Marketing guide for students

Quick answer

A marketing claim is a statement that can be checked, so it needs a source rather than a tone. Define your audience by what it is trying to do, keep a source you could produce on request, and remember that consent is part of the channel.

Marketing that can survive being looked at: the claim before you publish it, the disclosure before you are paid, and the measurement after the fact.

This section is organised around a single idea — that most marketing problems are evidentiary problems. A claim you cannot substantiate, a disclosure that is not where people will see it, a metric that flatters rather than informs: each is a promise made without something behind it, and each is enforceable somewhere.

Where a rule differs by jurisdiction — and advertising law differs a great deal — the page states the method and then names the body that decides it: the FTC in the United States, the European Commission and national authorities in the EU, the CMA and the ASA in the United Kingdom, the ACCC in Australia. None of this is legal advice, and none of it is a substitute for the regulator’s current published guidance.

Nothing here sells anything and there are no affiliate links in this section. No page recommends a tool, and where a paid product is mentioned it is named as an example rather than recommended.

Start with marketing claims if you are about to publish something, or with defining your audience if you are about to plan something.

The claim is the thing that gets checked

Most marketing writing starts with the message and works backwards to the support. The order that survives contact with a regulator is the reverse: decide what you can demonstrate, then write the largest claim that demonstration actually carries. It is a slower way to write an advert and a much faster way to answer a letter.

This is not a stylistic preference. The thing that is examined after a complaint is not the design, the targeting or the intent — it is the claim, and whether the evidence existed at the moment of publication rather than after it was questioned. Evidence assembled in response to a challenge is a defence, not a substantiation.

Substantiation, before rather than after

The working question is not “can we argue this” but “what would a reasonable person accept as proof, and do we hold it now”. For a performance claim that means testing under conditions a customer would recognise, not under conditions chosen because they produce the result. For a comparison it means comparing like with like, at the same date, on terms that both offers were actually available.

Superlatives are the claims most often left unsupported, because they feel like tone rather than assertion. “The fastest”, “the cheapest”, “the best” are comparative claims wherever they appear, including in a headline, a badge or a testimonial, and they need the same support as a number.

Disclosure is about placement

A disclosure that exists but is not seen is treated much like a disclosure that does not exist. The material connection — payment, free product, a family relationship, an equity stake — has to sit where the audience encounters the endorsement, in language they use, before they act on it rather than in a footer or behind a “more” link.

Who enforces this differs by jurisdiction and the page on influencer disclosure names each: the Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement guides in the United States, the Committee of Advertising Practice code and the Competition and Markets Authority in the United Kingdom, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive as implemented by national authorities across the European Union, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The wording differs, the principle is consistent, and a campaign that runs in several countries has to satisfy each.

Data, consent and the difference between them

Consent is not the only lawful basis for processing personal data, and treating it as the only one produces both over-asking and under-documentation. The regimes also diverge more here than almost anywhere else in marketing: the General Data Protection Regulation and the ePrivacy rules in the European Union, the UK GDPR alongside them, a patchwork of state statutes in the United States, the Privacy Act in Australia, the Personal Data Protection Act in Singapore, and the Data Privacy Act in the Philippines with the National Privacy Commission as its regulator.

What that means in practice is that a data practice cannot be described as “compliant” without saying where, which is why the page on data privacy is written jurisdiction by jurisdiction rather than as general advice.

Measurement that is allowed to disappoint

The purpose of measurement is to be able to conclude that something did not work. A dashboard that can only go up is decoration. Reach, impressions and follower counts are easy to obtain and difficult to act on; the useful question is usually narrower and less flattering — whether the people who arrived did the thing, and whether they would have done it anyway without being asked twice.

Attribution deserves the same scepticism. A channel credited with a sale it merely touched last is not the channel that caused it, and a campaign judged on a metric that no customer experiences is being judged on the wrong thing.

What this section will not do

No growth tactics that depend on a reader not noticing, no templates for disclosures that need to be hidden to fit, and no affiliate links. There is nothing here that works only because the audience is unaware of it; if a technique requires that, the page does not carry it.

Claims and evidence

• Marketing claims: how to test one before you publish it — A claim is a promise with a source behind it, or it is a liability. How to test one against the evidence you actually hold.
• Advertising claims: the proof you need before you publish — What adequate substantiation means in practice, which regulator asks for it, and the proof to keep before you publish rather than after.
• Health and wellness claims: the strictest rules — Why a supplement claim needs more proof than a software claim, what studies count, and which bodies enforce it.
• Number one, the best: when a superlative is a liability — A superlative is a claim about a whole market at a moment in time. How to use one lawfully, or why to avoid it.
• Pricing, fees and drip pricing: showing the real number — A price without its compulsory fees is a misleading claim in several jurisdictions. How to show the real number.

Disclosure and consent

• Sponsorship disclosure: what counts as an ad, and where — Free products, affiliate links and brand trips are all advertising. Where the disclosure has to sit, and what counts as clear.
• Data privacy for marketers: consent and cold outreach — Consent has to be specific and recorded. What that means for a mailing list, cold outreach and a list you inherited.
• Reviews and testimonials: what you may and may not say — A testimonial is evidence of one experience, not of typical results. The representations that turn a review into a misrepresentation.

Audience and research

• Defining an audience by what it is trying to do — Demographics describe people; they do not predict behaviour. How to write an audience definition you can act on.
• Market research without a budget: five methods that work — Desk research, five conversations, a landing-page test, a competitor teardown and one careful look at your own data.
• Marketing to an audience in another country — Language, imagery, pricing and legal exposure all change when the audience is in another country. What to localise and what to leave alone.

Channels and execution

• Content that compounds: choosing topics worth the effort — Most content is consumed once and dies. How to choose topics that keep answering a question for years.
• Measuring marketing without fooling yourself — Attribution is a model, not a fact. Which numbers are honest, which are decoration, and how to say so.
• SEO basics: what actually moves, and what is folklore — Search rewards pages that answer a question better than the ones above them. What moves, and what is folklore.
• Community and referral marketing that survives scrutiny — A referral programme is a marketing scheme with legal consequences. How to build one that survives scrutiny and actually gets used.

Working in marketing

• A marketing portfolio for a first job: what to show — Hiring managers cannot assess taste from a screenshot. The four pieces that demonstrate judgement rather than software.
• A marketing internship: what to learn in the first month — The questions to ask in week one, and the difference between a placement that teaches you the craft and one that teaches you the tool.

17 pages in this section. Every link above is resolved against the live page tree when this index is rebuilt, so a page that is published but unlinked — or linked but unpublished — fails the build rather than sitting here.

Common questions

When is a marketing claim safe to publish?

When you can rewrite it as a plain statement, produce the source if asked, show the source is about the same product and population you are claiming for, and it would still mean something if a competitor said it.

Can I message people whose numbers I collected in a spreadsheet?

Not without consent. Under the Data Privacy Act consent has to be specific, informed and recorded, which means you can say where each contact came from and what they agreed to receive. Buying a list does not create that.

Which authority decides whether a health claim is allowed?

In the Philippines, the Food and Drug Administration governs therapeutic claims, and an approval to sell a product is not an approval to claim an effect for it. Keep a link to the guidance you relied on before publishing.