Proof Claims on B2B Websites: What Holds Up and What Does Not

Why B2B Buyers Discount Your Claims

Every B2B website makes claims: “trusted by leading firms”, “cut costs by 40%”, “the UK’s leading provider”, “award-winning”. Buyers have read thousands of them. Most are discounted on sight, and the ones that cannot be checked do more harm than good, because they make the checkable claims around them look like marketing too.

In B2B the stakes are higher than in consumer marketing. The person reading your site often has to justify the purchase to a finance director, a procurement team or a board. A claim they cannot repeat with confidence is a claim they will not use, and a claim that turns out to be wrong in due diligence can end the deal.

The UK Rules Apply to B2B Too

It is a common assumption that advertising rules are for consumer brands. They are not. The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising (the CAP Code), enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, covers marketing communications on your own website, including business-to-business marketing. Two parts matter most:

• Substantiation. Before publishing, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that readers are likely to regard as objective and capable of objective substantiation.
• Comparisons. Comparisons with identifiable competitors must be fair, compare like with like, and be verifiable.

Separately, the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 prohibit misleading marketing aimed at traders. None of this is a reason for timid copy. It is a reason to keep the evidence behind each strong claim on file before it goes live.

This article is general guidance, not legal advice. For a specific claim, check the CAP Code and the ASA’s published rulings, or take legal advice.

Five Claim Types, Rewritten

These are the claims that come up most often on B2B websites, with the questions a careful buyer asks and a rewrite that holds up. All figures in the examples are illustrative.

1. Results claims

Before: “We cut onboarding time by 50%.”
The buyer asks: for whom, measured how, compared with what, and over what period?
After: “Across 14 clients onboarded in 2025, median onboarding time fell from 6 weeks to 3, measured from contract signature to first live user.”

2. Customer-count and “trusted by” claims

Before: “Trusted by hundreds of businesses.”
The buyer asks: how many, what kind, and do any look like us?
After: “Used by more than 120 UK firms, including 40 professional-services practices.” Show logos only with each client’s written permission, and only for work you did for them directly.

3. Superlatives

Before: “The UK’s leading provider.”
The buyer asks: leading by what measure, according to whom?
After: either name the measure and the source, or replace the superlative with a specific, provable fact: “Specialists in payroll for multi-site care providers since 2012.”

4. Comparisons

Before: “Twice as fast as the competition.”
The buyer asks: which competitor, on which task, tested how?
After: compare like with like on a stated task and date, and keep the test notes. If you cannot, describe your own speed on its own terms.

5. Testimonials and case studies

Before: an unnamed quote: “Game-changing — CEO, FTSE company.”
The buyer asks: is this a real person, and did they agree to this?
After: a named person, role and company, quoted with written permission, with the date and the service they bought. A case study should say what you did, what the client did, and what else might explain the result.

Build a Simple Claims Register

A claims register is a single table of every objective claim on your website, decks and proposals. For each one, record:

1. the claim, word for word, and where it appears;
2. the evidence behind it, with a link or file location;
3. the date the evidence was gathered and when it should be rechecked;
4. the owner who signs it off;
5. for testimonials and logos, the date and form of the client’s permission.

New claims go into the register before they go live. Claims with no evidence are rewritten or removed. It is unglamorous, and it is the single best protection against a claim unravelling in front of a buyer.

Check Before Launch, Not After

Claims are cheapest to fix before a website relaunch, a new sales deck or a tender submission goes out. A practical pre-launch routine:

• Pull every number, comparison, superlative, customer reference and award from the asset.
• Match each to its entry in the claims register. Anything without one is flagged.
• Ask the three objections for each flagged claim: what would a sceptical buyer ask, what would the ASA expect, and what is the most likely alternative explanation?
• Rewrite or remove. Then have someone who did not write the copy read it as a buyer would.

If you want an independent, signed check, Release Assurance does exactly this on a website, deck or proposal: every claim in scope is checked against its source, weak claims come back rewritten, and a named verifier signs the Assurance Note within 3 business days for the Pack. You can start with a free First Signal in claims mode in under an hour. Our article on how Release Assurance checks a claim walks through the method step by step.

Pranav Unni

Founder · ThriveFinity Connect on LinkedIn →

Pranav Unni is the founder and lead verifier of ThriveFinity. He reads and signs every paid deliverable personally, and writes about go-to-market decisions for established UK B2B companies.