How to Plan a Marketing Calendar
Do you have a strategic marketing plan for the next calendar year / 12 months? If you run a business, you should! It’s a great opportunity to help you strategically focus on connecting with new customers. I always like to answer the following questions when working on my marketing plan:
What am I doing new in the next year? Think blue ocean strategy.
Can I do something new / different every single month?
What am I reinventing and revisiting from last year that worked pretty well?
Do I have a goal for number of new clients per month / week / year?
Which was my worst month last year and what can I do to counter that?
Here are some resources. This is a custom Marketing Checklist and a fit biz focused Social Calendar Template that can help with your planning. You can find more Marketing inspiration from me on my resources hub and check out these “Free Content Strategy Templates” from Smartsheet, a company that offers lots of great marketing templates and tools, who inspired the following re-posted article, How to Plan a Marketing Calendar.
Creating a marketing calendar may seem overwhelming, especially if you are planning content and other marketing efforts a year in advance, on top of everything else that a wellpreneur is tasked with in any given week. But the whole point of using a marketing calendar is to get organized, save time in the long run, and actually reduce stress. To help you with this process, here are a few things to keep in mind as you plan your calendar.
Identify your target audience and adjust your marketing strategies to meet its changing needs. Developing a marketing strategy can provide some direction, but it’s all guesswork until a plan is actually implemented. Be prepared to adjust your tactics as you collect data from your customers.
Use your content as a way of getting feedback from customers. What content is your audience responding to? Which channels are leading to sales? Use your publishing successes and failures to drive your marketing plan.
Plan your calendar with someone. Identify who is responsible for what and how much content you can realistically produce. This is important even if you run a small business and generate all your own marketing content. There is no point in planning more than you can actually handle. If you are working with others, use your team to brainstorm topics and themes.
Choose themes for your content based on customer questions or interest. Identifying themes can help you categorize topics and ensure that you’re producing a variety of content aimed at achieving specific goals, whether it’s generating leads, showcasing your expertise, or selling products. Prioritize your content based on the intended result, and rotate your publishing schedule for different themes to make sure you are addressing a range of customer needs.
Find keywords to optimize your content. Following best practices for search engine optimization (SEO) can help bring a wider audience to your content. Use a keyword research tool to look up what phrases people are searching for that relate to your topics. Include this information on your calendar along with meta-titles and other SEO tactics.
Plan your calendar for up to 12 months out. Create a master calendar to work from and adjust it as needed. You may want to plan a more detailed calendar for each week or month, but having an overview for the year makes it easier to coordinate your marketing efforts, plan for holidays and important events, and ensure that your content aligns with your marketing goals.
To find resources to help you develop and track every component of your marketing strategy, check out these “Free Content Strategy Templates” from Smartsheet and my Marketing Resources Hub. Wishing you all the marketing success in the coming year!