The five questions your marketing agency should be able to answer in 60 seconds
Hub365 AI is a marketing agency, not a law firm. This is not legal advice. It's a notice that these rules exist, with a link to the official text, so you can review it with your attorney or your licensing board. Where we name a statute or a bar rule, it's Florida's.
All week we've been talking about what your website says about you. Which sentences your profession puts at risk, how to write the three answers an AI engine can actually cite, and why a loose price carries rules almost nobody opens.
That leaves the uncomfortable question: if all of that was wrong, who wrote it?
Nearly always the answer is an agency, a freelancer, or a nephew with good intentions. And nearly always there was no bad faith. They were handed a playbook, the playbook works, and the playbook was written for a business with nobody reviewing its ads.
These five questions aren't a trap. They're the minimum somebody should know before writing a single line of your website.
1. Which rule covers my profession, and can you name it?
Why it matters. There is no advertising rule for "businesses." There's one per profession, and they say different things. A dentist has Fla. Stat. §466.019. An attorney has the Florida Bar's 4-7 rules. A CPA has Rule 61H1-24.001, F.A.C., which we took down to concrete sentences in how an accounting firm gets new clients. A med spa depends on the chapter licensing whoever actually performs the treatment.
A good answer sounds like: "Yours is 466.019, and 456.062 gets added the moment you advertise anything free or discounted. And the Board of Dentistry has its own on fees, 64B5-4.003. Here are the links."
A bad answer sounds like: "We always stay compliant."
That second one isn't an answer. It's a sentence designed to end the conversation.
2. Of everything you published about me, what can be verified?
Why it matters. It's one test and it settles most of this: an objectively verifiable fact can almost always be published. An adjective about yourself almost never can.
With one exception you saw on Thursday: a bare figure is verifiable and still carries a condition. A fee gets published with the variables that move it, not on its own.
"The best practice in Fort Lauderdale" can't be verified by anyone: not your board, not the Department of Health, not an AI engine. It's a sentence that exposes you, and we haven't seen it do anything a verifiable fact doesn't do better.
A good answer sounds like: "Year founded, services by their actual names, the cities, the languages, and what happens on a first visit. And if we publish a figure, it goes out with the variables that move it. The adjective is what we took out."
A bad answer sounds like: "That's marketing language, everybody uses it."
Everybody does use it, and that part is true. That the same rules apply to you and to a coffee shop is not.
3. Who wrote my testimonials, and what authorization do I have for each one?
Why it matters. There are two doors here and most people only walk through one.
If you're in healthcare, publishing a patient's testimonial or photo is a disclosure of protected health information and needs that patient's written authorization (45 CFR 164.508(a)(1)); where the use also meets HIPAA's definition of marketing, the requirements at 164.508(a)(3) stack on top. Treatment consent covers neither: they're different documents. Separately, the content of the testimonial is still subject to your professional rule even when it's signed. A signed "best dentist in Fort Lauderdale" is still prohibited under §466.019, because that rule looks at the content of the ad, not at who said it first.
And whoever wrote them, the FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 CFR Part 465, in effect since October 21, 2024) reaches the review itself: it bars knowingly disseminating a review that misrepresents who wrote it or whether they were ever really a customer. How to read one that's already published is in how to spot an AI-written review.
If you're a Florida attorney it's a different animal and a longer one: Florida Bar Rule 4-7.13(b)(9) sets six conditions at once, and one of them is that you can't write the testimonial. "I'll draft it and you approve it" is exactly what the rule doesn't allow.
A good answer sounds like: "They wrote them, we have the signed authorization for each one, and none of them says anything your rule flags."
A bad answer sounds like: "We drafted them and the client approved."
4. What do you have access to in my business, and since when?
Why it matters. Your agency is a vendor with keys. It almost always has the Google profile, sometimes the ads, sometimes the email, and in the businesses we audit, increasingly, some AI tool connected to one of those.
And that last part no longer works the way it used to, and we covered it Monday: it's no longer just a tab where somebody pastes text, many are installed applications that can ask to share a window of your screen, and the clean-window rule is the short answer to that. Mailbox permissions are the other half: when you connect a mailbox, the permission almost always covers the entire archive, not just new mail, because consent is granted by data type, not by date. Check the scope you actually approved.
If you handle patient information, there's another layer. A tool that creates, receives, maintains or transmits patient information on your behalf generally lands in the business associate category under HIPAA, and when it does, the signed agreement isn't optional: it has to exist before the access is granted. In a law firm the parallel question is client confidentiality.
A good answer sounds like: a list. Which tool, what access, who approved it and when.
A bad answer sounds like: "Let me check and get back to you," with no date on it.
If a vendor needs more time, ask them for a date in writing. What shouldn't happen is that nobody knows where to start looking.
5. How do we know this is working, and what can we NOT know?
Why it matters. This is the one that separates people, and in the businesses we audit it almost never gets asked.
The second half is the important half. Anyone can hand you a number. Very few people will tell you what can't be measured yet.
In AI-engine visibility there are things you can observe, and we left the method on Monday in the August 24 roundup: three questions, on three different days, across two engines, signed out. What you read off it is a pattern: whether you show up evenly or never show up at all, whether one engine sees you and the other doesn't, and whether the same competitor keeps taking your spot. And there are things that today cannot be claimed seriously: how long a change takes to show up, or exactly how many people found you that way.
A good answer sounds like: "We measure this, and here's how. And this other thing we can't know yet, so I'm not going to bill you as if we did."
A bad answer sounds like: a round number, delivered with a lot of confidence and no method behind it.
