NZ Marketing Best Practice Guidelines 2025 your go-to resource for strategies, insights, and tools to elevate marketing performance.

This guideline is based on 9 basic principles: 

1. Ethical Conduct 
  • Honesty and Transparency: Avoid deceptive practices and provide clear and accurate customer information.

  • Truthful: marketing collateral should be accurate and truthful about products, services, and pricing.
  • Respect for Privacy: Collect, store, and use customer data responsibly. Obtain customer consent for data collection.

  • Fair Competition: Engage in fair competition, avoid defaming competitors, and ensure marketing strategies are based on the value of your offerings.

2. Customer-Centric Approach 
  • Understand Customer Needs: Conduct market research to understand customer needs, preferences, and pain points. 

  • Customer Feedback: Encourage and act on customer feedback to improve products and services. 

  • Customer Lifetime: Build long-term relationships by identifying customer needs and tailor marketing strategies to address these effectively.

  • Customer complaints: Handle customer concerns promptly and efficiently.

3. Content and Communication 
  • Value-Driven Content: Create valuable, relevant, and engaging content.

  • Collateral: Ensure that marketing collateral educates, informs, and encourages your audience to act.

  • Communication Channels: Develop a multi-channel approach to marketing communications.

  • Personalisation: Establish a one-to-one communications strategy.

  • Consistent Branding: Maintain consistency in brand messaging, tone, and visual identity across all marketing channels.

4. Digital Marketing 
  • SEO/GEO Best Practices: Optimise your website and content for search engines and AI to improve visibility and organic traffic.

  • Social Media Engagement: Actively engage with your audience on social media platforms. Respond to comments, messages, and feedback in a timely and professional manner.

  • Email Marketing: Personalise campaigns based on customer behaviour and preferences.

  • Anti-Spam: Ensure compliance with anti-spam laws and provide easy unsubscribe options.
     
5. Advertising and Promotions 
  • Truthful Advertising: Ensure all advertisements are truthful, substantiated, and not misleading.

  • Terms and Conditions: Disclose all terms and conditions clearly.

  • Ethical Promotions: Conduct promotions and discounts ethically. Ensure customers understand the terms of promotions.

  • Message: Focus on product benefits not on features.

  • Children: Advertising aimed at young audiences should be sensitive to their credulity, vulnerability and lack of experience.
     
6. Compliance and Legal Considerations 
  • Adhere to Regulations: Stay up to date and comply with all relevant marketing and consumer protection laws. 
  • Data Protection: Adhere to privacy and data protection laws. Implement robust data security measures to protect consumer information. 
  • Avoid Misleading Claims: Do not make false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims about products or services. Ensure all promotional materials are accurate and verifiable. 
  • Self-Regulation: Comply with industry codes and regulations, including local advertising standards. 
  • Intellectual Property: Respect intellectual property rights. Avoid using copyrighted material without permission and give proper credit when due.
     
7. Consumer Protection 
  • Fair Practices: Do not exploit vulnerable consumers and ensure marketing practices are fair and equitable. 
  • Clear Disclosures: Provide clear and prominent disclosures regarding any fees, terms, and conditions. Ensure that all claims are backed by evidence. 
  • Unfair Contracts: Avoid unfair or inequitable consumer contracts.
     
  • Complaint Resolution: Establish a clear process for handling consumer complaints and resolving disputes promptly and fairly. 

8.Social Responsibility 
  • Sustainable Practices: Incorporate sustainable and environmentally friendly practices in marketing strategies. Promote products and services that contribute positively to society. 
  • Community Engagement: Engage with and contribute to the community. Support social causes and demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR). 

9. Training and Development 

  • Skill Development: Invest in continuous training and development. Stay updated with the latest marketing trends, tools, and technologies. 
  • Knowledge Sharing: Foster a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration within the marketing team and across the organisation. 

Source: Keith Norris, 26 September 2025