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.