Marketing is easy when you have a plan.
A marketing plan that is. It’s hard to showcase your business if you don’t have a clue what to do or when so let’s talk about creating a marketing calendar. The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to create your own personal marketing road map for 2010.
Consider where you want to focus your marketing efforts:
- Email campaigns
- Joint venture promotions
- Blogging
- Virtual blog tours
- Article marketing
- Social networking i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
- Podcasts
- Video marketing
- eZines/Newsletters
- Virtual events
- Giving a seminar
- Writing an eBook
You get the idea, right? Make a quick reference list of everything you want to do and be daring – include something new to stretch yourself.
Next Steps
If you like working online then use your eCalendar, if you like to be a bit more hands-on then get a paper calendar, your favorite pens and highlighters, some stickers, and roll up your sleeves. (It’s okay to rip the calendar apart so you can see a whole year laid out across the floor. You can staple the corner when you’re finished.) The fun is about to begin but let’s get some of the logistics out of the way first.
Step 1: Make sure all major holidays are highlighted with attention to the smaller holidays and note those religious holidays that would be meaningful to your target market. You never want to send out a business to business marketing message when your target audience is focused on a holiday and is not thinking about business. If you are selling a product, you DO want to market to the consumers who would buy your products during a holiday. HINT: Remember to check Chase’s Calendar of Events for a fun holiday if you see some gaps in your plan. Who says you can’t celebrate National Thank You Day with your own fun marketing promotion?
And the fun begins
Step 2: Mark your yearly goals on the calendar.
Step 3: Mark your quarterly goals.
Step 4: Time to mark your monthly action plan.
Step 5: Weekly to-do’s.
Step 6: And lastly, Daily to-do’s.
As you fill in the areas of the calendar for each marketing type remember to work backwards from the end date allowing enough time for each step needed to implement your marketing steps. If you’re a blogger mark each date you want to post something new to your blog. As you mark each area soon before your very eyes you see that you’ve outlined the year with an easy to follow step-by-step plan of what needs to be done and when.
No need to skip down the yellow brick road without a care in the world when it comes to marketing because you’ll now be ready to hit the ground running towards your own personalized marketing goals. Ready. Set. Take off marketing!
