s been a match made in heaven for them and for marketers.

Now however they are reinforcing their original mission statements. Advances in the way they can analyse online content i.e. What an advertiser says and where that leads their customer, have made that possible.

Just to recap on those mission statements: Google “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

Facebook: “Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” and “People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.”

Online marketers can and do bleat and moan about this but really it’s nothing to worry about for those who have nothing to hide. They are already being compliant. The intention really is just to prevent people from being misled, conned or sold false promises. Fairness is the common sense interpretation of all this.

It’s just a matter of adjustment for most internet marketers. It means adding compliance information like terms of service and disclaimers to landing pages and websites: Transparency in other words.

Being Compliant – Would Granny Like It? 

Jay mentions the gut check used by both Google and Facebook to establish whether advertising is suitable for their consumers. Believe it or not he says it comes down to “would my grandmother like this?”

In truth it’s always been that way. The problem has been though that there have always been and always will be people who would rather find a way round, a back door, than to simply do things the right way. When things get to the scale of Google or Facebook though, that’s hard to police.

Jay’s message then is simple. Just be honest. I like that. Not being compliant means that if you are telling lies you will be stopped – sooner rather than later. Of course there will be people who will still tell what they see as “little white lies” or try to work around compliance.

What attracted me to Jay and his partner Stuart Ross’s business and has kept me there for close to 18 months now was their transparency. They made it very clear that my results would rely on my applying their training and systems.

The community style set up of their business also means that I’ve been able to liaise with other members, compare notes and learn from an extended family of entrepreneurs. Their frequent live events take that further and their stand point on compliance, constant updates and forward progression is always inspiring. There’s no excuse for not being compliant in this business.

Learn more about them on the link below.

By Dave Menzies