Summary
Know your industry specific regulations in all your locations
Proven growth marketing strategies for regulated sectors
Lead-generation with paid advertising
Increase customer retention with compliant CRM
Rise of AI in advertising and the impact on compliance
Are you looking for marketing support in a regulated sector?
Compliance is an important part of marketing, even more so when creating marketing strategies for regulated sectors.
From running targeting paid media for financial services to driving increased traffic to legal services websites, we are experts in creating marketing strategies that promote growth within regulated sectors.
Here, we have shared some of our tried and tested strategies that not only comply with marketing regulations in the UK, but also can be implemented in sectors with increased, or even stricter, regulations.
Know your industry specific regulations in all your locations
Ensure your internal team and any external partners you work with are aware of industry specific regulations, as well as other more broad compliance regulations required for marketing in general.
This means understanding the current regulations for your sector, as well as any variations in different markets that you will be advertising in.
In the UK, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a key governing body that impacts your use of personal data, which may influence your marketing strategy.
Restricted industry specific organisations may include the FCA for financial services or the Gambling Commission for gambling, which may further inform how you market your product or services.
However, if you are marketing in other territories, such as Europe or America, it is imperative that you are aware of governing bodies in this location, and adapt your strategy to adhere to these regulations.
Having a robust understanding of the rules and restrictions for regulated sectors and territories will help you to confidently create a marketing strategy with growth in mind.
Proven growth marketing strategies for regulated sectors
Here is our recommended approach to marketing for regulated sectors in the most compliant way.
Educational content creation
Focus on creating high quality, informative content that can support your marketing campaigns and be distributed on a range of channels to help educate potential customers.
Consider creating a range of formats, from shorter, SEO driven blog posts or longer-form research-driven white papers or reports, to infographics or video content that can be shared on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Meta.
Ensure to create content that addresses relevant industry specific updates and amend or revise existing content to reflect any changes to regulations too.
This can help position your business as industry leaders, and a trusted source of information, further increasing your compliance credentials and brand reputation.
Lead-generation with paid advertising
Strategic paid advertising, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to target highly engaged potential customers who are searching for terms or phrases that are relevant to your service.
Alternatively, paid social media can be adopted to generate new leads, through a compliant data-capture campaign.
A great example of how you can use your educational content as lead-generation material is to run a targeted campaign on LinkedIn, promoting your thought-leadership article in exchange for signing up to your mailing list.
This provides a transactional approach - information and content for the customer, and first-party data for you, as long as you provide clear terms and conditions, and receive consent to contact these leads.
Authentic brand partnerships
Strategic brand partnerships or working with relevant influencers in your specific field can be a great way to grow your brand awareness with new audiences and potential customers.
The best partnerships are long-term, perhaps over several months or even a year. It’s even better, and more authentic, if the person you partner with is already a fan or user of your product or service.
In order to adhere to Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) regulations, you must ensure any paid partnerships, including sponsored content or gifted items, experiences or services, are clearly declared and audiences are made fully aware of this.
Strategically selecting a partner that resonates with your target audience and has a genuine interest in your brand, working with them over a significant period of time and being transparent about the transaction is a far more effective use of your marketing budget, than working with multiple, less relevant, influencers, as this may feel inauthentic to both your audiences, leading to distrust in you both.
Making marketing truthful
Make sure that all of your advertising is truthful and accurate, ensuring you don’t make any claims that are incorrect or misrepresent your product or services.
From advert messaging and written copy, to accurately depicting the product results, it’s important to rely on evidence-based or data-driven claims to ensure that you are portraying your advertising truthfully and transparency.
Not only will this help build trust in your brand, product or service, it can improve your overall brand reputation, helping to create organic growth via social proofing and word-of-mouth recommendation.
Increase customer retention with compliant CRM
Email marketing is a great way to promote loyalty and strengthen relationships with customers or clients, leading to an increased retention rate.
However, it is important that you understand anti-spam laws. This means you can only send marketing emails to those who have given specific consent, typically gained through an opt-in mechanism.
Therefore, when you capture first party data such as email addresses, you must explicitly ask for consent to contact customers in specific ways, like via email, phone or post.
Keeping an up-to-date record of customer communication preferences will help you to make sure you are only contacting them how they want to be contacted. This allows you to effectively utilise email marketing in a compliant way, by communicating with customers who want to be contacted.
You can then honing your strategy by analysing email data, such as click-thru-rate and open rate, to create specific segments and create email journeys most suitable for differing levels of engagement to increase your chance of retaining loyal customers.
Rise of AI in advertising and the impact on compliance
With the increasing use of AI in all industries, including marketing, it’s important to remain compliant and aware of the complicated and evolving regulations that surround its use.
For example, if you are using AI to make your creative advertising, it’s wise to include this as a disclaimer from the offset. This will help to adhere to social media policies, such as Meta's approach to AI generated labeling, and avoid your ads being flagged at a later date.
If you are using AI to streamline your admin or operations, then be sure to review the AI tools' privacy and use policy to protect sensitive company or customer information.
While AI can provide many exciting opportunities for marketing, new and emerging technologies must be thoroughly interrogated to ensure that they don’t compromise your compliance.
Final Thoughts
From ASA to AI, when it comes to advertising in the regulated sector, there are several approaches you can take to grow your business in a compliant and creative way.
Whether you want to increase your lead-generation, build brand awareness or trust, or improve your retention rate among your existing customers or clients, these strategies can help you to achieve sustained growth in an efficient way.
Are you looking for marketing support in a regulated sector?
Get in touch with our experts and see how we can support your growth with our e-commerce and digital marketing strategies.
