While the FDA regulates some aspects of the information presented on the packaging, juice makers still have enough wiggle room to mislead buyers through tricky marketing language.

How do you know if you’re buying real 100% juice?

You have to read the ingredient label on the back and ignore the label on the front. The FDA requires labels that list the ingredients in descending order of predominance according to weight. The heaviest ingredients are first and the lightest are last. Manufacturer’s don’t have to reveal the % of each ingredient in order to protect their trade secrets. Yet, if they claim something is juice, they have to say what % juice it contains. Let’s look at some examples of how buyers can still be mislead…

Safeway apple juice cocktail = not juice
Anything that says ‘cocktail’, ‘blend’, or ‘drink’ is usually code for a mix of cheap ingredients like corn syrup. Companies often substitute the syrup for the real juice, because it’s cheaper to produce.

Mott’s 100% apple juice = real juice
These are 100% apple juice. They’re usually from concentrate and well diluted, but that’s about as close as you can get to pure juice, without buying expensive apple cider. Note that you can’t simply rely on a name brand for real juice. The same brands may offer different product lines- some not containing juice at all.

Snapple = not juice
This Mango Madness Snapple is 95% sugar water and other unnatural ingredients. Only 5% of the drink is the mango juice advertised. The ingredient label reveals what’s really in it: Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Kiwi Juice from Concentrate, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Mango Puree, Vegetable Juice and Beta Carotene (for Color).

Sunny Delight = not juice
Some people confuse Sunny Delight for orange juice, but it’s not even close. The ingredients reveal that it’s again just sugar water and various unnatural ingredients, which aren’t that healthy. Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and 2% or Less of each of the Following: Concentrated Juices (Orange, Tangerine, Apple, Lime, Grapefruit), Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Natural Flavors, Modified Cornstarch, Canola Oil, Sodium Citrate, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Sodium Benzoate to Protect Flavor, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6. (This was just copied and pasted from a website)

Dole Pineapple, Orange, Banana 100% juice = mostly apple juice
While this is 100% juice, it isn’t the juice the front label suggests. It’s apple juice with some pineapple juice and even less of the other ingredients.

Safeway Pomegranate juice = mostly pineapple juice, apple juice, and water
This is 100% juice, but not the juice you think it is. When you’re spending $5.99 for it at Safeway, you’re probably serious about getting what is advertised. But a look at the ingredient label reveals this is mostly water, pineapple juice, and apple juice- contrary to the front label saying pomegranate juice and showing only pictures of pomegranates. A much lower percentage than the other juices is pomegranate and blueberry. The FDA doesn’t require them to put the exact percentage of the pomegranate and blueberry, but with 3 higher % ingredients, you could assume it’s not very much.

Pomegranate juice = real 100% pomegranate juice
This is actual 100% pomegranate juice. It says it right on the ingredient label. And it’s the same price at the fake pomegranate blend above.

Misleading tactic:
Marketers discovered people become used to looking for the word ’100%’, as in ’100% juice’. So guess what? They now put ’100% vitamin C’ prominently on many labels- perhaps so you think it’s actually 100% juice, when it isn’t. This is common for grape juice, since it’s one of the most expensive juices to produce. So, they cut many corners in not giving you real 100% grape juice but pass it off as real by the ’100% vitamin C’ tactic. Beware!

To summarize, marketers are crafty with their juice product labels and fancy graphics. The prudent shopper should just ignore the wording and look at the ingredient label for the real story on what the drink contains. If you’re going to shop for fruit juice, you might as well get the real stuff.

Any businessperson knows the importance of research. Market research is critical for business planning. Imagine how much insight it would give you if you had a copy of your competitor’s business plan, for instance. Or, perhaps financial reports, units sold per month, website traffic per month, the number of employees a business has, and more.

Fortunately, a lot of this market data is floating around out there ready to be seized and analyzed- if you know where to look. Sometimes it takes creativity and extra effort to learn secrets about your competitors, but this endeavor is quite worthwhile.

I would like to share the 3 useful ways to glean information from your competitors. This mostly applies to internet businesses, but can be a source of inspiration for any general business, as well.

