The #1 Rule of a Marketing Calendar is to make sure you have one for your local business! But unfortunately, many do not.
What is a marketing calendar?
A marketing calendar helps a business owner keep track of all marketing activity, free or paid, for their local business. It helps capture lead flow and conversions, identify when and what marketing is scheduled, the cost of the marketing campaign, etc.
A marketing calendar should be created as a proactive—not reactive—marketing tool
A marketing calendar should include the whole year’s activities by month, and then broken down by week and day. This allows you to look at the project flow for each month while identifying marketing gaps and opportunities. A marketing calendar is not a static document, but instead should be updated and utilized to add more marketing campaigns when needed, in addition to capturing pertinent data of recent marketing campaigns. These updates allow you to look at the projected flow for each month, in addition to providing a means for tracking and capturing historical data for later review.
Creating a marketing calendar takes time, but is a simple process
It does take time to create a marketing calendar, but it’s a necessity. A good marketing calendar gives you an opportunity to make assumptions based on historical data vs. simply throwing numbers out there. If you want to increase revenue by a certain percentage in any particular month, you can compare what you did last year and amp it up for this year, but if you’re doing less this year, or the same when compared to last year, then you’re off target.
You can build your marketing calendar by hand, or use a simple Excel spreadsheet. The calendar should include every marketing campaign (Internet, direct sales/print, broadcast, etc.) you’re planning for the upcoming year. It should include date(s) of each campaign, and include a place to capture cost, lead generation, lead conversions, and profits, at a minimum.
Schedule some time this week to ensure you have a 2012 marketing calendar in place for your business.
For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. With a long-history of counseling local businesses about their marketing efforts, Marentis provides insight on what it takes for small businesses to succeed and thrive in today’s evolving digital environment. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL's Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies, Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 technology platforms. Marentis is a frequent speaker at local digital marketing conferences and a contributor to SMB and technology-focused publications.
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TracyAnn0312
January 5, 2012 at 10:43 am
In my opinion, Creating marketing calendar can help marketers to balance their time and spend it on other aspects! It can also help them to plan! Good thing you have shared the importance of it, many marketers will be interested here!
Ann
January 5, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Hi Chris,
Great article. I started using a marketing calendar a couple of years ago. (although, I really didn’t know what I was doing). I has saved me so much money. And, rather than relying on memory, I can actually review each campaign, results, costs, etc. It has been a great tool for my business.
Anna
January 6, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Having a marketing calender, makes you more organized and determined, I think. Therefore I am very pro this idea!
bilal
January 7, 2012 at 1:39 pm
ahan nice and superb idea … i will surely gonna follow it this year
Dan Keller
January 8, 2012 at 1:42 am
I have been using a marketing calendar since the beginning of 2011, it was part of my new year resolution to get organized. It does work. I feel much more confident when I am organized. This increase in productivity has helped my start a new blog this year with all my extra time.
Danny
January 10, 2012 at 4:43 am
A Marketing calendar is a great way to stay organized and structured.
Running around like a chicken without a head, no plan of what to do when is a big time waster and makes it more likely for people to give up.
Stan
January 10, 2012 at 9:53 am
Calendar is really important for all of us in scheduling important things that we need to do for a particular day for example. Same advantage is offered to those who are into marketing. Calendar for 2012 would be very helpful for these marketers to meet their goals.
Chuck Ferraro
January 13, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Thanks for the info. Well written!
Nicholle Olores
January 16, 2012 at 2:01 am
Definitely, implementing a calendar for marketing is a great idea to stay organize and manageable to your marketing world. But still it needs implementation within yourself to stay more organize.
Liz
February 2, 2012 at 5:15 am
Implementing a calendar marketing is really a great help to us. I am a new for this bout I wanted to try it.
Vince Arthur
March 4, 2013 at 5:41 am
Really impressed! Everything is very, very clear and open. You have shared a lot of valuable information.
Fran
March 18, 2013 at 6:06 pm
Marketing calander works good and helps organize eerything. You also can track monthly sales and what months convert better. I also like that i know when i need to have cash for renewing ads and marketing
Bode
April 16, 2013 at 10:11 pm
Its true that the process is simple. but really taking good time. and one thing time is not a factor i think. for a good marketing we should give some time. its our time investment. thanks for sharing ur article with us.
Michael Magic
July 5, 2013 at 3:43 pm
I did this last year and Ive created a new marketing plan for this year. This is really handy and very simple to implement. Thanks Chris.