Make a Date With a Marketing Calendar

This is one of those posts where I think “man, I’m going to sound like an idiot pitching this idea, but I don’t see many people doing it…so here goes.”

Raise your hands – How many of you (especially the small business owners & one-person marketing departments) actively create, follow, and follow-up on a yearly (OK, at least quarterly) marketing calendar? All of you? Ok, cool. You can stop reading. If there are any of you left who did not raise your hands, read on.

December and January are absolutely my favorite times of the year. No, it’s not because Wisconsin is having a record snowfall season (though that’s a bonus), it’s because this is THE time of year when possibility and opportunity are at their peak. We’ve just come off a great year that we’ve either done a lot of great business or learned a ton from our mistakes and we’re heading into a brand new year full of possibility and opportunity. To use a comfortable metaphor, we’ve standing atop the ski slope with all of the rush and potential of what awaits us as we cruise down the hill.

So, let’s discuss what I think is the most simple, basic and fundamental concept in making good marketing happen this year – the venerable marketing calendar.

What’s in a marketing calendar?

A marketing calendar is actually a very simple document. I typically follow a very simple “G-O-S-T” framework, which simply means Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics. There are a few must haves that I’d put into every document. Here’s an outline of how a plan typically comes together:

The Fundamentals:

Goals for the year ahead
>>>Organizational goals
>>>Marketing goals
Objectives
>>>Quantification of what marketing needs to deliver (such as leads)
Targets/Segments/Personas
>>>Core (the main market you desire to serve – where you have a clear differentiation)
>>>Secondary (great customers, but perhaps more competitive, you’re less differentiated)
>>>Opportunity (aspirational customers that fall outside of your core)
>>>Harvest (you’ll take the business but deck no marketing $$ against this segment)
Messaging & Differentiation
>>>Unique value proposition
>>>Key messages for each target/segment/persona
Obstacles to overcome
Strategy
>>>Go-to-market strategy (Go-to-market is the delivery mechanism for the unique value proposition)

Getting Tactical:
So many marketers want to go straight to tactics. After all, they’re the most tangible. We can often get a much better grasp on the concept of “let’s do a postcard” or “let’s start a blog” vs. the more strategic questions of “what is our overall go-to-market strategy?” There are a few components of the tactical part of the plan that we need to consider:

Tactics & Channels
Progressive Tactics Timing & Schedule
>>>Daily activities
>>>Weekly activities
>>>Semimonthly activities (2x/month)
>>>Monthly activities
>>>Quarterly activities
>>>Semiyearly activities (2x/year)
>>>Yearly activities
Marketing Cycles
>>>60 or 90 days (these are review cycles where you assess your marketing progress)
Monthly Plans
>>>January – December – typically one page/month
>>>Goals, themes, major dates and week by week action items detailed

Different forms of marketing calendars:
My personal weakness for marketing calendars lies in putting them all into mindmaps. For some reason, there’s nothing like printing a big visual on the wall to keep things on track and on task. However, that doesn’t work for everyone. Some like to put everything in a nice outline, or Word document. Still others will put their plans in a spreadsheet with multiple tabs. However you decide to organize and whichever tool you use, make sure it’s something that you’re comfortable working in on a daily basis for the whole year.

If you want to put your marketing plan “in the cloud”, I recommend putting everything into a document + calendar system like Google Docs and Calendar or Zoho Docs and Planner.

In order to get get started on your own calendar, you’ll find the ideas conveyed above organized neatly into a mindmap marketing calendar. You can download a PDF or the source file (MindManager) of the calendar as well if you like, in addition to the image below.

In part 2 of this article, we’ll cover:

The rest of the tools & resources you need to create the ideal marketing calendar.
Creating and executing a recurring marketing activity roster.
Determine a marketing plan review cycle.
Examples of marketing calendars.