Designing Marketing Approval Workflows | What to Put in a Request, and How to Run It

You missed the placement window while waiting for approval. Or an ad went out with nobody's sign-off and became a problem. Marketing approval workflows break whenever they lean too far toward either speed or safety. This article covers how to set criteria for each type of approval, and how to write rules that keep the process moving.

Deciding by Spend Alone Fails

In most organisations, approval thresholds are set by amount. Up to a certain figure a manager signs; above it, a director.

That is fine for accounting purposes, but there are situations in marketing where it does not work.

Small spend, large risk

Advertising creative is the archetype. Production might cost very little, but if the expression causes offence it affects the whole company. A social post costs nothing at all, and the damage from a backlash cannot be converted into a figure.

Draw the approval line on spend alone and these things reach the public without anyone checking them.

Large spend, small risk

The reverse also occurs. Continuing an ad placement on the same terms as last year, or renewing an existing contract, involves almost nothing to decide even at a large figure.

Impose the same approval process on these every time and the procedure grows while nobody reads the content.

Four Categories of Approval

What needs approving in marketing divides into four types, each requiring a different lens.

1. Spending budget

Ad placements, tool contracts, outsourced work — anything where money moves. Here the amount-based threshold works straightforwardly.

What to check: does it fit within the budget, and is it proportionate to the expected return?

2. External messaging

Advertising creative, social posts, press releases, website copy — anything that reaches the outside world. The line has to be drawn independently of cost.

What to check: is it factually accurate, could it be misread, does it disparage competitors or any group? In regulated industries, the compliance check belongs here too.

3. Handling customer data

Connecting data to a new tool, sharing lists externally, adding fields to what you collect. Again, not measurable by spend.

Trying out a free tool and finding you have put customer data on an external server is a common accident.

4. Direction of the work

Entering a new channel, changing the target audience, shifting the message. Not individual execution but the policy itself.

This is closer to building consensus than to approval, and getting people in a room to discuss it is faster than circulating a document.

What a Request Should Contain

The key principle in designing a request form is not to add fields. Ask only for the minimum the approver needs to decide.

For a budget request, these fields suffice.

• What it is for: the campaign name and the specific use.
• How much: the total, and which budget line it comes from.
• What is expected: the anticipated effect and the basis for it.
• By when a decision is needed: the approval deadline.
• What happens if it is declined: the consequence of passing.

The fourth and fifth are commonly missing. Without them, the approver cannot judge priority and pushes the request down the pile.

Messaging approvals need different fields

When seeking approval for creative, showing the artefact is not enough. Add where it will appear, who will see it, and in what context it will be displayed.

The same wording lands differently depending on the placement. Most approver misjudgments trace back to this context being absent.

Rules That Keep It Moving

A designed workflow means nothing if it stalls in operation. Three rules need settling.

Delegation when the approver is away

The most common cause of stoppage. There will always be periods when the approver is travelling or on leave.

Is delegation allowed, or do you wait? If allowed, who is the delegate? Without settling this, each occurrence turns into an ad hoc negotiation.

Response deadline

Set how many working days a response takes. Without a deadline, waiting on approval becomes the permanent state.

Settle what happens when the deadline passes as well. Automatic approval, a reminder, or escalation? Leave that blank and the deadline becomes decorative.

The scope for retrospective approval

Marketing has moments that turn on speed: reacting to a competitor, riding a trend, taking a slot that just opened.

Requiring prior approval for everything loses those windows; allowing unlimited retrospective approval loses control.

The workable answer is to draw the line on both amount and content: below a certain figure and within existing policy, retrospective approval is permitted; everything else needs prior sign-off.

Three Signs Approval Has Become a Formality

• Nothing has ever been sent back: if everything passes, approval is not functioning as a judgment.
• Requests arrive immediately before execution: submitted at a point where refusal is impossible, approval is ceremony.
• Approvers cannot recall what they approved: the volume has turned it into processing.

If the third is present, it is time to narrow what requires approval. Raise the amount threshold, move routine items to blanket approval, and cut the volume.

Reducing the number of approvals is not loosening control. It is making room to spend time on what actually needs looking at.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many approvers is appropriate?

Two per request is the guide. Past three, nobody considers themselves the final decision-maker. Where genuinely different checks are needed, running them in parallel rather than in series shortens the elapsed time.

Too much gets sent back and nothing progresses

The criteria are probably not shared. If people know in advance what a request must satisfy, the quality of submissions rises. Collecting past rejection reasons into a checklist works well.

Do small teams need this?

At a size where everyone can see everything, a written workflow is unnecessary. But keep external messaging and customer data handling as things one person always reviews. Those two produce accidents regardless of scale.

Will a tool solve it?

Tracking requests and keeping history gets easier. But introduce a tool while the approval criteria remain vague and all you get is vague decisions made faster. Settling what you are checking comes first.

What Should Be Visible Before the Request Arrives

One reason approvals run slow is that the approver has no overall picture. Without knowing where this request sits against the budget, or how it relates to other campaigns, checking takes time.

Xtrategy manages campaign schedules alongside budget and KPIs on a single screen. When the situation is visible before the request arrives, approval becomes confirmation.

Summary

• Draw approval lines on spend alone and cheap but risky things pass unchecked.
• Sort what needs approval into budget, external messaging, customer data, and direction.
• Always require the approval deadline and the consequence of declining.
• For messaging approvals, include the context it will appear in, not just the artefact.
• Settle delegation, response deadlines, and the scope of retrospective approval in advance.
• If nothing is ever sent back, approval is not functioning as a judgment.

The first thing to do in designing an approval workflow is to set criteria other than money. Start by deciding one thing: who reviews external messaging, regardless of what it costs.