Marketing Calendar Tips: How to Create a Marketing Calendar

Marketing calendars schedule out the time frames and due dates for all pieces of content a company needs to complete a marketing campaign. This includes social media campaigns, internal graphic design and copywriting needs, video marketing initiatives, and more. There are plenty of free marketing calendar examples online, as well as more sophisticated marketing calendar software and apps available for different pricing tiers.

Once you establish a marketing strategy, planning well becomes paramount to its execution. Here are three reasons to consider using a marketing plan calendar to meet this need:

1. 1. To facilitate project management: A content marketing calendar helps streamline everyone’s workflow by predetermining what people need and when. For example, if an editor needs to include an infographic in a brand video, a marketing calendar would set the due date for this infographic. Effective project management ensures everyone has what they need for their own work and deadlines.
2. 2. To clarify company goals: Putting your content plan on a marketing calendar helps further clarify your company goals. For instance, a specific editorial calendar would make it clear when writers should file assignments with their editors so they can publish them in a timely matter. Similarly, you could set a deadline to increase your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking or another due date for when you hope to improve your conversions to a certain number. This strategy works across all marketing channels.
3. 3. To provide tangible milestones: Sometimes all it takes is a calendar view to motivate yourself. When you can see due dates right in front of you, it gives you a tangible point in the future to meet key performance indicators (KPIs) or exceed metrics. These milestones are especially helpful in social media marketing, as so much depends on the exact time you post any content.

Marketing calendars help advertising teams stay on track. Keep these tips in mind as you create and optimize your own marketing calendar:

• Allow for customization. It helps when marketing calendar templates are customizable for all stakeholders. This allows individual team members to make personal notes for themselves on their own specific version of the general marketing calendar. Familiarize yourself with the functionality and features of different online calendar tools to see what works best for you and your team.
• Define your marketing goals. Brainstorm plenty of content ideas with your marketing team members before deciding on a marketing strategy. Define both long-term and short-term goals and add them to your marketing campaign calendar when you’re ready.
• Differentiate overlapping tasks. These calendars feature all the different marketing activities for the year, so it helps to differentiate various tasks. For instance, color-coding email marketing tasks versus social media marketing needs will help each relevant team see what they need to do specifically. You can also keep different types of content calendars separate (i.e., a social media calendar, an editorial calendar, a graphic design calendar) and then sync them to create a comprehensive marketing calendar.
• Grant access to all stakeholders. Make sure everyone who needs access can plan calendar due dates and make other updates. This sort of integration makes it easier for team members to schedule working sessions and meetings with one another.
• Plan around important dates. Note major holidays and other significant company dates on the marketing calendar so that you can plan around them accordingly. Maybe you want a social media post to announce your Black Friday discounts long before the day itself. Perhaps you want your target audience to know about a product launch or upcoming webinar well in advance. Planning ahead helps you execute in real time with far less stress.
• Prepare for possible changes. Even the most meticulous content planning is subject to change. A client might not grant approval on time, a coworker might lag on their own deadlines, or life might just get in the way. Marketing strategy calendars are easily changeable when your team has to adapt. Try to stick to all your deadlines, but be ready to change them when necessary.
• Set reasonable deadlines. It’s better to plan far ahead than to set deadlines that force you to rush through initiatives. Marketing efforts take time, and this tool helps you use time as efficiently as possible. A calendar also helps you break down goals into smaller touchpoints. For example, instead of setting one big deadline for an entire podcast episode to be complete, set smaller ones for recording, editing, and distributing to make the lift more manageable.

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