What Your Fractional CMO Wishes You Knew About the Content Approval Process

Date: June 9, 2026

Reading time: 10 minutes

Key Takeaways

• Good content can still get sent back. Fit into the brand, the quarter's goals, and the channel matters more than how brilliant a piece looks on its own.

• In regulated industries like healthcare, compliance can wipe out two thirds of a content calendar overnight. Ask about the rules before you post, not after.

• A trend is only worth chasing if you like who started it, it fits your brand, and it will actually land with your specific audience.

• A second set of eyes matters more, not less, in the AI era. Get direction and feedback in writing.

• Creators who want to think like a CMO need the business goals, not just the marketing or social metrics.

• Even a 'bad performing' piece of content holds diagnostic value. Check delivery, audience overlap, and organic versus paid fit before writing it off.

• New EU rules starting this August will require disclosure when AI is used in content, a shift most brands are not talking about yet.

The Black Box Between "Hit Submit" and "Published"content

You wrote the post. You designed the graphic. You filmed the reel. You hit submit, and then someone above you made a decision. Approved it. Changed it. Killed it. Or quietly let it die in a folder somewhere.

Most of the time, you never find out why.

In a recent episode of Strategy Talks, I sat down with someone who has lived on both sides of that moment. Anna Geffert started out as a creator. Now she is the one in the room making those calls, working as a fractional CMO for clients across three continents, including a number of healthcare and wellness brands with strict compliance rules to navigate.

I wanted to know exactly what goes through her head when content lands on her desk, because if you are the one creating and you are not the one publishing, that gap can feel like a mystery.

Here is what she told me.

What a Fractional CMO Is Actually Looking For in your content

Anna's first point set the tone for the whole conversation: content is visible, and that is both its biggest strength and its biggest problem.

“Everyone, meaning the founder, the salesperson, whoever else is on the team, is going to have an opinion on it,” Anna said. “And it's not founded in any kind of marketing experience. It's just, I like it, I don't like it, make it pop.”

“I don't want a perfect puzzle piece that doesn't fit in anywhere.”  — Anna Geffert

That is the real standard Anna applies. A piece of content can be well made and still get shelved if it does not fit the brand, the quarter's goals, or the current context. Maybe the founder shifted priorities the day before and nobody told the creator. Maybe the piece is genuinely brilliant, just not for right now.

When that happens, Anna does not just say no and move on. “A good CMO should actually tell you about those things,” she said, “not just shut down completely, so you know what's going on and you know you can change something.” She also turns the question back on herself first: was the brief clear enough? Did the creator actually have what they needed, or is the miss on her end?

That question, whether the brief was good enough, is one I've learned the hard way too.

“For longer pieces of content, a video script or a blog article from a transcript, I do the brief and make sure I have the right angle. There's five big ideas in here, but what angle are we going to go with? Because we can't do them all.”  — Dorien Morin-van Dam

The Fastest Way to Get Your Content Shelved

Ask Anna what gets a piece of content sent back immediately, and the answer is not bad writing. It is compliance.

Anna works with several healthcare brands, and the regulatory framework in Europe is strict. When she onboarded a new client last October, she went through the existing Instagram feed and had to shelve two thirds of it. Not because it was poorly made, but because it would have ended in a lawsuit.

Her first question in a moment like that is never who wrote this. It's whether this person was given the right brief, whether they actually have experience in this field, and whether the brand is even allowed to say this in the first place.

The second fast way to get content shelved is a brand voice mismatch. If the brand guide calls for a warm and reassuring tone and the copy leans into fear tactics, which Anna noted is common in healthcare advertising, that is an automatic rejection. “Those two things do not align,” she said. “So, nope, right back to you.”

Should You Jump on the Trend?

Trending content is tempting, and it gets harder to justify the closer your brand sits to a regulated industry. Anna's framework for deciding whether to chase a trend comes down to three questions:

• Do we like the person who started it?

• Is it aligned with our brand?

• Is it actually going to land with the audience we're trying to reach?

If the answer to all three is yes, there may be a way to frame it, even in a regulated space. Sometimes that means going organic instead of paid, simply because of how enforcement works.

For startups moving fast, without the long approval chains larger companies deal with, Anna sees real opportunity here. Healthcare just comes with more inspection along the way.

Getting content Right in a New, Regulated Industry

If you are a content creator stepping into an industry like healthcare for the first time, Anna's advice starts with the brand's responsibility, not yours. “It's on the brand to provide that content,” she said, “to not just assume everyone knows the ins and outs of that industry.”

But she does not let creators off the hook either. If you want to build a long-term career in wellness, healthcare, or supplements, do your own research. And do not assume the rules are the same everywhere. Europe has a general framework, but individual countries interpret and enforce it very differently. “At the end of the day, it's still your profile that's associated with it,” Anna said.

