Online Brand Marketing Compliance Management Solution

While marketers focus on crafting high-performing campaigns, managing compliance requirements can be complex and time-consuming. That’s where a robust marketing compliance software solution comes in, not just to monitor brand assets, but to ensure every piece of content meets legal obligations before it goes live.

In this blog, we’ll explore what makes a powerful marketing compliance management solution and why it’s essential for today’s marketing teams.

What is Marketing Compliance?

Marketing compliance means following a set of guidelines to keep your brand marketing consistent across all consumer platforms. This involves adhering to external regulations, laws, and industry standards that govern marketing practices. Following marketing compliance ensures that your marketing materials, advertisements, and strategies align with legal requirements and ethical guidelines. It covers everything from truthful advertising, data privacy, consumer protection, and fair use of endorsements and testimonials.

Why is this so crucial? 

• Firstly, it helps organizations avoid the risks of violating regulations and laws. Non-compliance can result in fines, legal action, and severe reputational damage.
• Secondly, marketing compliance protects consumers from misleading information and the misuse of their data. That’s why governments and other entities make, disseminate, and enforce marketing compliance rules.

For instance, in the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) actively monitors advertising to prevent deceptive practices. They have strict guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, demanding disclosure of links between an endorser and the product. Non-compliance in such cases can result in substantial penalties. 

Apart from the penalties, non-compliance can also result in serious reputational harm. Below are some of the real-world examples that show the impact of marketing non-compliance: 

• The CNIL of France fined Google €50 million for not meeting the GDPR’s transparency and consent criteria.
• Luxembourg’s CNPD fined Amazon €746 million for GDPR breaches linked to targeted advertising.
• Facebook had to pay $5 billion in a settlement with the FTC for data privacy breaches.

Since there is much at stake, most professionals and marketers use marketing compliance software to help them develop foolproof marketing compliance strategies. 

Let’s have a look at marketing compliance software and its types. 

You might find this interesting: What are the Five Reasons for Compliance Failure

What is Marketing Compliance Software? 

Marketing compliance software is a digital tool designed to assist companies in managing and following marketing guidelines, brand rules, and internal policies across all their marketing efforts. 

This software automates and simplifies the work connected with checking marketing material to guarantee it meets legal standards (including advertising standards and data privacy laws), industry-specific rules, and your brand’s visual and messaging guidelines.

Essential Features of Online Brand Marketing Compliance Management Solutions

To effectively handle compliance of online brand marketing, a strong software program should give a full set of tools meant to simplify systems and guarantee adherence to the complained guidelines. These are the key features you need to look for in marketing compliance management software.

1. Centralization of Comments and Approvals

Among the most important elements for efficient workflows, this feature offers one single, integrated location for all comments, changes, and ultimate approvals concerning marketing material. 

Instead of having feedback scattered across multiple email threads, a centralized platform houses all comments and suggestions in one place. All team members can access and add to the same conversation within the platform rather than random emails and different communication threads. This makes the approval process more transparent and efficient, minimizing delays and keeping everyone aligned on the final content.

2. Review and Approval Workflows

Customizable review and approval workflows are the basis of a complaint marketing strategy. These workflows help businesses define specific stages that content must pass through, with the assigned people or groups in charge of every stage review and permission. This structured approach ensures accountability and prevents content from being published without proper supervision. It also integrates compliance checks at key intervals, minimizing the risk of publishing non-compliant materials.

For example, once the marketing team creates a draft, it could automatically route to the legal department for review, then to the brand team for visual consistency, and finally to a senior manager for final approval.

3. Secure Guest Reviewing

It is increasingly necessary to include an external stakeholder in your review process, whether that be legal, agency, or partner review. The secure guest review feature offers you the ability to provide external readers with secure access to designated content without providing full access to the platform. 

Thus, if you are working on a campaign with an external advertising agency, instead of sharing sensitive marketing materials via email, you can invite them as “guest reviewers.”

They can access the specific creative assets within the platform, provide their feedback, and see the approval status without accessing your entire internal system.

