Did you know that the FTC has fined businesses over 5 billion?

That's billion with a B in recent years for deceptive advertising.

Could you be next?

Very often marketers have misconceptions about compliance and

their duty to uphold the regulations that the FDC has put forth.

So what do you see the most?

What is the most common misconception in our industry?

Everybody else is doing it.

Everybody else is out there doing it, so why can't I?

The problem is think about when you're speeding on the highway, you're going

nine, five and you get pulled over.

It doesn't matter if 10 cars around me are doing nine, five.

I can't tell.

The cop

Welcome to the Special Ops podcast where we give actionable

insights to entrepreneurs today.

We're gonna be shaking things up and doing something new.

Ryan Pott from Gordon Reese and I have decided to create a spinoff.

Welcome to Marketing On Trial.

Here we're gonna break down compliance, particularly for

direct response marketers, online sellers, and e-commerce brands.

Oftentimes, legal compliance can be overwhelming, but Ryan and I have helped

hundreds of entrepreneurs navigate the waters of compliance with over three

decades of experience between us.

We are here to share what we know.

And how to execute it.

So let's dive in.

Today we're gonna be talking about the FTC.

Did you know the FTC has fined businesses over 5 billion?

That's billion with a B in recent years for deceptive.

Advertising, could you be next?

Today we're sitting down to discuss what marketers aren't being told

about consumer protection laws and how to make sure you are not next.

Don't forget to like and subscribe because when you do, you get notifications

every time we put out a new episode.

Also, if you're interested, we co. Authored checklist called

the FTC Compliance Checklist.

You can head over to www.specialopspodcast.com and

sign up for a visionary vault.

There you'll get loads of tools, including that FTC compliance

checklist, which is gonna help you audit your marketing for legal risks.

So why your marketing might.

Be illegal.

I'd love Ryan for us to talk about first misconceptions.

Very often marketers have misconceptions about compliance and

their duty to uphold the regulations that the FTC has put forth.

So what do you see the most, what is the most common misconception in our industry?

Everybody else is doing it.

Huh?

Everybody else is doing it.

So I, without even a pause, you say this.

No, it comes up.

I hear you've heard that quite a bit.

Quite a bit.

No it's every client call, they're like this company's doing it.

This company's doing it.

So they're doing a hundred million dollars, Emma.

And they're doing it.

Why aren't they in trouble?

Can't we just tell on them?

No, that's not how this works.

No, and it's a crap shoot.

'cause enforcement actions are just like a roll of the dice Why?

Some people get picked.

Yep.

Some we will never know for most of them, but yeah, it really is.

Everybody else is out there doing it, so why can't I?

The problem is you know, think about when you're speeding on the highway,

you're going 95 and you get pulled over.

It doesn't matter if 10 cars around me are doing 95.

I can't tell the cop, you can't pull me over.

No.

I drove up here from Houston, like phone number people left and right.

It didn't matter how fast we were going.

Yeah.

So I mean that, that's the biggest one.

And I think the other misconception is if I plug it into ChatGPT or Google

or something like that, I'm just gonna get some answer that I can basically

hobble along with and that'll be fine.

Problem is, it's a lot, usually a lot more complex.

Think of environmental claims and things like that.

But, and so people just don't really know where to look or they

can rely on Google or chat GPT.

Yeah.

So pretty much every aspect of our businesses.

Is regulated by some law tangentially, at least whether or not it's the FTC has an

opinion on everything we do, pretty much.

It doesn't matter what vertical you're in, the marketing channel

that you're using, there's something out there that's gonna govern what

you're saying and how you can say it.

So as consequence of not following their guidelines.

Their rules, their regulations.

You can end up with a letter, a take down letter, millions in fines, even jail time.

I wanna focus for a moment 'cause there's some new things that have

happened in January and there are just like some, they've got a heart

on right now for certain components.

So I'd love to just walk through what are some of the things people don't know

that could cost them millions a second?

They get caught doing it.

Yeah.

I think the easiest one out there, subscription billing compliance.

I mean it, it's continuity.

Continuity.

Our continuity products.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think it's not difficult to do.

What are people doing wrong?

They're either not disclosing that people are enrolling into a

subscription, or it's a membership program that is not fully disclosed.

Basically, you get to the checkout page and you're enrolling in a subscription.

Nobody really knows that they're enrolling in a subscription.

I think a lot of people don't understand the rules around subscriptions and

forced continuity and the pre-checked box versus the not pre-checked

box versus the pre-checked box.

