Category: Affiliate Marketing

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Three Things To Improve Your Law Firm’s Social Media Marketing in 2015

When I committed myself to social media marketing a few years ago, like most lawyers, I wasn’t quit sure what I was getting myself into. One thing I knew for sure: I had to just start.

I’m sure my early posts were fairly mundane and added little value, let alone acted as a catalyst for a conversation. As most social media experts will posit, social media is about identifying and engaging with customers, employees and prospects. Over time, I increased my engagement, learned to participate and learned what worked and what didn’t. What follows are a couple of things that I try to keep in mind as part of my legal social media marketing efforts.

1. Have a voice. As lawyers we have instant credibility. Use this to your advantage. Whether you are a personal injury lawyer or in house counsel to a pharmaceutical company, you probably follow certain topics or have expertise in a particular area. You can use your area of expertise to talk about events, trends or interesting developments. Even if all you do is post a link to something that interests you, you are developing your online persona.

2. Cultivate your followers. One of the most powerful aspects of social media marketing is the network effect. As followers like, share or favorite your content, your message gets spread exponentially. Don’t be afraid to engage with those followers to cultivate and strengthen those relationships.

3. Always evaluate. Sometimes I am shocked that a post gets shared or favorited. For whatever reason, the subject matter resonates with my followers and my followers’ followers. When I see that, I try to note the subject area or topic, how it was shared an by whom. Focusing on content that others find useful enhances the value of my voice and my content.

As we look forward to 2015, now is an opportune time to take a look at what work last year, what didn’t and how we can improve our focus going forward.

If you find my posts uself, I encourage you to share, comment, follow or just get in touch.

Best of luck for your legal marketing efforts in 2015!

Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Branding, Compliance, Contracts, Creative Content, FTC, Internet, Law, Legislation, Litigation, Marketing, Media, Networks, Regulation, Regulatory Compliance, Technology, Uncategorized

Success = Scrutiny: recent trends in FTC actions against affiliate/online marketers

Online marketing continues to evolve and affiliate marketing can be a great method of building brand awareness. Online marketers need to stay ahead of legal and regulatory compliance trends. This article looks at recent Federal Trade Commission (“FTC,” “Commission,” or “agency”) activity that impacts online marketing.

Given the lack of a comprehensive federal regulatory scheme, and the increasing awareness of deceptive marketing practices, it is not surprising that the FTC has ramped up enforcement efforts against entities not covered by existing, industry-specific federal regulations over the last decade. Notably, one company has defended itself against the FTC by challenging the FTC’s authority to pursue such broad enforcement.

Jurisdiction

The widely-watched case of FTC v. Wyndham Worldwide Corp is not just about Cybersecurity.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just won the first major round of its fight with Wyndham Hotels over data security. However, the importance of the case has more to do with the FTC’s jurisdiction, challenged when Wyndham moved to dismiss the FTC’s case. Affirming the FTC’s broad jurisdiction, the federal judge overseeing the controversy noted that the case highlights “a variety of thorny legal issues that Congress and the courts will continue to grapple with for the foreseeable future.”

Affiliate Marketing: A Roadmap for Compliance: Text Message Marketing

The Commission is cracking down on affiliate marketers that allegedly bombard consumers with unwanted text messages in an effort to steer these consumers towards deceptive websites falsely promising “free” gift cards.

For example, in eight different complaints filed in courts around the United States, the FTC charged 29 defendants with collectively sending more than 180 million unwanted text messages to consumers, many of whom had to pay for receiving the texts. The messages promised consumers free gifts or prizes, including gift cards worth $1,000 to major retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Target.

By now, many in the Affiliate Marketing industry are familiar with the Legacy Learning Systems case. In March, 2011 the FTC settled charges against Legacy — which sells instructional DVDs — that Legacy represented, directly or indirectly, expressly or by implication, reviews of their products were endorsements reflecting the opinions of ordinary consumers or independent reviewers, when many of the favorable endorsements were posted by affiliate marketers who received a commission from Legacy for sales they generated.

Regardless of the form of affiliate marketing – email campaigns or text message campaigns – there are a couple key take-aways here.

First, identify and disclose a material connection between a product user or endorser and any other party involved in promoting the product. A “material connection” is a relationship that affects the credibility of an endorsement and wouldn’t be reasonably expected by consumers. See our article about complying with the endorsement guides here.

Second, set up and maintain a system to monitor and review affiliates’ representations and disclosures to ensure compliance. For example, Legacy looked at its top 50 revenue-generating affiliates at least once a month, visiting their sites to review their representations and disclosures. It has to be done in a way designed not to disclose to the affiliates that they’re being monitored.

Third, understand he requirements for conducting legally-compliant text message marketing. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) makes it unlawful to make any call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice … to any telephone number assigned to a . . . cellular telephone service … or any service for which the called party is charged for the call. The prohibition on calls to cell phones applies to text messaging.