3 Simple Steps to Creating Your Marketing Calendar

A marketing calendar is an essential tool to keep track of your marketing plan for the year.

Commonly, marketing calendar's are broken down into the day's and month's of each year to assist in keeping you on track with all marketing events, campaigns and marketing efforts for the year. Think of it as a haven, not only for your annual marketing plan, but the place to write down contacts, ideas and last minute networking opportunities for your business.

How effective your new marketing calendar is begins with 3 simple steps.



First, research who your audience is. Who is your target market? How old are they? What do they have in common with one another? Where do they shop? What salary bracket are they in? What media do they get their information from? If your target market is a 40 and older, female that reads the newspaper everyday and doesn't have a computer of her own, then clearly online marketing or advertising via Facebook may not be your first avenue of where to spend your marketing dollars.

The more research you do on the characteristics of who you are marketing to, the more successful your marketing calendar will be and your efforts will have a higher pay off.

Second, after completing marketing research on who your demographic is, you will want to discover the best possible venues or marketing tactics for marketing and advertising. Examples of marketing venues are online marketing, direct mail marketing, newspaper advertisements, local weekly and monthly magazines, billboards and, currently the most bang for your buck, cable television. Place yourself into the daily life of your target market to discover which advertising opportunities will reach the highest number of your desired audience.

The third and final step is to take action and create your marketing plan and marketing calendar. You now know who your target market is and which media avenue they frequently use.

You'll find dozens of marketing calendar templates and tools on the Internet.

What your marketing calendar looks like and how it is set up is entirely based on personal preferences.

Using all the information you have gathered, create a timeline for each marketing campaign, deadlines for sending advertising to marketing venues of choice, along with the costs of your marketing and advertising efforts. Be sure to keep track of your return from an marketing campaign in the marketing calendar to track how much bang you got for your buck. This information is valuable to your marketing efforts for years to come so don't toss this years calendar away come next January!

Marketing calendars are paramount in assisting with short and long term success forecasts. From writing down the name of a person you met at an event the night prior to scheduling an advertising deadline 4 months from now. Not only does a marketing calendar guide you through your daily marketing goals, it also navigates your business throughout the year and for years to come.

So get that marketing calendar working for you today, you'll be glad you did.

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