That can't be unchecked.

And if you've been listening to me long enough, I've talked about this quite a bit

and we'll probably talk about it quite a bit in the coming months on this podcast,

but I wanna know, I wanna be compliant.

I don't wanna get in trouble.

I wanna make a lot of money and I wanna have a subscription.

What is your advice to me on how I make sure that my subscription part of my

product is on the up and I'm not gonna get in a whole lot of trouble for it.

So the example besides calling you and having you review

it for a gazillion dollars?

No.

The example I use is go ask your grandmother.

Go ask your parents.

Give them your enrollment path.

Okay.

Okay.

I was like, go ask grandma what the FTC thinks.

Gonna be fine with that.

No.

Give your enrollment path to somebody who's older than you.

Preferably over 65, right?

Not super tech savvy.

Have them walk through it, have them make a test purchase, or they

don't need to click the button.

Oh, that's smart.

But basically get to the end and then start asking 'em questions.

Be like, Hey grandma, what'd you buy?

That's smart.

How often are you being billed?

And if the answer is I think I only bought one bottle you're gonna have a problem.

'cause that's the lens that regulators, and to be honest, consumer protection

attorneys are gonna be using.

You're gonna get, grandma from Nebraska enrolled in dietary supplement and she

thinks that she's buying one time and then suddenly she's in a subscription.

So at the end of the day, you want your subscription billing

disclosure or just your continuity model to be clear, unavoidable.

Like all the, you're gonna pay me $49 a month, I'm gonna send you X

product every month on the third of the month, and this is how you cancel.

Yep.

And if we're hiding the ball, then that's gonna be a problem.

If there's any question, especially now with the new regulations in place, okay.

If there's any question, by the time you get by, you hit that either buy

now button or whatever you're using at the end on the checkout page, if

there's any question whatsoever, what you're buying, how often you're gonna

be billed, there's gonna be an issue.

And it's not really defensible anymore, really.

That's great to know.

Terrifying, by the way.

I'd like to go into deceptive advertising to me means misleading claims.

It means exaggeration of claims and it means improper evidence of claims.

So I'd love to dive into that because I think that for the most part,

people who are selling understand what they absolutely cannot say.

What they don't understand is how to say what they can say.

And so just because it's true doesn't mean that I can say it.

I'd love to.

Yeah.

Go please.

No, like just getting the brass tacks of it all.

You summed it up.

An advertisement needs to be truthful, not misleading, and properly substantiated.

And so you can have a statement that is perfectly truthful.

I've got 5,005 star reviews.

Look at how great I am.

Okay.

But just because that is true, if you have 10,001 star reviews quoting that,

Hey, I've got 5,001 star reviews.

It's true.

No, but okay, because the So I didn't know.

I didn't know this.

It's all gonna be coming.

Can I try and play with words?

Sure.

Okay.

So just ask one of the 5,000 people that left me a five star review

doesn't matter because the impression.

The net impression of that statement is gonna be a majority of

consumers really like my product.

And so you're hiding the fact that there's all these, an overwhelming number

of one star reviews out there twice?

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

So I would've guessed that I could have said that.

That's really interesting.

I wanna move on to lack of evidence of what's true.

And I wanna just go through.

What the rules are of what you need to keep for evidence.

And then I wanna play around a little bit on how we've made those things happen in

the past and share some of those things.

So yeah, I have a ton of clients who call all the time, and my customer

service clicks a button and it tells me that nine out of 10 of the

people who call in love the product, but I've kept no record of this.

Can I say it?

Yes but no.

Yes, but no.

What you need to, how do I 100% get a yes from you?

Let's go there.

Pay me.

I've given you a lot of money.

I'm pretty sure that's how you get your car.

No, which by the way has never taken me for a ride in, one of these days.

One of these days.

So there is usually always a way to say something that you wanna say very.

Rarely will we say Absolutely not.

You cannot say that.

Okay.

There's usually a compliant way to say it.

Okay.

The devil's just in the details.

So if you wanna talk about how your product works or how efficacious it is.

So let's go over efficacy for a minute.

'cause I had this conversation the other day for 40 minutes.

You looked at me and said, what's efficacy?

So what is efficacy?

What's maximum efficacy?

What does efficacy mean?

So if you say your product does X, Y, and z. You were saying that your product

is gonna do it, so if you say at what you've prescribed your product as.