1. Estimate a competitor’s web traffic

Use tools like compete.com, alexa.com, and quantcast.com as general guides for traffic. You can also see any competitor’s page count in Google or Yahoo by typing in a search ‘site:domain.com’. The higher the page count, the better. You can also see exactly how optimized their site is and how many incoming links it has from tools like websitegrader.com. You can logically figure that a website with x pages with only x% optimized will yield about x visitors per month. If your competitor is lacking in optimization for certain keywords, but is fairly successful in traffic from a low quantity of incoming links, you can make predictions of how much more traffic you can get with your own similar site, but better optimized.

2. Acquire competitor information through a ‘business for sale’

Pursue a possible purchase of another business like yours- perhaps even a direct competitor- and learn a lot of critically important information about a business’ health. Use websites like bizbuysell.com.

The idea here is not to manipulate the seller, but to be genuinely interested and open minded about a potential purchase while enjoying the informational benefits. You will likely sign a non-disclosure agreement and perhaps even write a letter of intent. The time invested is worth it to learn about another business’ strategy, financials, strengths and weaknesses. This information can be invaluable to help you operate your own business, and who knows, you might actually choose to buy it.

3. Calculate competitor’s Ebay sales

For Ebay businesses, you have it made. Ebay is fairly transparent and allows you enough information to calculate units sold per month and monthly sales revenue of any competitor. How? First you can estimate units sold by feedback. If you figure about 85% leave feedback, you can take the feedback from the last 30 days, divide by .85 and you should get a rough idea of a business’ monthly customers, which may correspond to the units sold, then just multiply their average selling price by the units sold to get their estimated monthly revenue.

Even if you don’t sell on Ebay, it may still be interesting for you to compare prices of someone selling similar products/services as you in the Ebay marketplace. Ebay may also be used for test-market new products, such as to estimate demand. You can test pricing, for example, by listing something at $1 and see what it bids up to. You aren’t obligated to sell the item if you simply put the hidden reserve price high enough that no one will ever buy it. Craigslist is another place you can test interest in a particular product/service.

BONUS TIP: Estimate retail sales

This is the single most useful piece of information I learned in my graduate school MBA program.

If you’re interested in buying a brick-and-mortar retail store, here’s a very useful way to gauge sales. Let’s say you’re thinking about buying a Taco Bell franchise…

1. Walk into the store as the first customer at the beginning the day and buy the cheapest thing they sell- a Coke or something.
2. Keep the receipt and notice the customer number on it
3. Return at the end of the day and order something as they close, trying to be the last customer of the day. Try to order from the same cash register.
4. Subtract the customer # at the end of the day from the one at the beginning. Now, you have a good record of how many customers came to that particular cash register. You could also ask whether that register was used most of the day or what % it was used in order to estimate more precisely how many customers they served.
5. Finally, estimate an average cost per customer (you can even ask them) and multiply by the # of customers. Now, you have a rough estimate of daily gross sales. Very cool.

I hope this competitor research information helps equip you with more tools to make better business decisions.

This is a class I’ll be offering this week at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington…

NEW! Web Marketing Strategies & Search Engine Optimization
Increase traffic to your website, increase sales, and make more money online. Find out how to get free and paid listings in Google and Yahoo. Learn about online stores through eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo. Gain insight into email marketing and how to market through social media sites like Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter. (Trent Mueller) $40

Three classes on Wednesdays, Jan. 14 – 28, from 7 – 8 p.m. in MAN 125, sign up for item number 2371. View the Lower Columbia College website for more information.

Buyer beware is a good mantra for navigating the waters of ‘free’ services. This posting will highlight common ‘free’ offers and will shed light on some of the unethical marketing practices we see corporations engaged in today.

In most all cases, the company offering the ‘free’ service will only offer it free for a short trial period, then will automatically bill you thereafter. Companies will get you in a contractural agreement and will usually make more money off you- more than recovering their cost of offering something ‘free’ for a limited time.

1. Free Credit Reports

Free credit reports are never free. Notice the above signup form from a popular ‘free’ credit report website. It asks for all of your contact information on the first page, then when continuing to the next page (after you already invested the time to fill out the first form), it then surprises you by asking for your social security # and credit card information. This is their initial explanation for that:

Your credit card will not be charged during the free trial period. However, valid credit card information is required to establish your account.

Then, more hidden is the real legal agreement text:

When you order your free report here, you will begin your free trial membership in Triple AdvantageSM Credit Monitoring. If you don’t cancel your membership within 9 days of enrollment, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership. If you are not satisfied, you can cancel at any time to discontinue the membership and stop the monthly billing; however, you will not be eligible for a pro-rated refund of your current month’s paid membership fee.

