Marketing is hard work and keeping it up is tiring – unless you have a solid plan in place to guide you along.
Your marketing calendar is the plan that overviews all your marketing activities for the year. It could be done around your most popular sales periods or around well-known trending holidays. While it may take a bit of planning and effort initially, you’ll be very glad you did it when you can make the most of #NationalCakeDay, #BossesDay or #TalkLikeAPirateDay! Life gets busy and typically just when you need to pounce on a good social media opportunity, work will be at its most manic.
Why a marketing calendar is so important
Firstly it gives you a good holistic view of everything you are promoting during the year, so you don’t spam your customers with too much of one type of content/product/offer. It’s important to keep things fresh and unexpected. Secondly, it helps you plan which channels you are going to use when – e.g. blog posts, social media or follow-up emails.
Plan it properly – ask these questions
If you’ve never done a marketing calendar before, here are some questions to ask:
- Who is your target market, which types of content appeals to them and what times of day are they be most active online?
- What kind of problems (pain points) can you solve for them? Customers love useful marketing content, such as recipes or tips on how to use your product to save time/money.
Getting started
It doesn’t matter what your calendar looks like but it’s important to note the date, type of marketing activity (e.g. Facebook post or YouTube video) and what your key messages are.
A good place to begin is by plotting out the main calendar events of the year with a few fun hashtags in-between.
For example:
January
7th: Schools resume in Ireland
February
5th: Chinese New Year #YearOfThePig
14th: Valentine’s Day
March
17th: St Patrick’s Day
31st: Mother’s Day
April
7th: World Health Day #LetsTalk
20th: National Look-Alike Day #NationalLookAlikeDay
May
15th: International Day of Families #FamilyDay
16th: Love a Tree Day #LoveATreeDay
June
16th: Father’s Day
21st: Take Your Dog to Work Day #TakeYourDogToWorkDay
July
1st: Wimbledon starts
August
5th: August Bank Holiday
19th: World Photo Day #WorldPhotoDay
September
20th: Rugby World Cup kicks off
October
31st: Halloween
November
16th: International Day for Tolerance #ToleranceDay
December
21st: First Day of Winter #WinterSolstice
Think ahead
While you are busy with your 2019 calendar, why not get 2020’s up and running as well? As you finish one activity, put it on next year’s calendar and make a note what worked (a lot of likes or comments) and what didn’t (not a single email back). This way you can refine and improve your marketing strategy every year.
Don’t have time to do this all yourself? Get in touch with Kri8it to help you create an impactful and strategic 2019 marketing calendar.