Yeah.

So if it says take two tablets twice a day.

And it will support healthy liver function or something like that.

Sure.

But all of the claims say that you had to take nine times what you put

in your product because you're a cheapskate or because they had to take

four of the capsules and you didn't want it to be confusing copywriters.

So yeah.

So whenever your dietary supplements is a great example, so whether

it's white label or you formulated this, most often people go out and

they just Google and they're like, ashwagandha, what does Ashwagandha do?

It's oh, I see it has some stress relieving properties.

Great.

And they look at a bunch of studies.

Typically, they're from overseas, right?

And they'll say 86% of people suffer less stress, depression, and

anxiety when taking ashwagandha.

Not even that.

I'd go a step further.

It's an animal study where they're giving them six grams of ashwagandha in one day.

One, and they're chilling like they're stoned and it's a mouse.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Or even in the human studies, they're giving 'em six grams or whatever a day,

but your product has 500 milligrams.

But no.

Anyway, there's just a massive disconnect between what science says will support

your claim, what you were advertising your product will actually do.

It depends on what vertical you're in, what product you're trying to sell.

If you're selling a health product, you need competent and

reliable scientific evidence.

If you're getting into green claims or recyclability composting, you

need to be able to prove that your product actually does it right?

And there's usually a statute out there.

So let's talk about how to prove it.

Let's do it.

Okay.

I'm gonna go through a couple different products.

That way we can give some good examples, and I'm actually going to utilize

some things that you and I have done in the past few years to help our

mutual clients achieve these things.

The first thing I wanna talk about, and I'm just gonna go over here

to bring it back so you can have these double blind studies done.

We've talked about this is very expensive.

That will allow you to make a lot of claims, right?

But one of the easiest, cheapest ways that we found that's super effective is to do

a true survey on our own customer base.

And so you and I have done this on an ED product, which is a class two

medical device, water pump member.

Okay.

And so I want you to walk me through, I wanna be able to say, so as a class

two medical device, there's lots of things I can say and can't say.

So I can say, where are some things I got?

So I can say it supports a male.

Erectile function.

Okay.

Can I say that?

So I always do it on camera.

I will say a erectile Absolutely.

Okay.

'cause that class two medical devices.

We'll restore.

We'll restore sexual health.

Probably Okay.

Will increase your size by two inches.

Absolutely not.

And the reason, the FDA has said that these products are

approved for certain purposes.

Mail enhancement is not one of 'em.

Okay.

So setting aside the regulatory issues, and this is where it gets into, because

here's how we do it, here's why you get paid, the money you get paid.

How do we do that?

No, but so everything, even before we go here for a second, okay.

Everything is gonna be on a risk scale.

Yep.

Some businesses are very comfortable with the risk.

Some businesses are not.

Some businesses like to make millions of dollars and some billions

like to make tens of thousands.

Yeah.

you want to be on this risk tolerance scale, typically probably around a seven

or eight where you get to keep most money.

So let's talk about the risk tolerance scale, because most people, in my

mind, most people would think 10 is a, oh God, I'm going to jail.

And one is perfectly fine, but it's actually.

the opposite.

So 10 is I'm brick and mortar.

I'm making my own knit products and I'm selling them for cash only.

'cause no online seller is a 10, our one is, yo, you gotta stay

in Spain for a couple more days.

'cause you might get arrested on your way back into the country.

Yep.

We've had that happen.

So most businesses wanna be around a seven or eight.

It means that they're competitive, they're taking on a certain amount of risk,

but they're not gonna get huge fines.

They're not gonna get take down notices.

They're not gonna, yeah.

They're nipping in the bud.

Some of the, like the class action liability risks.

They're still being aggressive enough to be competitive in the market.

But.

The FTC could still always find an issue because the FTC could always

find an issue with something.

But you wanna make sure that you fall somewhere on that risk out.

And taking it back to what we were just talking about with the ED

pumps, the FDA very clearly says that this class two medical device

is approved for this purpose.

You can advertise it for X, Y, and z. Mail enhancement is not one of those.

Okay.

And so business has to make that judgment call.

I thought you're gonna say the business has to make that up.

I was gonna say, Brian, no.

The business has to make that judgment call if they feel comfortable

with a little bit more risk.

But you can do it.

How do you do it?

'cause there's a way to do it.

The more compliant ish way to do it would be to run a consumer survey.

So I can create.

40 questions.

I saw one inch or more of growth.