4. Easy Collaboration

Collaboration is an essential element of marketing. Features like commenting, annotating, and real-time feedback allow team members to communicate seamlessly. This eliminates lengthy email chains, leading to a faster and more efficient feedback exchange and subsequent improvements. All stakeholders can contribute insights and suggestions directly on the content, improving the review process and enhancing content quality.

5. Document and File Referencing

The ability to link and reference relevant documents and files within the platform is crucial for maintaining continuity and adherence to brand style guides and legal requirements.

With this feature, reviewers can directly view the brand style guide, legal disclaimers, previous approvals, or other vital information in the content review process. This provides the context for good decisions and guarantees that the team follows the established plan.

6. Compliance Monitoring Tools

A compliance monitoring tool identifies potential issues before content goes live. This feature automatically scans marketing content for compliance against pre-established rules, regulations, and brand guidelines. It then provides a flag for any potential violations. 

This feature helps identify compliance issues early in the content creation process, minimizing the risk of publishing non-compliant materials. It saves time and resources and prevents potential legal or reputational damage.

7. User Access Controls

In a large organization, different departments have different levels of access needs. Better user access controls maintain data security and ensure that team members only have access to information and functionalities related to their roles and responsibilities. Granular permissions allow administrators to define specific access levels, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data and ensuring secure compliance management.

8. Comprehensive Activity Logs

Detailed activity logs provide a complete audit trail of all actions taken within the platform. This includes who accessed what content, when, what changes were made, and who approved those changes. These logs are key for accountability and transparency, and safely demonstrating compliance with regulatory obligations, providing a verifiable record of the entire life cycle of the content.

9. Enterprise-grade Security

Protecting sensitive brand data and user data is a top priority. A compliance management solution for online brand marketing must include enterprise-grade security features. These should include strong data encryption in transit and at rest, secure access mechanisms, and routine security audits. 

This protects sensitive brand and user data, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and guarding against potential security breaches.

10. Audit Reports

Generating detailed audit reports helps demonstrate compliance and understand the effectiveness of compliance processes. These reports summarize review and approval activities, identify bottlenecks, and track compliance metrics. They can be used for audits and continuous improvement.

If you face a regulatory inquiry, such as a GDPR audit for your online advertising campaigns, sorting through emails and spreadsheets can be chaotic. A compliance platform instantly generates detailed audit reports, streamlining the process. These reports will give a detailed overview within a specific timeframe, clearly outlining the date and time of each approval and the names of the individuals who provided the approval.

Don’t miss out on this: People, Process, and Technology: The Three Pillars of Effective Compliance Management

Choosing the Best Compliance Tool for Your Marketing Team

After all these top options, if you are still confused about choosing the right marketing compliance tool, then do the following things to make a final decision: 

Assess Your Marketing Workflow

The perfect tool will fit directly into your marketing workflow. Think about how the team develops, reviews, approves, and publishes content. If the tool aligns with your existing workflows, you can adopt it more easily and operate more efficiently.

Look for Specific Compliance Features

Identify the compliance challenges your marketing team is attempting to address. Do you require features that help manage GDPR consent, compliance with advertising standards, and/or compliance with data privacy laws? Pick features that directly address your highest-priority compliance needs.

Integration Capabilities

A good compliance tool should integrate easily with your normal marketing platforms, including your email marketing software, CRM system, and analytics software. The ability to integrate ensures data consistency, assists with workflows, and creates a complete picture of your marketing efforts.

Ease of Use and Accessibility

The tool should be intuitive and relatively easy for your marketing team to learn and use. Anything too complicated or cumbersome will likely face resistance and hinder compliance efforts. Prioritize a simple user interface that requires the least amount of training.

Consider Scalability

Your business will grow, and the regulatory guidelines will also be constantly updated. Select a compliance tool that can grow with your organization and be flexible or responsive to new or changing regulations. Verify that the platform can accommodate future increases in content and/or data volume as your marketing programs expand.

Best Practices for Marketing Compliance

You need to follow best compliance practices in your online brand marketing to protect your organization’s operations and maintain customer trust. Here are a few tips that you can follow to stay compliant while executing your marketing strategies. 

Stay Updated With the Ever-changing Regulations

Marketing regulations frequently change, and new laws emerge daily. Businesses like yours should stay aware of these changes and incorporate regular reviews and updates into their compliance processes. Keep yourself updated with industry regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, and FTC guidelines, to ensure your campaigns are always compliant.

