How to Create a Marketing Calendar and Why is it Important?

So, you’ve got a really buzzing marketing team. Ideas are coming thick and fast, and creativity is blooming. Lucky you.

However, what happens when all this creativity is allowed to continue with no centralized control? The different minds that are producing all this fresh thinking will go in their own directions, and output will become unpredictable and heterogeneous. 

Chaos is the all-too-frequent result. And chaos leads to confused customers. This is not a good marketing plan. 

So, creativity needs to have organization applied. Those wonderfully creative brains need to have some kind of framework so that you can produce a more cohesive whole. This is where marketing calendars can be absolutely crucial.

What is a Marketing Calendar?

A marketing team can be quite widely-spread, especially in the era of remote working. You may have international staff, multiple channels, and websites with varied domains. Many and varied can be this collective’s efforts, and it’s a daunting task for the marketing manager to stay on top of the entire team’s output and make sure the right marketing gets done at the right time.

This is what a marketing calendar assists with. How does it do this? It simplifies the work landscape by visually representing, in a digestible format, what’s to be done and when.

In the same way that a regular calendar allows you to relax in the knowledge that you’ll never forget your niece’s birthday again, a marketing calendar contains all the information that a marketing manager needs to ensure that nothing gets overlooked or gets sent out late.

What Should Be On a Marketing Calendar?

First of all, there shouldn’t be just one version of the marketing calendar. The elements that make up the company’s marketing strategy are incorporated into the manager’s calendar so that the team leader has a bird's-eye view of the range of activities, from global to local marketing.

Then, for each team member, there are different iterations of the marketing calendar that contain information pertinent especially to them and their particular projects.

The manager can drill down into this detail if needed, but they’re not swamped with it. Things are kept as simple as possible unless greater information is requested.

So, the top layer that a marketing manager might be greeted with could contain a list of upcoming marketing projects and a list of names to whom these have been allocated, set against completion dates. There will usually be some indication of progress visible so that the team leader can keep tabs on how things are developing and be on top of any concerns quickly.

Incorporate Key Dates

It's important to incorporate key dates in your marketing calendar, including important retail events and holidays. By including these dates, you can align your marketing efforts with relevant retail occasions and leverage them to engage your audience. Consider using a retail social media calendar to plan your content and promotions around these events. This will help you stay on top of the retail landscape and maximize your marketing opportunities.

How to Put a Marketing Calendar Together

When approaching a marketing calendar for the first time, it’s easy to become a little flustered on the one hand or a little blasé, thinking that all your marketing problems are over. The truth is that a marketing calendar is only as good as you allow it to be. Follow these steps to get yours functioning optimally.

1. Get Your Data Down

So, you’ve got lots of marketing stuff going on. That’s why you needed the calendar. You now need to make sure that you’ve got a good record of all the marketing activity currently ongoing.

A trusty spreadsheet such as Excel or Google Sheets will do the trick nicely, or whatever workflow assistive tech your business uses. Onto this, enter all the marketing ingredients that make up your organization’s activities.

Include all the campaigns, the individual campaign goals, and the overall marketing strategy for the business. Depending on your calendar tool, you may be able to automate some calendar entries from your data pipeline or CRM system.

Go into detail on the activities—what do they consist of? Blog posts? Online content? Emails? Social? A combination of many different components? Put all these details in so that you have a fully rounded picture of your company’s marketing endeavours.

2. New Ideas

Now that you’ve got the existing landscape defined, think about new directions and what fresh perspectives might be employed. It’s often the case that introducing a new tool coincides with new thinking. Use this opportunity to set down some thoughts on where your company’s marketing could be heading now you have the calendar in place.

Start general; then, once you have some nascent thoughts and company goals, start to attach more concrete steps in terms of what forms of marketing can be applied to realizing those goals. Think about how relatively new digital marketing possibilities, such as via TikTok, can be used to reach new sectors.