I saw two inches or more growth.

I was able to function sexually 90% of the time.

I was able to function sexually 80% of the time.

I can send my previous 10,000 customers.

The survey, right?

You send it to everyone.

And then I get statistical significant back.

I disclose how many people it went to, what percentage responded.

and then let's say 94% say they grew two inches.

Now I can say 94% of my customers grew two inches technically.

Yeah.

So assuming that we put the survey together and we're not just randomly

picking, as opposed to we know these people are posting all over

Instagram that they really like it.

We send it to most of our customers.

We could even incentivize it saying, Hey, we'll give you an Amazon gift card if you

use A or Consumer survey or lubricant.

Sure.

You can get that kind of critical mass.

I promise I'm not gonna make all of these this.

Uncomfortable just trying to loosen you up a little bit.

So once you get all these survey responses back, you know you're gonna look at 'em,

you're gonna pull out the data that you like, and you frame it in a truthful way.

It's a survey of 10,000 customers with, X number responding, observed,

whatever you're trying to say.

as long as it's true.

That is one way to make the claim that you want to be making without spending.

$2 million on study that some scientist is gonna do on your behalf of the product.

Correct?

No, I will caveat that.

Okay.

Of course you will because you know we're talking about health 'cause you

don't like phone calls or nasty comments.

Because it's all gonna come down to the product you're selling and whether or not,

like if you're selling a health product, can we disclaim it in a different way?

If you have an attorney, you should call your attorney and ask your

attorney, can I do it this way?

This is what I wanna do and help them guide you.

If you don't have an attorney, contact Ryan Poti.

You can go to Gordon Reese's website and look him up, and he probably

won't answer your phone call because your name is in Emma, but.

But contact Ryan Poti we can drop his email in the show notes and just

contact an attorney to walk you through.

But this is a basic idea of how you can get these things done

and you're gonna pay an attorney to help you do a proper survey.

Way less than you are going to pay for an actual site to be done.

Correct.

Can we move on to the next product?

Do you feel comfortable with that?

We're good.

See, he's an attorney, so he is going to cover his ass all the time.

It's crazy to me.

Okay.

I wanna.

Just move on to one more product type because we've talked a lot about CLP ones.

I don't wanna necessarily talk about those because they're already approved

by the FDA and there's like loss, so much weight loss, they get to do

so much more than everybody else.

But let's talk about weight loss supplements.

So how about GLP one activators?

Perfect.

Great example.

All over social media.

Yep.

Take this GLP one with beta, it's a dietary supplement with random collection

of dietary ingredients in there.

Take this, it's gonna activate the GLP one protein.

Okay.

That will help you lose weight, dietary supplements regulated by the FDA.

If you're out there saying that this product is gonna help you lose weight,

you actually have to back it up.

And like we were talking about the ashwagandha.

Yeah.

It's same thing.

Same principle.

If you're gonna say your product does this, you're gonna need at the

very bare minimum ingredient studies, technically human ingredient studies.

And then the best evidence would be actually random clinical

trial on your own product.

But if you're gonna be able to go out there and say, this product

helps you lose X amount of weight, you need to have something on

file that's gonna back that up.

Not just simply, I know this thing is gonna work, which

we've seen before, couple times.

Love it.

I wanna move on though, because.

We have a lot to cover.

So the next thing that I would really like to cover is false urgency

Marketing 101 is create urgency.

We don't survive if we don't create urgency.

So people put countdown timers.

People say Big pharma is shutting me down.

People say 200 bottles left.

No, the FTC hates it.

Absolutely conservative, right?

But what do we get for?

What is that in your number scale?

I'm gonna move into pricing next, but let's just go into urgency right now.

What's that on your number?

Scale?

Yeah, like I got a countdown timer.

What's that on your number?

Scale?

So here's the thing, when we're looking at.

Word salad.

He's never gonna commit.

No, but here's the thing.

So in isolation not a big deal.

Okay.

Ryan's saying not a big deal.

Okay.

You put that on top of false and deceptive efficacy claims.

Hidden continuity and all that.

It's just you put it all in a salad bowl and it's like this's, it's burg of, yeah.

How many things are you doing that are not compliant that you don't even realize?

'cause most marketers, most online sellers because the FTC complaint will

read, online marketer, deceptively or deceived consumers into buying

this limited supply of, oh, this a product that doesn't even work.

Oh we've read them, deceived the elderly Oh and defrauded them out of

$2.1 million because you put a count on town and that, that timer, that's real.

