There are few things more annoying than working hard to create valuable content only to struggle getting it approved by your client or the right people.
When deadlines are approaching, you find yourself sending follow-ups and rushing the feedback and revisions stage. And that’s when mistakes start falling through the cracks.
Without a proper marketing approval process in place, it’s easy to confuse each person’s feedback or edits and the latest versions of each post or marketing asset – especially when your content exchanges hands with multiple people.
We’ve all been there, and it’s a pain.
Let’s look at what really happens when you don’t have a marketing approval workflow and why it’s so important to have one for social media content and marketing assets.
1. Sending endless follow-ups and waiting around for marketing approvals
How many times have you proudly sent your work on time only to have the client or approver ghost you? Then you have to start sending follow-ups, and questioning how many you should send without annoying them.
Having to follow up with clients or approvers doesn’t help your relationships with them either.
It’s much better to spend the precious time you have with them talking about strategy and furthering the relationship, rather than reminding them about what’s pending their approval.
Without a defined approval process, it becomes too easy to spend extra time sending reminders and waiting for people to respond rather than working on more important tasks.
Not to mention, it causes missed deadlines. When you can’t get anything approved in a timely manner, you face a constant struggle to keep up with a content schedule or plan.
2. Feedback and edits are scattered throughout different versions
When you need to get content or marketing assets approved by multiple people, things can get even messier without a defined marketing approval workflow.
One person might change some wording in the first version, and then another person makes some changes without looking at any of the previous edits.
Feedback and corrections can easily scatter across multiple communications channels, whether it’s email attachments, Slack messages, or even text messages.
Without a clear approval workflow, it’s only a matter of time before someone leaves feedback on or revises the wrong version, creating extra work to figure out who approved what and which is the latest version.
3. Mistakes are slipping through the cracks
One of the worst consequences of not having a marketing approval workflow is when it causes mistakes to slip through the cracks.
Whether it’s a simple typo or a bigger blunder, the last thing you want to do is accidentally publish something that wasn’t approved and upset a client.
We’ve all seen brands publish content online with mistakes that could have easily been avoided or images/videos that clearly weren’t approved.
Typically, mistakes happen when assets miss a step in the approval process.
For example, not everyone who needs to approve content before it goes live saw it, or an approver’s feedback came in too late after the content was already published.
How an automated approval workflow can end the madness
If you are dealing with any of these pains and it’s leading to inefficient work or unhappy clients, then it’s time to take a step back and put a workflow in place that will help organize and automate feedback and approvals.
An automated approval workflow takes care of the menial tasks for you, such as sending your work to clients or stakeholders for feedback and then following up with them until everything is approved.
Each approver can easily view the work, send feedback to the person who created the content, or automatically send the content to the next approver in the defined workflow. This eliminates the need to send messy email chains with reattached files, as well as manual reminders.
An automated approval workflow also ensures that you’re always working on the latest version of any content. It eliminates the possibility of outdated versions making the rounds so you can be certain your team and clients always see the correct version.
The result is more time for meaningful work and nurturing relationships with your clients or stakeholders.
Create an automated approval workflow that fits your needs with Gain
Approval workflows come in all shapes and sizes.
It doesn’t matter how simple or complex your team or client workflows are because Gain allows you to create automated approval workflows that are completely customized to fit the way you work.
With Gain, you can add as many people and rounds of approval as you need and decide who approves what and in what order. Content moves automatically to the next person for review or approval, so you can say goodbye to sending those manual follow-up emails.
Gain also keeps a complete record of all conversations and feedback on each social media post or marketing asset. That means you’ll know exactly which person changed or approved your work, bringing more transparency into the approval process and improving communication overall.
You’ll no longer have to waste valuable time sending out status updates on each asset or discussing issues that have already been resolved.
Finally, Gain allows you to grant different levels of publishing and approving access to each of your accounts. This way, your accounts stay secure, and no one can publish anything without the right level of access or approval.
When each person knows their role in the approval workflow, it’s a lot easier to avoid mistakes!
Gain is the easiest and most flexible tool to automate gathering feedback and marketing approvals from your clients or stakeholders, and it’s specifically designed for any type of marketing asset. Start a free trial and save precious time with an automated approval workflow for all your marketing content!
