You are in business and now need to develop marketing materials and a marketing and advertising campaign. There are rules that must be followed when marketing your services and products. Below are snippets of useful information from the Bureau of Consumer Protection Business Center under the Federal Trade Commission.
Whether a business is an established global brand or a start-up, effective advertising and marketing can be the key to its success. All businesses have a legal responsibility to ensure that advertising is truthful and not deceptive. No matter where an ad appears – on the Internet, on the radio or television, in newspapers and magazines, in the mail, or on billboards or buses – the same truth-in-advertising standard applies. Additional standards apply if you use telemarketing in your promotional efforts.
Advertising and Marketing Basics
Under the law, claims in advertisements must be truthful, cannot be deceptive or unfair, and must be evidence-based. For some specialized products or services, additional rules may apply.
Children
If you advertise directly to children or market kid-related products to their parents, it is important to comply with truth-in-advertising standards. (Questions about kids’ privacy? Check out the FTC’s resources about COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.)
Endorsements
Do you use endorsements or testimonials in your marketing? Do they meet the standards of the FTC Act and the Endorsement Guides? Find out more by consulting FTC compliance resources.
Environmental Marketing
Companies are offering consumers an ever-growing assortment of “green” options. Whether your environmental claims are about the product or the packaging, you will need competent and reliable scientific evidence to support what you say. Find out more by consulting the FTC’s revised Green Guides. Have you spotted what you think might be a deceptive claim or practice? Contact the FTC at green@ftc.gov.
Health Claims
Companies must support their advertising claims with solid proof. This is especially true for businesses that market food, over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements, contact lenses, and other health-related products.
Made in the USA
Do you promote your products as “Made in the USA?” Under the law, some products must disclose U.S. content. For others, manufacturers and marketers who choose to make claims about the amount of U.S. content must comply with the FTC’s Made in the USA policy. Is your company up-to-date on what’s required?
Online Advertising and Marketing
The Internet connects marketers to customers across the country and around the world. If you’re thinking about advertising online, remember the rules and guidelines that protect consumers also help businesses by maintaining the credibility of the Internet as an advertising medium.
Do you have questions about children’s online privacy? Read about the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Telemarketing
The FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule helps protect consumers from fraudulent telemarketing calls and gives them certain protections under the National Do Not Call Registry. Companies must be familiar with rules banning most forms of robocalling. If you or someone working on your behalf is telemarketing products or services, know the dos and don’ts before planning your strategy.
Visit their website for more in depth information on each area – http://business.ftc.gov/advertising-and-marketing.
“Tweeting” is the new email. With smart phones in abundance, millions are using Twitter to communicate around the world and even to people sitting next to them. How can you use this great communications tool to benefit your business?
Using Twitter to market your business in 140 characters or less can be very challenging. Given that you may want to share a link and add a few hashtags, your message will be greatly shortened. So what can you do to make sure your tweet is read and re-tweeted? You need to be very creative and selective about the words you use.
Your Headline
Using techniques like the ones provided below can definitely draw attention to your tweet:
Attaching a Link
Twitter links to your blog and news stories can be long. If so, to get the most out of your 140 characters, you should use a URL shortening service. URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct users to the required page.
A few of the services available are:
If you decide not to use a shortening service, Twitter will use its own which could leave you with less characters with which to work. See Twitter announcement here. https://dev.twitter.com/blog/upcoming-tco-changes
Adding Hashtags
Keep hashtags short. There is no need to overwhelm the reader. Pick one that best fits your blog and headline so that it reaches your target audience. Don’t use a lot of random words that mean nothing to your message.
Twitter can be a great business tool if used properly. Make sure you are following businesses in your industry and others that are complementary.
Try it and document your results. Let me know what happens…
We’re busy people. Sometimes we just cannot fit enough business hours into our days to accomplish our goals. Not to mention, how difficult it is to coordinate meeting schedules with more than four or more people.