That's a real thing.

That's a real thing.

Yes.

When you're getting the FTC is gonna calls all this a dark rat.

It's if you are using these marketing tactics to create this false sense

of urgency because you really want these people to buy these products.

It's material to their decision making.

It pretty much usurps their ability to make a rational purchasing decision.

Because if they knew they can get this sale later, or it's not really

gonna run out, then they might not actually buy it right now.

They might actually do a little bit more research, but we've all been there and

we've seen, oh my gosh, thick airplanes.

I think, it's gotten a little bit better in the past couple years, but when you go

to, Google flights and all of a sudden you just see the prices creeping up, you start

buying your flight a little bit earlier.

Do you think that it's gotten better corporate travel?

I was just gonna say your company's clearly paying your flights, but.

You're sitting there oh my God, I can't go to this conference.

I can't go to this meeting.

Or if I don't do this now, or your operations and you plan four months

ahead, or my kids' vacation is gonna be in jeopardy if I don't buy these tickets now.

So you buy it now.

If you had a little bit more time to search, you probably would've found

that, Southwest is flying there for 99 bucks or something like that.

But you paid way more over here, right?

Because you're worried about that opportunity disappearing.

So FEC hates it.

consumer protection attorneys love it.

Great.

We can't do it, can't do it, can't do it.

How do we do it?

How do we create urgency?

And I'd love to give you, I'd love to play a game again.

I'd love to give you some of my ideas.

Fast acting premiums that actually go away.

Absolutely.

So I'm going to give you Product A and your first month in my membership

free, which will actually help your conversions on your continuity product,

making sure that you disclose that you're gonna charge them and all that others.

Put that little caveat in there.

You come from me, but I'm gonna give you my first me membership free.

It's if you buy in the next 15 minutes.

Count time timer's there.

Yeah.

and it actually goes away.

Even if I retarget them with the same thing over and over again.

It goes away in that moment for that truly.

I bet if you tested that, I've tested it where it worked and where it didn't

work, but I, most of the time it works.

They buy it on the retargeting and then you're not gonna pay the affiliate.

Sorry, Phil.

Okay.

So I'm gonna have so many comments over that.

So another way to create a sense of urgency, they're

gonna scroll off the page.

And you see this all the time.

I'm sitting at a, on A product that's for, we'll say, weight loss.

And I go to scroll off and you see the popup come up.

Big pharma is shutting me down.

I don't know if I'm gonna be here tomorrow.

What's another way I can do that?

Don't lie to consumers and create an incentive.

Just I a hundred percent.

But how can I give you some ideas on how, and you can tell me.

I don't even know if it's gonna be illegal.

We'll see.

Let's see how much I actually know.

Okay, I'm going to scroll off the page and I scroll to the top.

And instead of saying big pharma, it says, wait, are you sure you wanna

go click here for an extra 15% off?

That would be fine, but you always gotta a no, that's fine

in isolation, totally fine.

Okay.

If you want to incentivize consumers to buying now.

That's fine.

Scaring people into buying now is a different thing.

I agree.

The big pharma, no, you just wanna go.

We already said that's bad, but hey, if you wanna buy this now, you'll

get an extra 15% off your order.

The counter argument to that is it's still deceptive because you're trying to

lean on consumers, emotional fear, that they could not get the same offer in

the future for the same amount of money.

or at least less money.

I think incentivizing is fine.

continue to try to encourage consumers to make a purchase.

So I'll give you another one.

Okay, so I go to scroll off the page and a lot of times

you'll see and don't come at me.

I've never ever done this, but you go to scroll off the page and it says, wait, big

pharma is trying to shut this page down.

I don't know if this will be here tomorrow.

Absolutely.

Can't do that, right?

Can't do it.

That's bad.

Gone.

Sure.

Here's a way that I think possibly you could do it.

Perhaps maybe they go to scroll off the page and it says, wait, this

product is really amazing at X. If you try it today, we'd like to offer

you an additional 15% off fine.

No problems there.

Because you're not trying to convey like, Hey, if you don't do this now right.

You're not gonna be able to get it again in the future.

It's just, here's one more incentive of why you should make

a purchase, why you should buy it.

Yep.

Instead of, scaring people into oh my gosh, is gonna go away.

I'm not gonna be able to get it again.

This is in such low quantity that I'm not gonna be able to get it

in the future I have to buy today.

