We know you have a lot on your plate and hats on your head. Because between managing operations, handling customer inquiries, and trying to grow your business, marketing might feel like just another task on your never-ending to-do list. And if you’re like most of the small businesses we talk to, you may have created some sort of marketing calendar in the past, but you rarely referenced it after you created it (because the truth is, you’re mostly waking up each day and flying by the seat of your pants). But what if we told you it’s possible to create a marketing calendar you’ll actually use?
It sure is! And we’re going to share exactly why you need one and give you a step-by-step guide to building one so you can finally start reaping the benefits of a marketing strategy once and for all.
What is a Marketing Calendar?
A marketing calendar is a calendar that helps you plan, execute, and track your marketing activities over a specific period of time. It’s more than just a schedule of dates and deadlines; in order to be effective, your marketing calendar should reflect your marketing goals, key campaigns, content plans, and assigned responsibilities (if you’re not the one who’s doing absolutely everything).
By visualizing your marketing plan in a calendar format, you can make sure all the things you’re doing align with your business goals and help you stay on track throughout the year.
Why You Need a Marketing Calendar
If right now you’re thinking, “But I do this in my head”, we see you. And we call you out on this terrible habit. Here are four reasons we need to put this in a calendar format, friends.
1. You’re Busy, You Need to See if Your To-Do List is Realistic
One of the biggest challenges small business owners face is time management. Nope, it’s not just you (ask us how we know). And with so many things asking for your attention, it’s so easy to become overwhelmed.
Ultimately, a marketing calendar helps you prioritize your marketing activities by breaking them down into manageable tasks. This way, you can see at a glance what needs to be done and when ensuring your to-do list is achievable and realistic. If you’re looking at your calendar and seeing a million marketing tasks every day, you’ll know right away that you’re overcommitted.
By mapping out your marketing efforts, you can avoid last-minute scrambles and maintain focus on a few things, instead of trying do everything, everywhere, all at once.
2. Stay Organized
Be honest—what does your desk look like right now? Chances are, if you’re like most of the small businesses we talk to, you need a little help staying organized. It’s not your fault. You’re legitimately busy.
A marketing calendar will help you stay organized and focused. It allows you to plan things in advance, so that you can spread out your to-do list to give yourself time to create high-quality content and execute your marketing strategy effectively.
3. Measure the Success of Marketing Efforts
You know we like to talk about data around here…but it’s for the right reasons. Keeping tabs on how your marketing is doing is key to making smart decisions and improving your future efforts. A marketing calendar helps you set clear goals so you can track metrics for each thing you’re doing, every marketing channel you’re nurturing, every campaign you get off the ground, so you can easily see what’s working (in the 15 minutes you have to check it). This way, you’re always fine-tuning your marketing for the best results. It’s hard to look back at the past three months of “winging it” and decide what to do next because you wrote nothing down
4. Team Collaboration
Speaking of “because you wrote nothing down”, if you have a team, you need a way to tell them what you want them to do (in a way that’s organized, not in a string of late-night emails while you’re “thinking about it”). When done well, a marketing calendar provides a clear overview of all marketing activities, ensuring everyone is on the same page and knows their responsibilities. This transparency fosters better communication and coordination among team members, reducing the risk of missed deadlines and duplicated efforts.
With Enji’s marketing calendar, you can assign tasks and track progress in one place, making it really easy to manage for you as the business owner.
5 Steps to Build a Marketing Calendar
Get out your favorite new notebook (or better yet - start a free trial on Enji to do this for you). We’re going to walk through five steps to build a marketing calendar next.
1. Create Your Marketing Plan (with goals)
The first step is defining your marketing goals and plan. What do you want to achieve with your marketing? Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, or boosting sales, having clear goals will guide your plan and help you stay focused. Once you’ve identified your goals, create a marketing plan that outlines the tactics you’ll use to achieve them. This plan will serve as the foundation for your marketing calendar (and if you’re not sure how to create one, we walk you through how to create a small business marketing plan here).
2. Choose Key Campaigns
Next up, figure out the key campaigns you'll run throughout the year. Think about things like product launches, seasonal promotions, and content marketing projects you might want to start (like starting a YouTube channel or finally getting a handle on SEO).
As you decide where you’re going to focus this year, don’t forget to consider your business goals, target audience, and what's trending in your industry. By zeroing in on a few high-impact campaigns, you can use your resources better and get better results without running yourself ragged being all the places. Better yet, mark these campaigns on your calendar with start and end dates to keep everything on track.
Pro-tip: Marketing campaigns are things you do in addition to your regular/ongoing marketing efforts. Think of them as a way to put extra oomph into your marketing for a specific thing during a specific period of time.
3. Create a Content Plan
Next, it’s time to drill down even further and create a content plan. Start to create a content plan that outlines the types of content you’ll create, whether that’s blog posts, social media content, email newsletters, or videos. Think about the themes and topics your audience loves, and plan your content around important messages, dates, and events. By mapping out your content ahead of time, you can keep a steady stream of valuable content your audience loves, and spend less time wondering WTF to post.
4. Assign Roles and Responsibilities
If you’re working with a team, the next step is to decide who is going to be responsible for what. Assigning specific tasks not only holds your team accountable for their roles but it also helps you streamline your workflow (read: stop being the bottleneck in your business). Use your marketing calendar to allocate tasks and set deadlines, so everyone knows what they need to do and when. Trust me, they will appreciate the clarity!
5. Execute!
With your marketing calendar set, the only thing left is to take action. Make the plan, do the plan. Stick to your schedule and tackle each task as you scheduled it. Keep an eye on your progress and tweak things if needed to stay on track. By now, if you’ve followed these steps, you’ve created a marketing calendar that you’ll actually use this year.
Want to See What Enji’s Marketing Calendar Looks Like?
Did we mention that we can do a lot of this work for you? Here’s what it could look like (in less than 30 minutes).
If you’re like most small business owners, you’ve probably made a marketing calendar before, but it ended up collecting dust. Today, we’ve laid out why you need a marketing calendar and given you a step-by-step guide to building one. Now the only thing left to do is start your free trial on Enji to get it done!
