Creating An Annual Marketing Calendar
On today’s show we talk about creating an annual marketing calendar for your small business.
Then it’s Glenn’s turn to quiz Jodie. Thanks for listening!
Click below to listen to Episode 11 of Season 7.
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Marketing Calendars for Small Business
Planning your marketing calendar is great to do in October or November for the following year…but any time is a good time to think ahead for your business. So why not do a mid-year plan to cover the next 6 months and get started with this concept?
Our experience comes from creating marketing calendars for our B to C clients BUT the same principles apply to B to B. There are still seasons to tie in to and a need for monthly promotions.
BUT for B to B, you’ll likely have to push your dates up. For example, if you’re a company that creates corporate holiday cards, you’ll want to promote to your business clients months ahead of the holiday season so they can get their orders in.
“I often use a Google Doc for our clients but you can use any format or planning software you want.”
We recommend having a year-at-a-glance layout. One way is to do this is to create a spreadsheet with the months along the top and the channels/tactics on the left and then fill in the squares with the tasks/promotions.
There are 3 Steps in creating an annual marketing calendar:
Internal Assessment
External Research
Scheduling
INTERNAL ASSESSMENT
Note any natural ebbs and flows to your business
EXAMPLE: For our restaurant client we marked months as slow, steady or busy and focused our energy on creating new promotions and limited-time-offers (LTOs) that pulled people in during the slow and steady months without ignoring our busy months
Assess existing promotions
Which do you keep, tweak or drop?
Is there anything new you want to be sure to highlight?
New services or products
EXTERNAL RESEARCH
What holidays or weekly/monthly observances can you tie in to (look within and outside of your industry)?
EXAMPLE: For our liquor store client, we have noted that September is National Bourbon Heritage Month, so we make sure that this is in our calendar so we can schedule tastings, create promotional materials, etc.
EXAMPLE: For our In-home health care client, we tied into National Library Lovers Month in February by promoting transportation services to let existing and future clients know we can help them do things they truly enjoy.
What is going in in your community that you can tie in to?
Charitable events or 5Ks
Local celebrations or milestones
What are some media opportunities you can tie in to?
Check local magazine editorial calendars
Big broadcast programming: sports, holidays, etc.
SCHEDULING
Time to put the pieces together, like a puzzle
Create promotions that leverage your internal assessments with the discoveries you made in your external research
Match your product/service to a media outlet’s editorial calendar
Start planning all aspects of your promotions
Build into your calendar pre-promotion, promotion and post-promotion tasks
Review and update regularly
This is a living document, so adapt or evolve over time and when the opportunity arises
At the end of the year, you’ll have a fairly accurate account of what you did and what you’ll want to duplicate again.
Remember, plan your work and work your plan.
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