A Safe Approval Process for Marketing Content Before It Goes Live

Approve the risk, not just the wording

A routine photo of the shop and a post announcing a price discount do not carry the same risk. Create three approval levels so that low-risk content can move quickly while offers, regulated claims, customer stories, and sensitive complaints receive appropriate scrutiny.

Three approval levels

Level	Examples	Required review
A: routine	General service reminder, approved behind-the-scenes photo	Content owner checks spelling, facts and asset rights
B: commercial	Price, discount, event date, availability, service promise	Operations or pricing owner confirms details; marketing owner approves copy
C: sensitive	Health-related claims, customer-identifying story, legal complaint, crisis response	Business owner or qualified reviewer approves before publication

This is a recommended internal control. The correct level depends on the business and applicable laws.

Approval sequence

1. Brief: identify audience, purpose, channel, deadline, offer validity, and desired action.
2. Fact check: verify prices, dates, stock, service boundaries, and contact details against the source owner.
3. Policy and privacy check: confirm the asset and wording comply with platform policies and applicable law. Do not use a customer’s name, image, or story without the necessary permission.
4. Copy and accessibility check: ensure the message is understandable on a phone, image text is legible, and the call to action works.
5. Approval: record the approver and version. “Looks good” in a chat thread is not a reliable audit trail unless it clearly identifies the approved version.
6. Publish and verify: check the live item, link, date, image crop, and destination.

A version-control rule

Use filenames such as 2026-10-festival-hours-v03-approved. Keep one final approved version in a shared location. If the price or date changes after approval, approval is invalid for that field and the relevant owner must reconfirm it.

A lightweight approval record

• Content ID:
• Channel and planned date:
• Facts confirmed by:
• Risk level:
• Approver and timestamp:
• Approved version:
• Live check completed by:
• Correction required:

Avoid two common failures

First, do not ask every employee to approve every post; this creates delay without clear accountability. Second, do not let the creator approve claims that only the operations or finance owner can verify. The person closest to the copy is not always the person who knows whether the offer is true.

Next step

Apply the process to the next ten pieces of content. If approvals repeatedly stall at the same step, fix ownership or missing information rather than simply asking people to respond faster.

Sources

• Business Profile posts content policy — Supports the need to check published post content against platform policy.
• Guidelines for representing your business on Google — Supports accurate and relevant business information.