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Regulations Associated with an Offer

Interview with lawyer, Jeanette, Onyx Legal

Interview Transcript

Ellie Bakker, Marketing Director, Splice Marketing
How are healthcare professionals allowed to promote an offer for their services, and if so, how do they do that compliantly and ethically?

Jeanette Jifkins, Principal Lawyer, Onyx Legal
Okay, so there is nothing wrong with making an offer to get clients, either new clients or repeat clients, to access further services. However, you do need to do it carefully. So you can’t be seen to be misleading consumers, you can’t use like bait and switch, which is where you offer them something for the purpose of upselling them to something else. You have to be very clear on what the terms and conditions are.

So if you make an offer, for example, on a website and you say, for this week, you get two services for the price of one, whatever conditions you put around that, say for example, they have to make the bookings that week and they have to take them up within two months, something like that. Those terms and conditions have to be very clearly stated with the offer so that your client has the opportunity to read them through and understand them before they make a decision whether or not they’ll accept the offer.

So provided that it’s compliant with consumer law, which is not misleading and deceptive, doesn’t make any promises you shouldn’t, doesn’t have any costings that are noncompliant with consumer law, all of those sorts of things, and the terms and conditions are clearly stated and aren’t designed to lower someone inappropriately, then you can make an offer. You also need to be aware that if you’re making an offer, there are hubs of services where multiple practitioners work together. If you’re making a multiple offer across services, you need to be very clear that you know what applies in regard to each different service and who’s doing what and how people pay, all of those sorts of things. You’ve got to think those processes through and make sure that they’re very clearly articulated in the offer.

Ellie Bakker, Marketing Director, Splice Marketing
And then with an offer, if we’re putting this in a Facebook ad, do we have to put all of the terms and conditions in the Facebook ad itself or can that be on the landing page?

Jeanette Jifkins, Principal Lawyer, Onyx Legal
So all the terms and conditions can be on the landing page provided that it’s very clear there are terms and conditions. So much like TV advertising or radio advertising where they say terms and conditions apply, you’ve got to have that obvious link. So the Facebook ad would have to, in the visible part before anybody clicks on it, have to say that see our terms here or terms and conditions apply just so that people are very clear that the offer by itself isn’t standalone and you have to have a little bit more information.

Ellie Bakker, Marketing Director, Splice Marketing
And in Google ads, I know we did that a lot where we have T’s and C’s apply within the Google ad and the rest of the terms are on the landing page.

Jeanette Jifkins, Principal Lawyer, Onyx Legal
Same. It’s a good thing.

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