Marketing Magic: Use a Marketing Calendar to Boost Your Results

Every business is a marketing business! No matter how large or small your business is, you need income to survive. To get the income, you must make sales, and to make sales, you must make potential customers aware of your business, products, and services. That is the task of marketing. Your life will be much easier, and your business will be more successful if you use a marketing calendar.

What is a Marketing Calendar?

A marketing calendar is more than taking that wall calendar your local real estate agent gave you, hanging it up, and scribbling ‘to-dos’ on it.

Instead, it is a schedule of all your planned marketing activities, designed to give you an “at a glance” overview for the days, weeks, and months ahead.

More specifically, it includes key dates and events, marketing goals and objectives, target audience, and marketing campaigns and activities timetable. It can also include details about the marketing channels and resources used for each campaign.

Benefits of a Marketing Calendar for a Small Business

Okay, I know that you already have a lot on your plate as a small business owner. But, as we have already discussed, your marketing is critical to the success of your business.

It helps you plan your marketing efforts and ensures that you consistently reach out to your target audience. Having a plan for when and how to market your products or services can be incredibly beneficial as it enables you to effectively allocate your resources and budget, maximize the effectiveness of your marketing and measure the success of your campaigns.

As a self-employed business owner, it helps you get ahead of the curve and be more organized and effective in your business.

Consequently, a marketing calendar is an essential tool for small businesses.

Build a Marketing Calendar That Works

The first step is to adopt a tool for your calendar. You can find free marketing calendar templates at Evinex in both Excel and PDF formats. Projectmanager.com also has an excellent free template for Excel, and Google Calendar is yet another option depending on the level of detail you drill down to.

Here is the process to build a small business marketing calendar:

1. Determine your marketing goals: Before you start creating your calendar, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of your marketing goals. For example, what do you hope to achieve through your marketing efforts? Do you want to generate leads, drive sales or increase brand awareness? Specific goals will help you create a calendar aligned with your business objectives.
2. Identify your target audience:As we continually emphasize, identifying your target market and creating an ideal customer profile is crucial. Consider demographics, interests, and location when identifying your target audience. This will help you create campaigns that are relevant and engaging.
3. Plan out key dates and events: Your marketing calendar should include critical dates and events relevant to your business. This could consist of product launches, or industry events, and holidays that are great opportunities for promotions. By including these dates, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are timely and relevant.
4. Choose your marketing channels: Determine which channels you will use to reach your target audience. Options include social media, email marketing, content marketing, or paid advertising. It could also include networking, trade shows, public speaking, and direct mail.

Okay, let’s think about this for a moment – direct mail in the internet age? And public speaking?

According to a Forbes article in July 2022, “Direct mail marketing remains one of the most effective advertising strategies to target your customer demographic and increase foot traffic at your small business.” And doesn’t Google use direct mail? When most businesses have eliminated direct mail from their promotions, the reduced competition can offer a great way to get noticed by potential customers. But you must do your maths when planning the campaign.

Personally, I used public speaking as an effective marketing tactic when I started my accounting practice. Many people have a deathly fear of public speaking, and as I had developed confidence in my band days, I had an advantage over my competitors. So I often spoke at events related to my target market, which built my authority and credibility in the marketplace.

So be open-minded, consider which channels are most effective for your business, and allocate your resources accordingly.

5. Know your metrics: When launching a marketing campaign, it is vital to understand the metrics that will provide an accurate insight into how effective the campaign was and whether it achieved its desired result.

The first metric you need to know, even before embarking on your campaign, if possible, is the breakeven point. This is the point at which a marketing campaign’s cost equals the revenue it generates. To calculate the breakeven point, you’ll need to consider the following factors:

• Cost of the campaign: This includes any expenses such as advertising costs, design and production costs, and personnel expenses.
• Revenue generated: This is the total amount of money the campaign is expected to bring in from sales or other forms of revenue.

Once you have this information, you can use the following formula to calculate the breakeven point:

Breakeven point = Total cost of campaign / (Revenue per unit – Cost per unit)

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re running a marketing campaign for a new product that has a price of $100 and costs $50 to produce and sell. The campaign costs $5000.

To calculate the breakeven point, you would use the following formula:

Breakeven point = $5000 divided by ($100 minus $50) = 100 units

This means that you need to sell at least 100 units of the product for the campaign to break even. If you sell more than 100 units, you’ll start to turn a profit.

Some other standard metrics include:

• Reach: This is the number of people who see your marketing message. It can be measured in terms of the size of your audience or the number of people who see your ads via tools such as Google Analytics or Facebook Insights, which track data such as website visits and clicks on social media ads.
• Engagement: This measures how well your marketing message resonates with your audience. Clicks, shares, comments, and likes indicate engagement in your internet promotions.
• Conversion rate: This is the ratio of people who take the action you desire (such as purchasing your product or signing up for a newsletter) after seeing your marketing message.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): This is the cost of acquiring a new customer or converting a lead into a sale. To calculate the CPA, divide the total cost of your marketing efforts by the number of conversions.
• Return on investment (ROI): This measures the profitability of your marketing efforts. It is calculated by dividing the revenue generated by the cost of the campaign.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): This is an estimate of the total value a customer will bring to your business throughout their relationship with you. It is calculated by multiplying the average purchase value by the number of purchases made during the estimated time they will be a customer.

There are more commonly used metrics in this article on the DISSC Marketing Method.

6. Identify roles and resources: Planning your marketing is an integral function of your role as owner and manager. However, when it comes to the actual tasks, that should not be your role unless it is the area where you provide the most value to the business.

There are various options for small businesses looking for help with their marketing efforts.

One such resource is outsourcing to virtual assistants or experts specializing in small business marketing. This enables you to access expertise that may otherwise not be available due to budget constraints.

Virtual assistants can provide a wide range of services, including managing social media accounts, creating content, tracking analytics, and website updates. By outsourcing to virtual assistants or experts, you can save time by having someone else take care of the tasks involved in marketing your products or services.

Utilizing automation is also an effective way to ensure you stay on track with your marketing initiatives. Automation tools can be beneficial in automating mundane tasks such as scheduling posts or sending out emails, saving you time for more strategic endeavors. Automated systems also provide insights into customer behavior so that you can adjust campaigns accordingly.

Using a marketing calendar and automation software will help keep your campaigns running smoothly and keep communication between your team members clear and consistent.

7. Schedule your marketing campaigns: Once you have determined your goals, target audience, key dates, marketing channels, and metrics, it’s time to start scheduling your campaigns. Consider each campaign’s timing, frequency, and content, and ensure enough time for planning and execution.
8. Monitor, measure, review, and refine your calendar regularly: Your marketing calendar should be a living document that you review and adjust periodically. Keep track of the results of your campaigns and use this data to make adjustments as required, as well as to guide future marketing efforts.

Conclusion

In conclusion, creating a marketing calendar for your small business is a great way to stay organized, on top of campaigns, and create a successful strategy. Taking the time to plan ahead will save you stress and chaos later on. It also allows you to measure the success of your campaigns and adjust accordingly.

This article is part of our series on Business Hacks. Other articles in this series include:
The 80/20 Rule: A Powerful Business Productivity Hack
How to Transform Your Business With 90-Day Goals
Unique Selling Proposition: Why Your Small Business Must Have One
Online Hacks for Local Businesses