It's just if you wanna make a purchase today, we'll give

you an additional incentive.

You want people to feel not scared about their purchase or not worried

that if I don't want, As a marketer, you want them to feel scared.

Yeah.

PC doesn't want people to feel skeleton.

So you have to find the balance in making them feel like it's

going to solve a problem that they have not been able to solve.

That they feel like their life is not going to be what it could be without it.

And that they are incentivized to buy today without making them

feel like the product is going to go away if it's really not.

Correct.

Okay.

All right.

So that was fun.

I wanna talk about pricing 'cause I actually learned something

from you quite recently.

That has completely freaked me out, honestly, because I had no idea.

There's a lot of different things about pricing and I'm gonna, actually, after our

conversation yesterday, we went to dinner with some friends of ours and before

dinner we were talking and you told me that you can't use strikeouts on pricing.

So we're gonna go through that in a second.

But then I thought of some other things.

So I'm gonna segue us into that.

I do split testing on pricing, so I feel like this is okay, but I feel

like you might tell me it's not.

So I may have the same link on 50% of my traffic go to a $47 price point, and on

50% of my traffic go to a $69 price point.

Is there any issue in pricing with that split testing pricing?

No.

Split testing.

Pricing is fine.

Okay.

It's the strike through pricing component.

Okay.

Perfect.

Yeah.

So this is how, by the way, I don't pay him the $715 an hour

to ask him a simple question.

I'm just kidding.

So now let's talk about strike through, because I have not seen a

checkout page in a really long time.

For supplements, for gadgets, for tools even where it didn't have the

price a strike through the price and a cheaper price even on tv.

I can't think of a checkout page that You're not gonna

pay, you're not gonna pay.

This is what you're gonna pay.

So walk us through why this is wrong and how we, and then

you let me know how we do it.

So when you're advertising a sale or a strike through you need to advertise

the prevailing market price and in least California the prevailing market

price for the last three months.

And so you actually need to the price that you're striking through the

full retail price, you actually need to sell the product at that price.

Not only do you need to sell it, regulators are gonna say.

You need to sell it and we need to see a substantial number

of unit sales at that price.

And we've seen a ton of class actions.

I've got a couple of them right now on strike through pricing.

And it is, you have falsely represented that this retail price was the purchase

price and that these consumers are getting this deal that never existed.

And what you're actually selling is the, this product at full price,

but misrepresenting it as a sale.

And the way to do this is one you were talking about.

Split testing on pricing.

Yep, totally fine to do that.

You can also have different channels where you're selling products,

and so you might have your Amazon account or your Amazon storefront.

That is where things are listed at full price.

You might run a promotion on Your main website or sales

page or something like that.

Okay?

But what you need to be able to show is that you're actually

selling the product at the sale price or at the full retail price.

And so often people don't do that.

they come up with some number that they think sounds great, they slash

it through and then say, 9 today that you can't do, how do I do that?

How do I make that same outcome happen?

Yeah.

So you need to be advertising it and selling it somewhere

for the full retail price.

Okay?

Now.

I know where you're going.

Light bulbs are all over the place.

So your next question is what if I only drive my traffic to, I don't

drive any sort of traffic to my Amazon sales storefront or Shopify

or, so I have a storefront, Shopify or Amazon where I just put something up.

I have no traffic to.

That price is $149.

That's the strike through price that I use on where I actually send my traffic.

So that's where you are.

Why or why not?

That's where you're gonna get into an argument over whether or not that

is actually the prevailing market price for the last three months.

And so you might be actually selling, but it's not the prevailing price.

And so you will get into a back and forth with opposing counsel or regulators

of saying yeah, I get that you're, advertising at a Walmart or Etsy or

any of these storefronts, but you have.

10 sales.

Like how?

How can you use that?

As this is the prevailing market price.

This is what most consumers have paid over the last three months,

that you get into a difficult spot and you start having to do some word

gymnastics to try to argue around that.

But so long, defendable.

Depends on how many sales you have.

A lot of people will go and buy a ton of stuff off of Amazon.

I mean I do it all the time.

I don't search around 'cause it's just easier.

And so some Amazon storefronts will have a ton of sales just

because they make it so easy.

So it's a lot more easy to substantiate that.

Yeah.

your product is 99, 95 a month or 99.

95, whatever the price is.

And so can I tell you why I like Amazon?

Why?

Couple of reasons.

Number one, I don't worry about some BS and I'll even go

look at terms and conditions.