“You do not want that kind of scrutiny on your content in general, because for you, it's not just one brand. It's your face and your own business.”

Why a Second Set of Eyes on Content Matters More in the AI Era

I asked Anna how many layers of protection a solo content creator should build in: an editor, a fractional CMO, even someone from sales taking a look before something goes live.

Her answer was immediate: always. “Especially when now you have to assume that part of it may be done with AI or with the help of AI,” she said. “Having a real person that knows the context just have a look at it, I think is always important, from the company side and the creator side.”

“Get everything in writing.”  — Anna Geffert

That advice matters even more given what is coming later this year. Starting in August, companies in the European Union will be required to disclose when AI was used to help produce a piece of content, including which tools were used. Anna was candid that enforcement details are still fuzzy, but the direction is clear: audiences do not respond well to content they know is AI generated, and brands in trust based niches like healthcare should be building an internal AI policy now rather than waiting to be told to.

There is a tension underneath that policy conversation that creators rarely get to see. Anna shared a moment from a recent meeting where a founder told her, flatly, that he expected content to be ten times cheaper within six months because of AI.

“In six months, I expect content to be ten times cheaper.”  — a founder Anna works with

Anna's answer in the room was measured. “If the quality stays the same, sure, up the frequency.” Privately, she knew that expectation was far from realistic. It's a useful reminder that the pressure a creator feels from a client or a CMO is often just a smaller echo of the pressure that CMO is absorbing from the founder or the board.

How to Start Thinking Like a CMO

For any content creator hoping to move up into a strategist or CMO level role, Anna's advice starts with KPIs. The metrics you track as a creator, engagement, likes, saves, are rarely the metrics the business actually cares about. “On a company level, they are different,” Anna said, “because their numbers on the back end, maybe the number of leads, quality leads, whatever it is, you don't see, you don't know about.”

This is where I pushed the point further, drawing on fifteen years in this industry.

“You have to ask for the business goals, not just the social media goals, and not just the marketing goals. Because if you don't know the business goals, you're never going to attain them.”  — Dorien Morin-van Dam

It took me roughly a year of asking clients what they wanted on social media before I realized the better question was what they wanted to accomplish that year, and how they wanted to grow the business. That single shift in framing opens up information about sales targets and product launches that a creator working inside a marketing bubble never sees, and it is nearly impossible to do great marketing without it.

Anna also pushes back on writing off underperforming content too quickly. When a piece does not perform, she walks through it systematically: did it actually get delivered? Did enough people see it within the testing window? Does the audience on that specific profile actually overlap with the audience the brand wants to reach? Sometimes a piece that looks like it failed is simply reaching the wrong people, or reaching an audience that will never publicly engage with a sensitive topic like therapy or stress, even though the leads still come through quietly on the other side.

Her broader advice for anyone in organic or paid: learn the other side. “If you're normally doing organic, get into paid, and if you're normally doing paid, get into organic,” she said, “because we're getting to the point where everyone just has this one pile of data to work with, and sometimes you can elevate the ROI of a piece just by sharing it with someone else on the team.”

Anna's Advice for Leveling Up Your Marketing Career

Anna's closing advice for anyone eyeing a CMO level role split into two parts, and both come back to AI. First, pick one AI tool and spend real, focused time with it rather than sampling five tools for five minutes each. Second, and just as important: keep time away from it, doing things with your own brain, even when the result is not perfect.

“You need your brain. If you don't have the structure around it, you will never be able to tell if AI is telling you crap about something.”  — Anna Geffert

It's advice that applies well beyond the content approval process Anna manages every day. Know the fundamentals, question everything, and remember that most tools are just a phase. The fractional CMO role, and the judgment it depends on, is not going anywhere.

Frequently Asked Questions about the content approval process

What does a fractional CMO actually look for in a content approval process?

Fit. A fractional CMO is checking whether a piece of content fits the brand voice, the current quarter's goals, and the compliance requirements of the industry, not just whether it looks polished on its own.

Why does well made content still get sent back or shelved?

The most common reasons are compliance risk in regulated industries, a mismatch between the piece and the brand's established voice, or a shift in strategy that has not yet been communicated to the person creating the content.

How can content creators make their content approval process go faster?

Ask for a clear, detailed brief before starting, confirm the business goals behind the request rather than just the social media goals, and build in a second set of eyes, especially on anything touching AI or a regulated industry.

About Anna Geffert

Anna Geffert is a fractional CMO working with startups and small companies across three continents, with particular depth in healthcare and wellness brands navigating strict European compliance rules. She started her career as a content creator herself, with a background in fine arts, and now leads content strategy, brand alignment, and AI policy for the clients she serves. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

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