How to Develop Your Marketing Calendar

This ONE practice could make all the difference in your marketing success!

"Failing to plan is planning to fail." ~Alan Lakein

Imagine having the majority of your marketing tactics mapped out on calendars that you hang on your office wall. Then imagine that these calendars help to ensure that you market your business consistently throughout the year (not just when you are slow—it’s too late then), prevent marketing “fire drills” (increasing chance of error and giving you less time to devote to crafting well thought out messages—and testing them) and keeps everyone on your team accountable (internally and vendors) for their part of the marketing process.

Because we’re all busy running our businesses, marketing often gets sidelined and then slowly forgotten as we get involved in other things. A common occurrence is knowing in the back of your mind that you need to get a promotion out the door by a certain date and waiting until a few days before that date to start working on that project. This is a recipe for frustration—and your promotion is likely to suffer from rushed implementation (which is why many business owners think that marketing doesn’t work). If you calendar your marketing initiatives you can greatly reduce production costs and get better results!

Clients that take advantage of this service have nothing but great things to say about the process. It brings a sense of clarity to your marketing program and helps to reveal gaping holes in timing. One of the biggest benefits is that it identifies every step needed to get a marketing project off the ground and establishes a realistic time frame for completion of these tasks.

Here are some tips to help you create your comprehensive 2012 Marketing Calendar:

1. Plan to spend one entire 8 hour day of completely uninterrupted time with key players to work through the first draft of your calendar.

2. Go back to good old pencil and paper for this calendaring process. We print out very large 36” x 48” calendars when we do this exercise with clients so that we can write in everything, erase if we need to, and everyone can see the “big picture” so-to-speak.

3. Start from the end. In-other-words, pencil in your “due” date for any given project and then work backwards through every step necessary to get to that due date. You’ll find this process to be very revealing. Don’t forget to add testing of projects into your timetable. This could mean that you actually have to start a project six months before launch! It also means that you’ll get much better results.

4. “Tag” each deliverable with the names of the team member who will be responsible for getting that item initiated or completed. This way everyone knows what they are responsible for, when they need to get started and when they should have tasks completed.

5. Post two to three months at a time. You’ll actually hang your calendars on your office wall for all to see. Then it’s everyone’s responsibility to check in with the calendar daily to ensure that they’re up-to-date on their assigned tasks. This aids in accountability and also helps the team see what’s coming so that they can schedule their time accordingly.

6. Don’t forget to note RESULTS from marketing initiatives right on your wall calendars. You’ll use this year’s calendars to create your calendar for next year, so it’s good to have notes regarding what worked, what didn’t work and ideas for future promotions/initiatives. If you don’t write them down, you’ll forget when calendar day rolls around.

7. Revisit your calendar quarterly and update accordingly. If you see that you’ll need to add a promotion in order to reach your revenue goals, or just want to tweak dates, this is the time to do that.

Sound overwhelming? Chances are you won’t make time for this valuable exercise if it feels too daunting. We can facilitate the calendar process for you so you’re sure to get it done.

Visit www.ucreativegroup.com/marketing_calendar to learn more.

Here’s to YOUR STAND OUT Success on 2012!