Marketing compliance is essential for an organization’s long-term success as it ensures that businesses operate within legal and ethical boundaries, avoiding potential pitfalls.
And, in today’s world, where news travels fast, it’s increasingly important to protect your business, as negative effects can be devastating. Non-compliance can result in hefty fines that strain financial resources and can diminish a brand’s reputation.
But, compliance is not just about protecting your business. It’s about consumer protection as well. By incorporating compliance in your marketing, you can protect both your business and customers.
With these increased concerns, it might feel overwhelming, but we have your back with some strategies to improve compliance in marketing.
Here are marketing compliance tips to help your organization mitigate compliance risks.
Develop a Comprehensive Compliance Program
Ensuring compliance becomes challenging without clear guidelines for addressing compliance marketing strategies.
Develop a comprehensive compliance program that outlines your organization’s dedicated compliance strategy and commitment to upholding both legal and industry regulations.
It may be helpful to integrate training sessions and meetings to review the compliance program as needed. This guarantees that everyone within the organization is well-informed and aligned with the compliance program.
Form Dedicated Compliance Teams or Legal Teams
Once a compliance program is established, it’s crucial to appoint a compliance team to consistently prioritize and uphold compliance within your organization.
This compliance team and/or legal team will be responsible for reviewing marketing materials and verifying they meet compliance standards. This will also allow for smooth integration of the program, as it becomes clear whom to inquire, preventing information from being misunderstood.
Know Your Compliance Officer
The next step is to designate a compliance officer responsible for overseeing and enforcing adherence to marketing compliance standards.
The officer’s efforts will maintain the integrity of the organization’s practices and uphold industry regulations. Not only does this minimize compliance risks and potential compliance issues, but it also fosters a culture of compliance and responsible business practices within the compliance team.
Embed Compliance Within Culture
Creating a culture of compliance starts with informing and setting the standards for your organization. Involving all employees in understanding and contributing to marketing compliance efforts sets a shared commitment to compliance that creates a shared sense of responsibility.
Once integrated, employees are more likely to understand the importance of compliance and will view it as a vital aspect of success instead of a burden. Keep everyone informed on the culture and expectations of this commitment, and keep it positive and collaborative.
To learn more about establishing a culture of compliance, check out this podcast.
Monitor the Ever-Changing Compliance Landscape
In an ever-changing business environment, regulations are continuously changing as well. Focus on staying up to date with changes in compliance standards in your industry. You may need to adjust your marketing practices and/or compliance strategies.
Consider scheduling regular meetings with the compliance team to discuss these changes and how to implement them within your organization. Always keep in mind that staying informed is crucial to avoiding possible compliance issues.
Create Streamlined and Documented Approval Processes
In order to implement compliance in marketing, an organization should embed a rigorous review and approval process. All marketing materials, including advertisements, email marketing campaigns, and social media posts, should be reviewed within this process.
This will help spot any non-compliant materials before they are released, preventing risks that diminish your brand.
The approval process can be very time-consuming, especially if your compliance team is small. Consider using a vault system, such as Dropbox, containing pre-approved marketing materials or using technology to streamline this process.
Educate Your Marketing Team
As previously mentioned, regular training and meetings may be helpful to ensure that your marketing team is educated on compliance best practices and consumer protection laws.
The marketing team might not be aware of all the potential legal pitfalls and preventative actions associated with marketing. Collaborating with the marketing team will prevent unintentional false advertising that these pitfalls can create.
To learn more about how to effectively collaborate with your marketing team, check out this blog.
Consistent Compliance Training
As previously mentioned, training may be helpful when getting started, but also consider ongoing compliance training.
Direct these trainings to the appropriate teams—including compliance, marketing, and sales. These trainings should involve anyone who regularly communicates with consumers. Providing ongoing training fosters a deep understanding of compliance principles that help effectively integrate compliance into your marketing efforts.
Transparent Data Handling
Practicing compliance requires protecting your customers, including how their data is handled. Customer data should be handled ethically and transparently, following data protection regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This involves ensuring secure storage and access controls and adhering to the principles of data minimization by only collecting necessary information.
Regular audits and reviewing of your data protection practices should be made to align with the changing regulations. Taking a responsive approach to customer protection further solidifies a commitment to maintaining trust, safeguarding privacy, and upholding legal regulations.
Document Compliance Efforts
Maintaining comprehensive records of your compliance program’s efforts, including approval processes and compliance reviews, is very important. Not only does this practice enhance the organization’s credibility, but it also shows a true commitment to compliance standards that build on its culture. This provides a business with the tools to safeguard, back up their efforts, and easily transfer this information across departments.
Regular Compliance Audits
Integrating compliance in your marketing is an ongoing, ever-evolving commitment. This dynamic landscape requires organizations to conduct periodic compliance audits to identify any potential areas of non-compliance and take corrective actions promptly. A proactive approach reinforces adherence to standards and ensures the alignment of marketing strategies with the regulatory framework.
Utilize Marketing Compliance Technology
Consider implementing a marketing compliance technology to help automate tedious tasks, significantly improve the scope of oversight, and streamline compliance efforts, allowing you to save time and resources that can be used towards other high-impact business objectives.
This approach eliminates hard-to-scale solutions tailored to individual channels and instead offers a cohesive automation-driven system that delivers a depth of coverage that is essential for comprehensive compliance.
Discover how PerformLine can seamlessly integrate compliance into your marketing efforts by speaking to an expert.
Kickstart Your Marketing Compliance Program with PerformLine
By following these tips for marketing compliance and integrating them into your practices, you can significantly improve compliance in your marketing efforts, mitigate compliance risks, and uphold consumer protection standards.
With PerformLine’s omni-channel compliance monitoring platform, your organization can streamline the discovery and monitoring of your brand everywhere it appears across channels, including the web, calls, emails, messages, social media, and documents.
Speak with our team today to optimize your compliance marketing strategies and mitigate risk.
Gianna Kennedy