Google Hangouts lets users connect and communicate with colleagues in multi-user video rooms. Users might use Hangouts to hold a business meeting, discuss a particular “hot topic” or pressing issue, or just have a multi-user video chat.
Hangouts are limited to 10 video conference participants, with no time limit. You can also use Hangouts On Air to broadcast a hangout to many more people. There is still a limit of 10 active participants. If you activate Google+ premium features, the limit increases to 15 participants for both Hangouts and Hangouts On Air.
What’s more impressive, when team members are scattered, Hangouts includes built-in productivity apps (like Google Drive) that improve team collaboration. Your team can make last-minute changes to an important presentation, get live input on your analysis from remote team members, or even plan the company holiday party.
Following are a few features:
Chat Face-to-Face
Seeing someone’s face can make all the difference. Catch up with everyone from your computer, phone or tablet device.
Host Virtual Meetings
Complete work faster in virtual meetings with powerful tools like screen sharing and Google Drive collaboration.
Sharing Presentations
Hangouts let you share your computer screen so other people in the hangout can it. You can choose to share any open window on your computer. You can also share Google Drive files and collaborate to write meeting notes or draw on a shared whiteboard.
Broadcast to the world
Go live in front of a global audience, whether you’re an aspiring artist, a global celebrity or a concerned citizen. See examples.
Here is just one example of using Google Hangouts hosted by Entrepreneur Magazine with Guest from the hit show “Shark Tank.”
Google Hangouts is the “next best thing to being there.” Learn more about it here and let me know what you think… here.
Do you have a business plan?
Most business owners are only required to have a business plan if they are seeking financial assistance from banks or other lenders. However, all business should have a business plan.
A business plan is a road map that sets the direction for your business. It outlines how you plan to make sales and grow revenue. It sets your business goals, why you believe they are achievable, and it provides detail on how you plan to reach those goals. Additionally, it provides the background information about your business, the owners, employees and other pertinent information.
Business plans are used as decision-making tools and are dynamic as your business grows and goals are achieved. A well-drafted business plan can help you become business credible. A business plan doesn’t guarantee “success” however, it can reduce the odds of failure.
SBA’s Business Plan Tool provides a step-by-step guide to help you get started. Not only can you save your plan as a PDF file, you can also update it at any time, which makes this a living plan to which you can often refer.
The tool can be found here – http://www.sba.gov/business-plan/1.
Below is just one of the many informative videos provided by the SBA.
So what are you waiting for? Get busy!
If you are a woman-owned small business (the standard size is 500 or fewer), the SBA has a contracting program. The new Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract Program was fully implemented in 2011, with the first contracts awarded the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2011. Read the excerpt below from the press release in 2011:
“Implementing the Women-Owned Small Business contracting rule has been a top priority for the Obama Administration and SBA,” said Administrator Karen Mills. “Women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. As we continue to look to small businesses to grow, create jobs and lead America into the future, women-owned businesses will play a key role. That’s why providing them with all the tools necessary to compete for and win federal contracts is so important. Federal contracts can provide women-owned small businesses with the oxygen they need to take their business to the next level.”
The WOSB Federal Contract Program will provide greater access to federal contracting opportunities for WOSBs and economically-disadvantaged women-owned small businesses (EDWOSBs). The Program allows contracting officers, for the first time, to set aside specific contracts for certified WOSBs and EDWOSBs and will help federal agencies achieve the existing statutory goal of five percent of federal contracting dollars being awarded to WOSBs.
Every firm that wishes to participate in the WOSB program must meet the eligibility requirements and either self-certify or obtain third party certification. Regardless of their certification method, WOSBs must also upload required documents proving their eligibility to a secure online data repository developed and maintained by SBA.
To qualify as a WOSB, a firm must be at least fifty-one percent owned and controlled by one or more women, and primarily managed by one or more women. The women must be U.S. citizens and the firm must be considered small according to SBA size standards. To be deemed “economically disadvantaged,” a firm’s owners must meet specific financial requirements set forth in the program regulations.
