10 Practical Ways to Ensure Marketing Compliance

The responsibilities of a marketing team go far beyond creativity and innovation. Team members must also work collaboratively to ensure campaign materials and other communications meet legal requirements and ethical standards.

Reviewing content in this way is known as marketing compliance, and it is a vital step in building trust in your brand. So, how can you implement marketing compliance practically? We’ve put together a few simple tips below to help you out:

1. Create a clear and traceable approval process

As a marketing professional, you probably write and review content regularly. With so much content to handle, you will need to maintain up-to-date tracking documents to eliminate the possibility of oversights.

In the rare event that you receive a complaint about your marketing content or communications, you must be able to trace the review and approval process to identify any problems. Before releasing sensitive public relations communications, for example, you may require top-level marketing representatives to give their signed approval.

You must also write detailed guidelines about brand standards that have been agreed upon by your marketing and PR teams. If you want to achieve collaboration and compliance across all departments, these guidelines should be made easily accessible to everyone in the company.

2. Invest in collaboration tools

It is common sense to maintain compliance documents in a central location such as a shared file. However, the review and approval process may take a long time if you’re using basic tools such as Microsoft Word or Excel.

Fortunately, you can streamline the review process using sophisticated collaboration tools such as ConfluxFiles. This handy and affordable platform is built into the Salesforce CRM. It allows several users to annotate documents simultaneously, making it quicker and easier to reach a consensus.

ConfluxFiles also automates time-consuming tasks such as sending review reminders, sharing content via email, and following up with stakeholders. Give it a go today and free up the timetable of your marketing team!

3. Keep on top of compliance news

Marketing compliance rules are constantly changing thanks to the fast-paced nature of the digital landscape. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for example, transformed the digital advertising space a few years ago as it forced companies to be much more careful with collecting user data.

A clever way to keep up with relevant changes is to subscribe to marketing news alerts. Remember that failure to comply with industry standards could result in financial penalties and reputational damage – bad news for anyone trying to grow a successful business.

4. Write a compliance checklist

Draw up a checklist for employees to use every time they write public content or communications. This list could include suggestions surrounding tone of voice to help you maintain brand consistency, as well as a table of potentially necessary legal disclosures.

For example, if you’re selling a financial product, you may need to disclose terms or conditions. Endorsements from social media influencers may also require a sentence or two acknowledging their relationship with your brand. You may need to ask a legal professional to help you write this checklist.

5. Share marketing materials with your stakeholders

If you’re using ConfluxFiles, you can collaborate with customers, partners, and other stakeholders in your Salesforce communities. By sharing design and content with others, you can ensure your review process is as comprehensive as possible. ConfluxFiles’ editing tools also feature timestamps and multi-user options, allowing you to view conversations between reviewers in real-time!

6. Implement thorough cybersecurity measures

Data breaches are on the rise, and hackers are finding new and inventive ways to attack businesses. Unfortunately, such infiltrations can be very costly and cause reputational damage. To avoid this fate, you must invest in compliance software that is safe and secure.

ConfluxFiles is great for security-conscious marketing teams as it only uses secure and native Salesforce Files. In this way, collaborators do not have to access insecure third-party drives to review and approve marketing materials.

7. Retain a detailed audit trail

Regulatory bodies require companies to retain details about their audit processes. By keeping thorough records of all content audits, you will easily satisfy regulatory professionals if they have any questions.

So, how should you go about maintaining an up-to-date audit trail? Your best bet is to use compliance software that saves all versions of past projects and automates boring compliance tasks employees are likely to overlook.

8. Keep close track of each project’s progress

The more projects your team takes on at once, the trickier it becomes to track the creation, review, and approval process. Therefore, it is important to keep close track of every project. Who is currently in control of reviewing certain material? Are they taking a long time to approve it?

Fortunately, cutting-edge technologies such as ConfluxFiles can automate this awkward tracking process. It will send alert emails to relevant team members when project reviews are overdue, ensuring your marketing campaigns run like clockwork.

9. Prioritize organizational skills

Growing businesses often find that maintaining marketing compliance gets more as data starts to accumulate. Therefore, you must establish clear processes for keeping your information organized and accessible.

Content creators, for example, should be instructed to save and store all files in an agreed format and location. From there, collaborators must pick up the baton and add any additional information or comments to the original files.

10. Continue to remind yourself and your colleagues of the value of compliance

Okay, so you’ve learned how to remain compliant with marketing laws and ethical expectations in a way that makes sense. Now is the time to start using these tips in real-life situations.

No matter how sophisticated your compliance software, the success of your strategy depends on collaboration across departments. If one person avoids their responsibilities in the review pipeline, your team may face delays.

So, how can you encourage your colleagues to stick to regulations? A good place to start is to remind them of the value of honesty and integrity. Customers are more likely to put their hard-earned cash towards brands committed to transparency and legal processes. If you want to create a thriving business, marketing compliance must be a top priority.