Content marketing in London: the approval route sets the calendar, so build the production line around it

The thing that decides whether a content programme ships is not the writing. It is the route a draft takes to approval. Work out who has to see it before publication, how long each of them takes, and what they are permitted to approve, then design the production line backwards from that. A calendar built without that step slips in its first month and gets cancelled in its sixth, and in London, where most of this budget comes from professional and financial services, the approval route is longer than almost anybody plans for.

What follows is the order to do it in: find out which of the three approval routes you are on, build a production line that takes almost nothing from the expert, commission the assets that answer buying questions rather than a weekly blog, get the copyright assigned to you in writing, and agree up front what you will measure in month two when the sale closes in month nine.

Who buys content here, and what they are actually buying

Walk through the London content briefs that get funded and the same sort of business keeps appearing: law firms, accountants, management and technical consultancies, asset and wealth managers, insurers and brokers, recruiters, and business software firms selling to all of the above. They are not short of expertise. They are short of expertise written down. The person who could answer the buyer's question in two minutes bills by the hour and has no gap in the diary, and that, not writing ability, is the constraint the whole programme has to be built around.

Three approval routes, and what each does to the calendar

Route	Who signs	What the rules require	Effect on timing
Unregulated commercial	One marketing owner	Accuracy, and evidence for any claim	Days. Publish weekly if you want to
Professional body oversight	A partner or compliance lead	Publicity has to be accurate and not misleading, client confidentiality protected, consent obtained before any client is identified, no suggestion that an outcome is certain	Weeks. Plan a pipeline, not a calendar
Financial services authorised	Somebody with authority to approve promotions	A financial promotion has to be fair, clear and not misleading, identifiable as a promotion, carry the risk information its subject demands, and be approved before it goes out, with records kept	Weeks, and some pieces never clear. Write that into the plan

Two practical notes. The approval step belongs in the schedule with a named approver and a date, not discovered in week three. And if two routes apply, which happens in a firm with both a regulated and an unregulated arm, keep two separate pipelines rather than slowing everything to the pace of the strictest one.

A production line that takes almost nothing from the expert

The model that survives contact with a busy professional is a standing recorded conversation rather than a request for a draft. It works like this.

• A recurring slot. Half an hour in the same person's diary every fortnight, treated like a client meeting. Not a request, an appointment.
• Questions sent ahead. The writer sends four or five questions the day before, taken from real enquiries and first sales calls. The expert thinks on the way in and does not prepare anything.
• The writer runs it and records it. The expert talks, is interrupted, is asked to explain the thing they just assumed. One slot usually yields raw material for two or three pieces.
• The expert never writes. That is the whole point. Their only other job is one pass over a near final draft.
• One review round, with a checklist. Give reviewers specific questions: is this factually right, is anything confidential, does any claim need evidence, is there anything you would not say to a client. A checklist produces decisions. An empty comment box produces three more rounds.
• A stated deadline rule. Agree in advance what happens if a reviewer does not respond by the date. Without that rule, drafts sit.

What to commission when the sale takes six months

Not a weekly blog. On a long cycle the pages that earn are the ones a buyer reads while deciding, and most firms have never written them.

• A how it works page in the firm's own words: what happens on day one, who you will deal with, what you need to provide.
• A page for each service that treats price honestly, even if the honest answer is a method and a range of factors rather than a number.
• A sector note for each of the three sectors you genuinely win in, written so somebody in that sector can tell you have done it before.
• Two or three case notes with written consent, built around the problem and the decision rather than the outcome.
• One answer page for every question that comes up on a first call. These are the pieces that get found, quoted and forwarded.
• The blog is where the remainder goes. It is not the programme.

Rights, which London content contracts get wrong constantly

Under United Kingdom copyright law the person who writes something owns the copyright in it unless they wrote it as your employee in the course of their employment, or they have assigned it to you in writing. A freelancer's invoice is not an assignment, and neither is an agency's statement of work that only mentions delivery. So put a written assignment of copyright in the contract, with a waiver of moral rights where you need to edit or republish freely, and take delivery of the source files, the data behind any chart, and the licences for every image. An unlicensed stock photograph is the invoice nobody budgets for, and it arrives years later.

Measuring a programme against a long sale

Month two cannot show pipeline, so agree what it will show instead and say so before the first invoice.

• Early: pieces published against plan, approval time per piece, and whether the expert slots happened.
• By month four: impressions and clicks on the pages that answer buying questions, which search terms they are being found for, and which pages get shared internally by prospects.
• By month six: enquiries that name something you published, and sales calls that start further along because the prospect already read the pricing page.
• By month nine and after: pipeline influenced, and coverage of the named accounts you set out to reach.

Sign off, rights and timing: the questions London content buyers ask

Should we hire a specialist writer or a good generalist?

A generalist who is genuinely good at interviewing beats a subject specialist who cannot get a partner to talk. For regulated or technical subjects, look for somebody who can read your own source documents without a translator, and test that before the retainer with one paid piece.

How long should sign off take?

Set the target at a few working days for an unregulated piece and up to a fortnight where a compliance approval is needed, then measure it. Approval time is a number worth reporting every month, because it is usually the thing holding the programme back.

Can we publish client work as a case study?

With written consent, and with care about anything confidential. Where consent is not available, write the same piece about the problem and the method with the client unnamed and the identifying detail changed. It does most of the same work.

Do we own the copy an agency wrote for us?

Only if the contract assigns it. Check the agreement you already have, and if there is no assignment clause, ask for one before the next piece rather than after the relationship ends.

What is a realistic publishing rhythm for a firm like ours?

Less often than most plans say, and more consistently. A good piece every fortnight that answers a question buyers actually ask will outperform four weak ones, and your approval route may well decide the answer for you.

Which of your pages gets used when a buyer asks an assistant

The questions your answer pages were written for are now being typed into assistants as often as into a search box, and the reply is assembled from a handful of pages the assistant chose to draw on. For a firm that has spent a year publishing, the useful thing to know is not how much of it was read but which pieces are being used as the source, and for which questions. That tells you which of your subjects you are already the reference on, and which ones somebody else is answering on your behalf. Which of your pieces the assistants are citing, and for which questions, is what AI Knows Us reports.