I don't have to worry about some BS charge coming in that wasn't disclosed to me.

'cause a lot of people do that.

I buy one time and that's it.

Number two, I don't have to pay shipping and handling.

I don't know why, but I would rather pay Amazon $10 more for a product than

pay you $4 for shipping and handling.

I have no idea why, and I have no idea where the package is either Yeah.

At least with Amazon, I know it's gonna be there in two days.

Not only do I know it's gonna be there in two days but I know

it's actually gonna show up.

Yep.

And if it doesn't, I'm not gonna call anybody.

I'm going to send a quick chat and I'm gonna get my money back immediately.

So there's just so many aspects to this, but, okay.

So the answer on Amazon is you can't or Amazon, or, and I don't

wanna just say Amazon because.

I would probably not do Amazon.

I would probably do Shopify.

Okay.

The takeaway from all of this is if you're really running a fake sale, it's,

we're not gonna call it a fake sale.

We're no.

You should know better than this.

We're not running a fake sale.

We hope to sell on Amazon, but our.

Traffic dollars are going into a funnel with an upsell flow.

Whereas Amazon, I don't have a funnel with an upsell flow.

As my attorney, I would advise you to advise the FTC that on Amazon, I can't

gather their data, so their lifetime value isn't worth as much to me.

But it's also on that because I can't retarget them.

That's true, but it's also on the.

The prevailing price of that product.

I don't care about the lifetime value of the customer, it's the product.

Fair enough.

So I tried, if it is fine to do this, but you need to be able to show

that you're actually making sales.

Okay.

And so there's, there are what percentage of sales that's gonna

depend on, okay, how much trouble do I get in for strike through pricing?

So consumer class, action liability you typically broad in California.

You're looking at statutory penalties by way, you just don't sell in California.

It's the 13th largest economy in the world.

People need to sell there.

I would say a good 30% of your sales, just picking a number outta a hat,

a good 30% of your sales needs to be coming from, the full blown retail price.

The problem is that actually prevailing?

'cause if you're only getting 30%, I think it's more defensible.

If it really is like single digit percentage, you're gonna have you're

gonna be facing an uphill battle.

Because it's gonna look like an ephemeral or a false sale.

Okay.

This has been great.

I wanna just close with one more question.

Health, beauty and finance, they're under the most scrutiny.

Easy.

Why?

Because it's what everybody wants.

Everyone wants to be healthier.

Everybody wants to be more beautiful, and then everybody wants

to be financially independent.

And so it's just that people are buying more in those categories.

Exactly.

it's what everybody's constantly looking for.

Got it.

Everybody wants to work four hours a week and be a millionaire.

Nobody wants wrinkles.

You know how you get money, you work really hard for it, or daddy.

Alright, so Ryan, this has been awesome.

This is our first of hopefully many marketing on trial.

It's been fun.

I'm gonna just run through some action steps for our listeners.

And so step one, audit your current marketing for risky claims.

That's gonna be like really important.

Actually read through.

You wouldn't believe the amount of business owners haven't

actually read through what their copywriters have posted.

Step two, ensure all your testimonials and endorsements are FTC compliant.

So meaning, you know you're following their guidelines and you have evidence

of what you're saying is true.

Step three, avoid misleading pricing.

Scarcity tactics or deceptive fee trials or anything like that.

We didn't really go into that, but I wanna throw that one in there.

Step four, get legal approval for your marketing.

If you're selling online, whether it's health, fitness, or finance,

or anything, if you're following all these guidelines, it isn't gonna take

that long for your attorneys to run through everything and give you a,

Hey, here's where your risks are.

So take the time to do that.

Step five, keep updated.

Stay in, in touch with what the FTC's guidelines are today and

what they're going after today.

Whether it's that you listen to this podcast or other podcasts, you just

simply read on the interwebs, and make sure you are educated in what you're

selling and what your requirements are for the products that you're selling.

So we hope you enjoy this episode.

the FTC doesn't care if you don't know.

Ryan said, if you're driving 95 miles an hour down the street and there are

10 other cars driving 95 miles an hour, the only person getting fined is you.

'cause you're the one that got full pulled over.

So protect yourself.

Now.

Get the free FTC compliance checklist that Ryan and I co-wrote at www do special

ops podcast.com in our visionary vault.

Subscribe for expert insights to marketing compliance.

And business protection right here, and we will see you next time.

See you guys.