Additionally, consider implementing small business marketing tips and strategies tailored to your specific industry to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, optimizing your website for search engines to increase online visibility, leveraging email marketing campaigns to nurture customer relationships and drive conversions, and participating in industry-specific events or trade shows to showcase your products or services to a targeted audience.

3. Start Dating

It’s now time to get some timetabling applied to those new marketing goals and methods. Try to decide which elements have the highest priority. It’s often helpful to bounce ideas off another person or put them to a whole team—it can give better and more objective conclusions.

Incorporate into the calendar those recurring elements that you need to plan campaigns around every year. Summer vacation, Christmas, etc., as well as any other significant upcoming events, be they company-specific or cultural events. For example, many offices purchase supplies and solutions around December for tax purposes. So if you’re running a fax from phone solution campaign, this should be considered. 

Once you have the priorities decided upon, start with those most pressing marketing initiatives and place them on the calendar. You’ll need to have an idea of the period of time each activity and marketing campaign will involve, as you'll have to come up with start and finish dates. 

Once you have those in place, you’ll then be able to fit in the less important marketing activities around the key ones.

4. Who Does What?

You know what’s to be done, and you know when. Now you need to decide the team members responsible for each task.

The beauty of an effective marketing calendar is that it will be very unlikely for an individual member of staff to be overloaded. For instance, a manager might be able to see very clearly that Eugene is busy for a week in August promoting a new automation testing facility, so he won’t be available at that point to assist with the product launches planned for the same time. 

Other colleagues can then be turned to, and labour can be shared out in an equitable and effective fashion. Or it may turn out that new staff are required. Marketing calendars give the heads-up about this in a nice, timely fashion. 

Why Are Marketing Calendars Important?

This is what marketing calendars can deliver.

1. A Cohesive Strategy

When you have a tool that clearly sets out what’s going to be achieved and when, then you’re in a position to make sure that it all happens harmoniously. To be able to direct a content strategy in a controlled rather than haphazard way is of tremendous value. This way, you can build momentum with marketing steps incrementally on what’s gone out before.

For instance, you can model social media campaigns on the back of a TV piece. The recognition factor that the former delivers can be utilized and exploited in the latter for greater traction and more penetration.

What’s more, having your marketing efforts laid out on a calendar means you can see potential gaps and direct your campaign improvements this way.

2. Be Proactive as Well as Reactive

The best marketers seize the initiative. They set out the priorities and define the landscape. They are proactive. 

Marketing calendars give you the power to get on the front foot by enabling you to enter each marketing step in a prepared fashion. You know how long each project will take, and you know what staff are going to be involved. You're the master of your agenda.

You can effectively schedule all manner of marketing messages and types of content, such as social media posts, in advance. 

Of course, a certain flexibility has to be permitted so that the business can stay relevant and responsive to things beyond its control. A marketing calendar can help with this by showing a team leader what resources are currently available should a last-minute effort be required.

In any case, you can readily change marketing calendars to suit the changing priorities of the business, and all stakeholders can be apprised in real-time. So, although there will be a concrete schedule for staff to follow, it’s open to change if necessary. 

3. Get The Most Out of Your Team

Team members with clear marketing objectives, unambiguous content deadlines, and fair work allocation tend to be happier and more engaged.  This is why marketing calendars tend to be very popular with staff. They can involve a bit of a cultural shift, but they allow for fair and productive workforce scheduling.

It’s a Date!

Now you know what marketing calendars can do for your business, it’s about time you started using one. Any tool that can help make sense of the teeming mass of ideas and concepts that can populate complex campaigns is nothing short of vital for a manager trying to apply some order to the creative maelstrom.

One final benefit of a marketing calendar is its adaptability, not least the customizable views. You can usually apply a theme that suits your business activity so that you have optimal compatibility. You can then see about choosing a colour scheme that pleases you. Well, when you have an overwhelmingly crowded calendar to deal with, it all helps.