What a GLP-1 clinic cannot say on its website
The FDA has sent warning letters to telehealth companies over compounded GLP-1 marketing. The rules are written for compounders and lawyers; this is the same set translated into what your website copy can and cannot say.
The compliance writing on compounded GLP-1 marketing is good and there is a lot of it. Almost all of it is addressed to compounding pharmacies and their counsel. Very little of it is addressed to the person who has to decide what goes in the hero headline of a weight-loss clinic's website, which is a shame, because that headline is what the FDA reads.
In 2026 the FDA issued warning letters to thirty telehealth companies over misleading compounded GLP-1 marketing. Reading what those letters object to, the pattern is consistent: the problem is rarely a clinical decision. It is a sentence on a web page.
The equivalence claim
The most common failure is describing a compounded product as containing the same active ingredient as a branded drug, or as a generic version of it. Regulators treat this as misleading, and the reasoning is not pedantic: a compounded preparation is not an approved generic and has not been through the manufacturing and review standards that word implies. The copy that reads as helpfully plain-English to a marketer is the copy that makes the claim.
- Avoid: the same active ingredient as Ozempic, a generic version, an identical formulation, the same medication at a lower price.
- Avoid: FDA-approved, applied to anything compounded. Compounded preparations from 503A and 503B pharmacies do not receive FDA approval, and the word is a legal term rather than a reassurance.
- Avoid: cheap compounded semaglutide, advertised to the general public. The FDA's position is that these should no longer be mass-produced, so a page advertising them at scale is describing something it should not be doing.
Brand names are not keywords
This one is worth saying plainly to whoever is doing the SEO. Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound have search volume that is impossible to ignore, and using them to advertise a compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide product is trademark infringement as well as misleading advertising. The keyword research will surface them, the traffic estimate will be attractive, and the page that targets them is a liability rather than an asset.
A brand-name comparison page is the single most requested piece of content on these builds and the single easiest one to decline.
Outcome claims, borrowed and otherwise
References to weight loss results, cardiovascular benefit or metabolic improvement that mirror the claims made for branded GLP-1 products are treated as especially problematic, because they import the evidence base of a trial that was not run on the product you are selling. The same applies to the softer claims that have accumulated around this category, reduced hair loss and improved sexual function among them, which lack the supporting data entirely.
Clinically proven is the phrase to search your own copy for. It elevates liability exposure on its own, and it almost never survives the question of which clinical trial, on which product.
What this leaves you to say
Quite a lot, and it is generally better marketing. The clinician, their credentials and their protocol. The consultation, what it covers and what it costs. Monitoring, follow-up and how the programme is actually run. Who is not a candidate. These are the things a person choosing a weight-loss clinic is trying to establish, and they are the ones a competitor copying brand names is not saying.
None of this stops you advertising. GLP-1 clinics are not in the group that needs platform certification before running ads, which is covered in which healthcare businesses need ad certification. What stops the ads is the copy, and the copy is a build decision.
