Why All Businesses Need a Marketing Calendar

Types of marketing calendars to use

There isn't one type of marketing campaign calendar, as different businesses might find different types more useful. Here's an overview of the different kinds available, so you can choose to create a smarter marketing calendar.

Editorial

An editorial calendar can make keeping up with important events easy. By keeping track of all of your events in one place, everyone involved will be aware of these dates, so they won't ever worry about missing deadlines.

Using a blogging editorial calendar template, investing in software for this kind of content, or creating a calendar from scratch can be extremely helpful.

Social media

A social media marketing calendar enables you to do several things. First of all, it allows you to write down which social media posts you plan to manage on different days.

Social media calendar templates also allow you to determine what information your social media followers are most interested in and make any necessary changes based on the results.

Advertising

An advertising calendar focuses on all types of ads that you would like to experiment with in the future, what hasn't been successful in the past, and more.

Special events

Most businesses plan special events, whether they're fundraisers or giveaways. A special events calendar encourages you to keep track of all the important dates of upcoming marketing activities.

Email marketing

An email marketing calendar enables you to keep track of ideas, dates to send out emails, and more.

Reasons to use a marketing calendar

There are many benefits to using marketing calendars at your business. Here are some of the most popular reasons businesses use them.

Stay on top of important dates

Running a business takes extensive planning, meetings, and other important tasks. Creating and maintaining a marketing calendar can help you stay on top of significant dates so you won't miss any appointments, calls, emails, and so forth.

Remain organized

Sometimes things can get hectic when you're running a business, and it's easy to quickly jot something down on random pieces of paper that you could misplace. Maintaining a marketing calendar ensures you keep all relevant information in one place, so you and your employees can easily access it on demand.

Unify your marketing team

A well-kept marketing calendar empowers you to unify your entire team, ensuring that team members remain aware of everything going on with marketing for the company and more.

Identify content gaps

If content gaps have been a problem and you're not sure how to solve the issue, then a marketing calendar can help you identify them. As a result, you can make the necessary changes.

Get a holistic overview of campaigns

A calendar can provide you with a holistic overview of your marketing campaigns, so you can identify possible problems, things that need to be upgraded or kept the same, and more.

Ensure consistency

Consistency is key to running a winning marketing campaign, and a marketing calendar can help ensure consistency on a regular basis.

Regularly publish content

A marketing calendar enables you to create and keep track of the content you plan to publish and on which dates ahead of time. That way, on each day you're planning to publish the content, all you have to do is transfer the pre-written post, and you'll be done in no time.

How to create a marketing calendar

It doesn't have to be a tedious task to create a calendar for your marketing strategy; it can be fun if you go about it the right way. Here are some important tips for creating the ultimate marketing calendar.

Decide your format

Marketing calendars can be created in different ways, depending on your needs and personal preferences.

• Using spreadsheets on platforms such as Microsoft Word and Google Sheets are popular for formatting your calendar.
• Software tools are an extremely popular choice, and marketing gurus like Mailchimp can provide you with a straightforward and convenient calendar to use.
• Marketing calendar templates are also valuable, but they don't always provide the comprehensive analytics of marketing software.

Identify your goals

Before you start creating your calendar and marketing strategy, you need to determine what your goals are. Once you've made that determination, you'll be amazed at how helpful your marketing calendar can be in assisting you accomplish your goals.

Think of campaign ideas

Coming up with effective marketing campaign ideas is vital to ensuring you have content regularly and that aligns with other campaigns taking place at the same time. Successful campaigns can help you achieve your business-related goals faster.

Appoint team members

Even though you might like to, you can't handle everything alone. By appointing team members, you can easily delegate certain tasks when you need to, so they can help you create an amazing marketing calendar that'll exceed everyone's expectations.

Determine a publishing schedule

By determining a publishing schedule ahead of time, you know exactly what type of content you need to have available on which days. If you've assigned creating content to others, that information will also be available to them in the calendar. As a result, you can support your marketing efforts and team.

Creating a publishing schedule also ensures that content is published when it's most appropriate. For example, you may publish a blog and social media post about recycling on Earth Day.

Create content

Of course, you'll need content to include in your calendar. As mentioned, the type of content you can create includes blogs, social media posts, whitepapers, and so forth.

Top elements to include in a marketing calendar

There are many elements you can include in a marketing calendar, but the following are the most important:

• Project name: No marketing calendar is complete without a catchy project name. You and your team can come up with one together.
• Important dates: Every well-run business needs to keep important dates on their marketing calendar, since it's the best way to ensure you don't miss any events.
• Upcoming campaigns: Campaigns are a huge marketing tool, and planning for upcoming campaigns and keeping track of them on your marketing calendar is smart.
• Status: Knowing the status of your marketing plan at all times is important, so be sure to include this when creating yours.

What to consider when building your marketing calendar

When building a marketing calendar, you need to take several things into consideration. First of all, creating an effective calendar requires strategic thinking since you don't want to throw anything together that won't help you achieve your short-term and long-term goals.

In addition to taking your time to build the ultimate calendar, you need to review it regularly. By carefully scrutinizing your marketing activities regularly, you can identify ways to improve aspects that need to be enhanced and make any other necessary changes.

Make your marketing calendar work for you

Marketing calendars have many benefits. From allowing you to ensure your team is organized to making it easy to stay on top of important upcoming events, marketing calendars are a must-have.

Now that you've learned all there is to know about marketing calendars and how they can help grow your business and promote customer retention, it's time to start building one.

If you don't know where to begin, Mailchimp's comprehensive marketing calendar software lets you easily view all the social media and email campaigns you have lined up. Plus, you can effortlessly track changes and verify that campaigns are going as planned. Creating a marketing calendar doesn't have to be tedious or time consuming, so let us help you today.