Lee-Ann is joined this week by IntegriShield president, Gayla Huber. On this week’s podcast, the two will discuss concepts like lead generation, data analytics and ensuring compliance in affiliate marketing programs.
With over 20 years of experience in advising clients on everything from compliance in affiliate marketing to brand management, Gayla offers an informed eye to the affiliate marketing industry, focussing on that aspect that isn’t so fun or shiny and that business owners would really rather forget: regulation.
Listen in to hear how you can keep your business compliant and growing.
Compliance in affiliate marketing content?
Yes, social media content has to adhere to regulations too. Brands in fact cannot just do whatever trend they see and think that they have the same standards as the high school kid posting a TikTok. Even affiliates have a standard to stick to, as Gayla explains.
“So social media runs our lives now, and so what we found is that when the shorter reels became popular with TikTok, in order for people to get their message across, a lot of times what they’ll have to do is they’ll either just play music during that short time or they might say something. But in reality, the image in the video might be the thing that could get a brand in trouble or an affiliate in trouble.
“If you think of it in terms of in the lending space somebody says, ‘Oh, you can get a loan’ and they hold up something that looks like a government check, that is absolutely not okay. And so, in that case, they didn’t say anything that we would transcribe as non-compliant. They didn’t do anything else. It’s just the imagery is what is actually going to be misleading to the consumer.”
Squashing the lead generation industry
The very nature of digital marketing could be changing, particularly with talk of changes to data gathering and use.
Gayla, for her part, thinks that some of the regulators are trying to “squash the lead generation industry”, saying: “The FCC specifically put out a notice of proposed rulemaking, where they included that. So, it has a lot of really good points that protect consumers that are completely logical and great for consumers that businesses should be okay with. But they did include in there some different points that if the rule were to go forward would be a real issue for lead generators, and that would be things like a one-to-one consent.”
She goes on to say: “Can you imagine having to go to each brand directly or to only be able to give that consent one time and think about how many times you put in your information if you had to do that?”
This is a good point for regulators to remember: if it makes more work for your consumers, they simply won’t tolerate it either.
An internet without borders
“The internet doesn’t have borders”, Gayla says, pointing out the headache that comes with trying to get any regulation or compliance in place for businesses online. The GDPR, for example, is an EU law that has been in place since 2018 but hasn’t been adopted by the US or other countries, meaning that there is a lot of confusion around what laws websites should be adhering to. Do they adhere to their country of origin or the country of the visitor? For the most part, it’s the latter.
“The FTC is starting, essentially, you see in the US sort of talking about it going over to Europe or something like that. If you guys do something, we tend to start to see that happen here, right? So we all kind of learn from each other. And then if we do something that everyone’s like, ’Oh, hey, that was good’, then we’ll start to see it over there. So, things kind of go back and forth.”
If you are interested in more affiliate and social media marketing insights, take a look at our blog for all the latest news and advice. Or for a more personalised approach, book a free call with a member of our team.
Or, for the very best advice from industry peers, register to join us for our ELEVATE Summit in July. Elevate aims to bring you the latest affiliate, performance, and partner marketing insights from across the globe and it’s all available to stream from our website.
Listen to find out more about:
- Do you know what compliance in affiliate marketing is?
- Learning from across the borders of the internet
Key segments of this podcast and where you can tune into go direct
[15:00] – The importance of education in compliance
[20:00] – New data regulations coming to the US
[30:00] – Do the right thing: eternal words of wisdom
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