Of the five bad answers, that's the one studying can't fix.
And now it's our turn
Publishing the bar and then refusing to be measured against it would be exactly what we're criticizing. So here are the five, answered:
1. The rule. Yes, and we'll name them: dentist, 466.019, plus 456.062 if you advertise free or discounted services, plus 64B5-4.003 if you publish fees. Physician and med spa, 456.072(1)(a), which reaches every Department of Health licensee, and then the licensee's own chapter: 458.331(1)(d) for an MD, 459.015(1)(d) for a DO, chapter 464 for nursing. Law firm, Florida Bar 4-7.12, 4-7.13 and 4-7.14. CPA, 473.323(1)(f) plus Rule 61H1-24.001. All five are mapped, each with its rule and the typical sentences that touch it, in what your website can't say in Florida, each with a link to the official text.
2. What's verifiable. It's our writing rule: verifiable fact first, adjective never. If you find a superlative about ourselves in one of our pieces, it's wrong and we want to hear about it.
3. The testimonials. It's house policy and it's in writing: we don't write or edit the text of a client testimonial. If someone needs help organizing what they want to say, we send it in writing and they write it in their own words.
4. The access. If you work with us, ask us for the list of what we have access to and since when. We commit to sending it within one business day, without you having to ask twice.
5. The measurement. And here's the uncomfortable part: we don't have a published study of our own isolating how much rewriting one sentence moves the needle. We don't know of one that's been published, and if somebody tells you they have it, ask for the method before you ask for the number. What we can stand behind isn't a measured result, it's a direct consequence: remove a sentence your rule restricts and that sentence can't show up in a complaint. And a verifiable data point, year, service, city, language, gives an engine something concrete to repeat; an adjective about yourself adds no new data. How much that moves your client volume, we don't know, and we won't tell you we do. That's what we claim, and nothing beyond it.
What to do with the answers
This isn't about firing anyone. It's about having the conversation.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't it awkward to send this to my agency? Less awkward than a letter from your licensing board. And an agency doing good work will be glad to have the standard in writing: in what we audit, they almost never get given it.
My agency isn't in Florida. Does this still apply? #1 applies even more. An out-of-state agency has no particular reason to know these numbers: in their state they're different. Ask anyway, and ask for the links.
What if I'm the one practicing outside Florida? #2, the HIPAA half of #3, #4 and the FTC rule are federal and reach you in any state. The statute and bar-rule numbers in #1 and #3 are Florida's. Your state has its own, and they are not the same numbers or the same tests.
What if I run my own marketing? Then answer them yourself. It's the same five, and #4 and #5 matter just as much when the vendor is you.
Why publish this if you're an agency? Because the standard is good for us. We work with Fort Lauderdale professionals who arrive with bad prior experiences, and describing how we work costs far more than publishing the bar and letting people measure us with it.
The sheet for having that conversation
If you want to walk into that conversation with something in hand, the citable profile is the template for what your website should say about you, and the scorecard puts a number on what it says today.
And if reading the five questions made you realize you don't know the answers for your own business, that's normal: in the businesses we audit they're almost never written down. We're here if you'd rather we went through them with you: a 30-minute call, no cost and no obligation. Your time pays more doing what you do.
Keep reading
- What your website can't say in Florida - the five professions and the rule that reaches each one, line by line.
- How an accounting firm in Fort Lauderdale gets new clients - this week's vertical, with the eight practices in Rule 61H1-24.001.
- AI roundup, August 24 - the protocol for measuring whether an engine sees you, and the clean-window rule.
- How to spot an AI-written review - the filter for reading what people say about you.
- Official text of Rule 61H1-24.001, F.A.C. - certified public accountant advertising (external).
Reminder: this is a marketing compliance summary, not legal advice, and it is Florida-specific where it names a statute or a bar rule. Confirm it with your own attorney or your board before you act on it.
Sources
Verified on August 26, 2026. The flsenate.gov links are official text; law.cornell.edu is LII's reproduction of the Administrative Code, and hhs.gov and ftc.gov are official agency guidance, not the text of the regulation.
- Fla. Stat. §466.019, dental advertising - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/0466.019
- Fla. Stat. §456.062, advertisement of free or discounted services by a health care professional - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/0456.062
- Fla. Admin. Code R. 64B5-4.003, dental fee advertising - https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/florida/Fla-Admin-Code-Ann-R-64B5-4-003
- Fla. Admin. Code R. 61H1-24.001, CPA advertising, eight prohibited practices enumerated at (1)(a) through (1)(h) - https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/florida/Fla-Admin-Code-Ann-R-61H1-24-001
- Fla. Stat. §473.323(1)(f), grounds for discipline for certified public accountants - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/0473.323
- Fla. Stat. §456.072(1)(a), §458.331(1)(d) and §459.015(1)(d), misleading representations and false advertising by health care practitioners - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/0456.072
- The Florida Bar, Handbook on Lawyer Advertising and Solicitation, rules 4-7.12, 4-7.13 and 4-7.14, including 4-7.13(b)(9) on testimonials - https://www-media.floridabar.org/uploads/2025/12/Handbook-2025-Approved-by-SCA-12-10-25.pdf
- Federal Trade Commission, Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, effective October 21, 2024 - https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumer-reviews-testimonials-rule-questions-answers
- HHS, HIPAA and marketing, written authorization, 45 CFR 164.508 - https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/marketing/index.html
- HHS, HIPAA and business associates - https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/business-associates/index.html
For you, who made it to the end: thanks for the time. Publishing the standard we want to be measured against was uncomfortable to write. It's published. If we ever fail you on one of the five, tell us.