That hidden legal agreement text no longer calls the service a ‘free trial’, but now a ‘membership’. Nine days is quite a short window of time to ‘cancel’ the membership- in fact, it’s only 1/3 of the way through the ‘free trial’ period. In the rare case a person is diligent enough to call within the limited 9 day timeframe, good luck on finding a live person on the phone. You can guarantee very long hold times, talking to multiple representatives, and perhaps having to call back a few more times just to ensure the service is indeed cancelled. Representatives are trained to do everything possible to not let you cancel, so you can bet it will be a frustrating experience trying to cancel.

It no longer seems worth it after learning the true meaning behind their words ‘free credit report’. It’s almost inevitable that you will pay them money.

2. Free Website Services

Trails.com is one of the most spammy and unethical websites I’ve seen.

Unfortunately, they rank super high in Google under lots of keywords, so they get lots of traffic. What happens is you might find a page like this.

Then, when you click to see the map and directions, you get a free trial signup page…

At the bottom of the signup page, you can also note that you are agreeing to receive spam from third parties, which they waive responsibility for, as well as saying…

For your convenience and to ensure that your access to your Trails.com subscription remains uninterrupted, unless we hear from you, we will automatically renew your subscription(s) at the expiration of the then-current term. If you elected to pay for the subscription with your credit card, Trails.com will charge your card on file for the cost of another term at the then-current rate using the information you previously provided us by phone or on our web site. You will not be notified in advance of your impending renewal.

It’s so nice of them to take, store, and auto-bill your credit card as a ‘convenience’ to you so your service ‘remains uninterrupted’. That’s one way to look at it.

And finally, on the next page, lo and behold, the ‘free’ signup page asks for your credit card. What a surprise.

3. Free Magazines

Free magazine offers are old school now. Yet, the same old marketing trick continues to be used and people continue to fall for it.

Free magazine offers can be found in a variety of places- through websites, direct mail, in magazines themselves, and in odd places like in grocery store halls near the restroom.

The trick is to get you to signup- which may open the floodgate for lots of junk mail- then later surprise you with a bill. Sometimes they will say you get only 1 issue free, but will go ahead and send you a few extra issues of the magazine. They will of course bill you for it and hope you will pay it, perhaps from feeling guilty for receiving the extra magazines.

4. Free Windshield Rock Chip Repairs

You may have seen ‘free rock chip repair’ tents in shopping area parking lots throughout the United States. The trick is they will say it’s free to you, but will bill your insurance if you have full coverage. It’s faulty logic to say it’s free, because you pay for your insurance. It’s also possible your insurance company will deny the claim and stick you with part of the bill or raise your rates.

It it really free? No.

5. Free Computers

Free computer offers still exist today, but this scam was most popular back when CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, MSN, and other internet dialup subscription services were popular. Stores like OfficeDepot, OfficeMax, CircuitCity, and Best Buy offered huge ‘rebates’ for buying computers with the internet subscription- often claiming to move than cover the price of the computer. The subscriptions were usually 3 year contracts at $25 / mo or so, making a $900 commitment, for example. The rebate was often for $300-$400 or so, making the computer ‘free’, but people didn’t walk out of the store with a free computer. You paid in advance, and later hoped you would receive your rebate.

Of course, rebates are usually outsourced to third party vendors, who often handle the rebate claims carelessly. Ever see your name and address grossly misspelled on a rebate form? Yes, they will do everything possible to not give you your rebate. This allows the retailer to save money while claiming no responsibility when people don’t receive their rebate, since it was outsourced. Unfortunately consumers were led to believe they could get a free computer only through buying dialup internet access- perhaps something they may have thought they would have used anyway, but it cost them dearly.

Some stores like OfficeDepot took the internet subscription trick to a ridiculous point, claiming “Free $300 cash for anything in the store (with internet subscription)”. That’s code for you giving them $600. Incidentally, the FTC investigated OfficeDepot for some of their misleading advertising.

Summary

Those are five ‘free’ services you want to avoid. There are numerous marketing scams to beware of like credit watch services, rebates, free cell phones, free music CDs (i.e. BMG), add-ons, bad contracts, and more. If you mainly avoid anything free that involves signing a contract, you’ll probably be in good shape.