How to Execute a Flawless Marketing Process in Regulated Industries

Guest Post by Lianne Wade, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer specializing in regulated industries

Imagine you’re a Medicare health insurance marketer. You’ve spent months preparing your campaign for annual enrollment—but on October 15th your campaign isn’t launched. Why? Your new marketing claim hasn’t been approved by legal. You missed a step. Yikes! Your brand isn’t in front of consumers when they are shopping and switching for health insurance providers—and now your competitors have the advantage.

Don’t let this happen to you. Start with learning how to execute a flawless marketing process to achieve your objectives. It is not a luxury—it’s a necessity. It ensures your campaigns are compliant, reviewed by all necessary stakeholders, aligned with business goals, and most importantly – on time to meet those critical hard deadlines.

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Why This Is So Important for Regulated Industries

Marketing in regulated industries requires resilience and creativity. You don’t have the same freedoms that unregulated industries such as fashion and retail enjoy, which are all about innovation and creativity. You must navigate the complexities of the rules and regulations inherent in the health insurance, health care, and financial services industries which have strong government oversight. But you still need to design innovative media and creative strategies to meet your goals and compete effectively in these fast-paced and dynamic environments.

Whether you’re planning for a Medicare Annual Enrollment Period or developing communications for a bank merger, you must balance compliance with speed and strategy.

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Five Proven Strategies to Achieve a Smooth, Compliant Process

As a performance marketing agency team leader for brands such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare, Nationwide, and MassMutual, I’ve experienced firsthand how hard timelines and complex regulations create pressure. I’m sharing five strategies based on best practices from the agency world to help you stay compliant, on schedule, and set you up for success.

1. Get Input from Key Stakeholders

Start your marketing campaign planning with input from the right internal team members based on your unique situation. Stakeholders in areas such as marketing, sales, product, data analytics, UX/Technology and Legal and Compliance would provide the necessary information and guidance to develop a strong, compliant campaign, while also accommodating for the necessary timeframes for reviews and approvals. Here’s a summary of the key stakeholders that are most common and the direction and input needed from them:

Tip: Keep these stakeholders involved at key times throughout the process to ensure alignment, avoid delays, and quickly resolve issues as they arise.

2. Build and Maintain a Disclosures Marketing Playbook

One of the most useful tools for keeping everyone involved in the process “in the know” is a Disclosures Marketing Playbook. This working guide is typically developed by the agency team in collaboration with the client at the start of campaign planning and is frequently reviewed and updated. Typical content that is included::

• Approved legal language, including disclaimers for short and long form content
  
• Language to avoid
  
• Imagery do’s and don’ts
  
• Review timelines and escalation contacts
  

Once an initial draft is completed and approved by legal and compliance, share it with your clients, marketing, creative, UX/Technology and media teams. Update it regularly. It’s one of the simplest ways to reduce legal review delays.

3. Gain Creative Alignment

Everyone loves to weigh in on creative concepts and if this is done at the end of the process, it can be devastating to the final product and detrimental to your schedule.

To avoid this, present initial creative concepts that have been reviewed by the marketing team to Stakeholders such as Product, Sales, and Legal & Compliance. Include necessary background and rationale with the creative concepts to provide context to help sell these creative ideas effectively. Use these early reviews as a temperature check:

• Is the messaging compliant?
• Do the creative concepts represent the brand appropriately?
• Are there any red flags?
• What tweaks to the creative concepts are needed in order to keep the campaign on brand and within regulatory boundaries?

This proactive approach builds trust and saves time later, and will not derail you when you provide the final creative product to the stakeholders for a final approval before releasing for campaign launch.

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4. Establish Clear Project Milestones

Most marketing campaigns in regulated industries take 4–6 months to implement from initial briefing to launch in the market. Based on the input you obtain from your stakeholders, including any key milestones dates you receive from the sales and marketing teams, quickly build a project milestones schedule with timelines which cover all key areas of the marketing campaign process. Here’s an example milestones timeline based on my experience with complex, multi-channel marketing campaigns:

These timelines can overlap and may vary based on campaign scope and channels, but they offer a baseline for forward planning.

5. Create a Detailed Project Timeline

Once milestones are set, build a detailed project timeline for each key area of the process. This should:

• Include every step, owner, and due date
  
• Be updated regularly as priorities shift
  
• Live in a shared workspace or project management tool
  
• Be managed by a dedicated project lead
  
  

See the below detailed example of a marketing in regulated industries timeline that can be your single source of truth. It keeps everyone accountable and aligned.

Download .XLSX Version of this project timeline – free!

Task Name	Duration	Responsible
Health Insurance Open Enrollment Campaign	195d
Project Briefing Kick Off	5d	Client
Obtain all Stakeholders Information	3d	Client
Approve Campaign Brief	1d	Client
Media and Creative Strategy Kickoff	1d	Agency
Media and Measurement Strategy	50d
Present Media and Measurement Strategy, Flowchart & Projections	30d	Agency
Provide feedback	2d	Client
Updates to Strategy Presentation (R2)	2d	Agency
Approve Media & Measurement Strategy	1d	Client
Media Setup	15d	Agency
Data Analytics and Audience List	30d
Measurement Plan	10d	Agency
Provide audience list sizing and models profiles	10d	Client
Set up measurement KPIs, tracking and reporting dashboard	9d	Agency
Deliver 1P data to media partners	1d	Client
Creative Concepting	30d
Develop creative concepts	20d	Agency
Present concepts	1d	Agency
Revisions	2d	Agency
Present concepts R2 legal	1d	Agency
Legal review and provide comments	5d	Client
Share final concepts for approval	1d	Agency
Creative Production, e.g. Video	50d
Kickoff	1d	Agency
Storyboarding	7d	Agency
Share storyboards	1d	Agency
Provide feedback	3d	Client
Storyboard revisions	5d	Agency
Share revised storyboards	1d	Agency
Legal review, comments, approval	10d	Client
Rough cut editing	5d	Agency
Present rough cut	1d	Agency
Provide feedback	3d	Client
Rough cut revisions	5d	Agency
Approve	2d	Client
Color correction	1d	Agency
Final Rendering	2d	Agency
Files Release	3d	Agency
Website/UX Development	30d
Kickoff	1d	Agency
Creative/UX development – landing page wireframes	10d	Agency
Revisions	5d	Agency
Review with IT/Technology team for implementation	5d	Client
Revisions	2d	Agency
Final approval of creative	1d	Client
Release files to IT for implementation	5d	Agency
Final QA (including tags) in production environment and launch	1d	Client

Final Thought for Successful Marketing in Regulated Industries

When marketing in regulated industries, the cost of missteps is high—missed deadlines, non-compliance, and lost business. But with a structured, strategic approach, marketing can thrive within these constraints.

By engaging stakeholders early (and often), creating clear legal guidelines, reviewing concepts initially and then before final production, and building a solid milestones and project timeline, you’ll set yourself—and your campaigns—up for success.

If you’d like support navigating the marketing process in your regulated industry, I’d be happy to connect.

Let’s make sure your next marketing campaign launches on time, on message, and on goal.