Checklist of Compliance Responsibilities for Every Marketing Role

Without a hierarchy of compliance responsibilities activated in your organization, it’s easy to miss governance holes in marketing content production, communications, and approval processes.

In this checklist, we break down how compliance impacts your entire marketing team, including top regulatory concerns for:

• Content Creators (Designers, Copywriters, Video Producers)
• Marketing Operations & Project Managers
• Martech Specialists
• Marketing Leadership
• Legal Counsel

Content Summary

Content Creator
Marketing Operation & Project Manager
Marketing Leadership
MarTech Specialist
Legal / General Counsel

With compliance risks coming in from every corner of the marketing ecosystem, marketing compliance can no longer be just a “Send It to Legal” for review in the final stages of marketing campaign planning. Collaborative, integrated marketing campaigns means compliance needs to be baked into everyone’s daily processes from the start.

Here’s what each marketing team member should be handling in their role when it comes to compliance:

Content Creator

As a content producer, you’re on the ground with the creative content itself, from creation to real-time modifications. Your work is constantly facing change requests, versioning and stakeholder approval. You might not be setting the compliance strategy, but your work touches many marketing compliance responsibilities, such as:

• Circulate current versions to the right stakeholders, in the right sequence, for review and approval.
• Check that you’ve received feedback from all stakeholders before creating new versions and new drafts for review.
• Maintain digital trail of how you’ve acted on requested changes.
• Save and store source files and final versions in an acceptable format and location.
• Check brand standards (colors, logos, copy, etc.), as well as any regulatory requirements (disclaimers, sizing requirements, etc.)

Marketing Operation & Project Manager

Marketing project managers are the keeper of the books. You’re overseeing the efficiency of the content creation processes, distributing creative assets for review and driving the collection of feedback, and fielding stakeholder input, all while meeting corporate goals, like:

• Determine which stakeholders need content access for each project and providing justifications for why (or why not.)
• Track when specific stakeholders are looped into content and campaign review and the actions they take.
• Ensure that controls are in place to record and distribute new comments, modifications, and decisions around marketing content.
• Maintain a record of approval sign-off from all stakeholders from start to finish.
• Set up review processes for different clients or stakeholder.
• Control project versioning in an organized manner.

Marketing Leadership

As a CMO or VP of Marketing, you’re not only concerned with internal corporate communications and process, but you’re also ensuring that brand partnerships and client communication meet the right standards. You need an easy way to:

• Set guidelines for how external stakeholders, partners, clients should interact with your brand – and ensure they’re being met consistently.
• Stay on top of regulatory requirements when brainstorming new or innovative campaigns.
• Create a strategy for the consistent review of corporate communications.
• Control brand cohesion across all of your marketing content channels, from digital to print to social media.
• Ensure that partner co-branding and content use across all partner campaigns align with legal requirements.

MarTech Specialist

As a MarTech specialist, you’re the go-to guide in the murky waters of how data can affect (and effect) marketing compliance. It’s up to you to show that, in a tour of all the marketing systems, data is handled properly at all times in order to:

• Gather the right types of data throughout our content production (the who, what, when, etc.)
• Secure data that’s collected around customer interactions and campaign analytics, and ensuring privacy laws aren’t being violate
• Generate real-time compliance reporting to stakeholders or regulators.
• Fully capture content details and marketing data and archiving it according to applicable retention schedules.
• Determine and configured content access needs across desktops and mobile devices for different roles.
• Monitor gaps in data governance practices.

Legal / General Counsel

As the leader of the legal team, you’re both first in line for setting compliance requirements and potentially the final stop (if not you, then a member of your team) to making sure all marketing communications are above board. This covers tasks such as:

• Conduct a legal review of proposed content that falls under the umbrella of a compliance program.
• Make sure that proper disclaimers appear in advertisements or packaging in the case of physical product distribution.
• Enforce contractor agreements to include full policies around proper content access, usage, intellectual property needs, and other concerns when working with outside contractors to create or distribute marketing content.
• Determine brand licensing agreements to ensure brand standards are being accurately met.
• Ensure that social media policies – both internal employee and partner use and within content distribution – are up-to-date with current requirements and enforced across the organization.

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