Implement Clear Approval Processes

Set up structured approval workflows that involve all relevant departments, including legal, compliance, and branding teams. This will make sure that all marketing materials undergo proper examination before going live.

Centralize Documentation and Communication

Use a centralized platform for storing marketing content, approvals, and compliance-related communications. This minimizes the risk of overlooking important details and helps bring transparency throughout the process.

Focus on Data Privacy

Prioritize consumer privacy and data protection. Always ask for explicit consent before collecting personal data, be transparent about how data is used, and ensure compliance with global data protection laws.

Train Your Team Regularly

Conduct regular compliance training for all marketing team members. This will help them understand the latest regulations and develop a strong compliance culture within your organization.

Use Marketing Compliance Software

Use CompliancOps to automate compliance tracking, streamline workflows, and reduce human error. These tools help ensure that marketing campaigns remain aligned with legal requirements and company policies.

Challenges in Marketing Compliance

While marketing compliance is necessary for protecting your brand and maintaining customer trust, it comes with its own set of challenges. Here are some common hurdles organizations face when managing marketing compliance:

• Constantly Changing Regulations: Keeping up with the constantly changing marketing laws and guidelines can be challenging and time-consuming.
• Complexity of Global Compliance: Managing compliance across multiple regions, each with its own set of regulations, can lead to confusion and legal risks.
• Balancing Creativity with Compliance: Striking a balance between innovative marketing campaigns and adhering to strict compliance guidelines can limit creativity.
• Tracking and Reporting Compliance: Manually maintaining accurate records of approvals, revisions, and feedback can be inefficient, leading to errors and difficulties in generating audit trails.
• Dispersed Collaboration Across Teams: Miscommunication and fragmented workflows between marketing, legal, and compliance teams can delay approvals and increase the risk of publishing non-compliant content.

Managing marketing compliance can be complex, from staying updated on regulations to balancing creativity with legal requirements. These challenges can slow down teams and increase risks.

VComply simplifies this process, improving workflows and automating compliance checks so your team can stay aligned with legal standards and focus on creating impactful campaigns.

Achieve Brand Compliance With VComply

When it comes to selecting a compliance tool that addresses the factors we’ve discussed- seamless workflow integration, specific compliance features, robust integration, ease of use, and scalability – VComply emerges as an ideal fit for your marketing team. With features like automated workflows, secure collaboration, and detailed audit trails, VComply allows you to focus on creating impactful campaigns while maintaining full confidence in your compliance posture.

Key Features:

• Centralized Compliance Tracking: Consolidates all regulatory requirements for easy management.
• Real-time Alerts: Get instant notifications for updates, audits, or regulatory changes.
• Audit Trails: Ensure transparent and easily accessible records of compliance activities.
• Automated Workflows: Streamline task management and approvals for faster compliance.
• Risk Identification: Proactively monitor potential compliance gaps to reduce risks.

Pricing Structure:

VComply offers three main pricing plans, each customizable based on an organization’s size and needs. A free demo and 21-day free trial is available for all plans.

• Starter GRC Suite: Customizable for startups and non-profits, offering compliance, risk, policy management, and audit management
• Pro GRC Suite: Starts at $1,000/month, includes all Starter features plus advanced risk management, real-time analytics, and multi-location support.
• Enterprise GRC Suite: Fully customizable for large organizations with complex workflows. Includes all Pro features plus custom domain, SSO, dedicated account manager, and unlimited implementation.

Go from manual to managed with VComply. Start a 21-day free trial today. 

Final Thoughts

Regulatory bodies are strict when it comes to punishing companies for non-compliance with marketing regulations. Plus, today’s customers also care about compliance. They only trust the companies that follow the laws created to protect them. 

This makes marketing compliance necessary and ongoing compliance monitoring more crucial to avoid legal risks and maintain customer trust.

ComplianceOps by VComply simplifies compliance monitoring by automating the manual tasks within your existing frameworks and spreadsheets. It serves as a centralized system of record that scales effortlessly across teams, departments, and locations. Ready to get started? Book a Free demo today.