To ensure that you are organized and on top of your marketing efforts, you will need a marketing calendar if you are investing in marketing strategies. If you don’t know the best ways to create a marketing calendar, it may be difficult to use effectively. We have the information you need to create a marketing calendar that works.

Continue reading to find out why you need a calendar for marketing and the eight steps that will get you started. 

Why is a marketing plan important?

Why do you need a marketing plan? These are three reasons why marketing calendars are crucial to the success of your business.

1. It will help you stay organized

It is important to understand how to create a marketing calendar. This will allow you to stay organized with your marketing campaigns. It’s easy to lose track of your campaigns when you have multiple ones running simultaneously. To ensure a cohesive marketing campaign you will need a marketing calendar.

You can use a marketing calendar to track when you are publishing content, sharing social media posts, or sending emails. This allows you to track when campaigns are launched and when they’re being run. It will give you a complete overview of your marketing campaign, which allows you to plan your strategies.

2. It allows you to remain consistent

A digital marketing calendar helps your brand remain consistent. Consistency is key to the most successful marketing strategies. A marketing calendar can help you ensure your business remains on top of each campaign. Consistency is key to marketing success because it makes people remember your brand more easily.

You can increase your brand exposure and make your audience more likely to remember you by posting content regularly. You can keep up with posting content frequently using a digital marketing calendar to help you build brand recognition among your audience.

3. It allows you to create cohesive campaigns.

You want different marketing campaigns to work together. You want to have a social media and an email campaign that work together. You can use a marketing calendar for multiple campaigns to gain insight into performance data, allowing you to see how they work together.

You can also use the data to help you make your campaigns more cohesive or better collaborate for success.

How to plan a marketing schedule

Are you ready for a lesson in creating a marketing calendar? These eight steps will help you get started.

Step 1.

First, decide where you want to place your marketing calendar. Although you can do it manually, it is recommended to create an electronic version. It will take you less time and it is more likely that it will be lost or destroyed.

An electronic version can be shared with coworkers from other teams. You have many options to create your marketing calendar.

• Microsoft Excel and Word
•  Google Sheets
• Software designed for calendars

It’s important to decide which option is best for you and your company. Google Sheets is a great option. Particularly if multiple people need to access the calendar from different places.

Step 2.

Before you get into the details of your calendar, it is important to establish your goals. You need to know your goals so you can plan what you are working towards. Your campaign goals should be focused on the things you want to accomplish with them.

It is possible to set goals that are focused on:

• Getting new leads
• Earning sales
• Increase brand exposure
• More

These goals will help you decide which strategies to invest in, and what you should include in your schedule.

Step 3.

Next, identify your marketing strategies. You need to identify the strategies that you are using to create a marketing calendar. These are some of the most common Los Angeles digital marketing agency strategies:

• PPC advertising: These are paid advertisements that appear in search results at the top, above organic listings. This strategy can be included in your marketing calendar. It will allow you to plan when advertisements will be run for specific products and services.

• Email marketing – Email marketing allows you to directly send emails to your subscribers and personalize the experience. To reach the right audience, you can plan when and how often to send emails. This includes product launches, product sales, and product updates.

• Social media Marketing: This involves sharing content on social media and creating new followers. You can use a digital marketing calendar to plan when you will post content on social media, and coordinate with other marketing strategies.

• Content marketing – Content marketing is a strategy that involves sharing and developing content with your audience. You can use your digital marketing calendar to plan the content you want to share and when.

Once you have identified your marketing strategies, it will be easy to know what you should do on your marketing calendar.

Step 4. Establish your target audience

After you have established your strategies, it is time to identify your target audience. Knowing your target audience is essential to best use your strategy. You can’t target your audience if you don’t know who they are. Instead, think about your typical customer.

Take a look at the people who visit your store and those who buy from you online. These customers will have common traits, such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Shopping habits
• Interests
• Hobbies
• Occupation
• Socioeconomic status
• More

These characteristics will help you to understand who is most likely to buy from your company. This will enable you to develop strategies that will reach these leads.

Step 5.

Once you have all the essential components such as your audience, goals, and strategies, you can begin to develop components for your marketing calendar. To plan a successful marketing calendar, you need to chart your selling cycle. Now it is time to create a 12-month calendar.

Your products’ seasonality is determined by their selling cycle. Let’s take, for example, school backpacks. Although your products are available all year, it is best to sell them right before school begins again in August or September.

In the months leading up to back-to-school, backpack sales will be at their peak. You should note seasonal changes like these in your sales cycle. This will help you coordinate your marketing efforts for peak times of the year. It’s important to include seasonal changes in your marketing calendar if you have products that change with the seasons.

A sports store might want to indicate when different sports gear is required. They might note that football products are more popular in the fall and spring, while baseball products are most popular in the spring. This information is important so that you can design marketing campaigns that correspond with the year.

Step 6. Identify important dates

You will need to include important dates in your marketing calendar if you want to learn how to plan one. These important dates are:

• Holidays
• Milestones in your company
• Launch of a new service or product
• Events for companies
• More

These dates are important so that you can coordinate your marketing campaigns. For example, if your 50th anniversary falls on a Friday, you might hold sales for your customers. Redner’s Warehouse Markets did this.

They planned to send out emails every day to their loyal customers to commemorate their anniversary with a special deal for certain food items. It is important to know these dates to create co-coordinating campaigns.

Step 7.

Once you have a good idea of the strategies you are using, it’s time to start thinking about what type of campaigns you want to run. When you start to gather ideas for your campaign and are excited to get them on the calendar. Now think about the time it will take. Planning your projects is an essential part of creating a marketing calendar.

You’ll need to dedicate more time to marketing projects than just one day. Every step of your project must be planned on your calendar. Let’s return to the example of school backpacks.

An infographic has been created that details how to choose the right school bag. To create this infographic you must consider the time it will take, as well as revision time. You will need to establish deadlines for each section of your digital marketing calendar.

This infographic can help you set a deadline for editing the first round, second round, and publishing. Knowing the status of your project will help you plan better and make it more efficient to use your marketing calendar.

Start creating your digital marketing calendar today 

Kobe Digital can help you plan and organize your digital marketing calendar. Kobe Digital has over a decade of experience and can help you select the best marketing strategies and organize your campaigns for maximum effectiveness. To speak with a strategist, give us a call or email us.​