I love to sit down and plan things in my marketing calendar.<\/p>\n
First, it really helps me to get a clear vision<\/strong> of what I have coming up.<\/p>\n Second, it gets me excited about how I can expand and grow<\/strong> my business.<\/p>\n And last but certainly not least, it makes me accountable to do the things<\/strong> I say I\u2019m going to do!<\/p>\n Planning a marketing calendar takes no more than a pen and paper. Sure, you can get as fancy as you like and set it up online, or you can do it like me and just use post-it notes on your wall calendar.<\/p>\n Whatever you choose, you should be sure to detail out what you want to do so that you can see how that looks in terms of impacting your workload and the people you want to market to.<\/p>\n By putting it all in front of you, you can determine timing for your product\/service launch as well as the marketing pieces that need to go with it.<\/p>\n Here is how it looks:<\/p>\n 1. To start your calendar, put your regular marketing activities on it<\/strong> (ie if you have a weekly newsletter, put that on your calendar; if you do social media marketing, indicate that as well). It really gives you a good idea of what you are doing when you can look at it right in front of you.<\/p>\n 2. For a new product or service promotion, pick a date for when you want to do your launch<\/strong>. Put that date on your calendar.<\/p>\n 3. Working back from that date, start to fill in when and where you are going to do your promotion.<\/strong> If you are promoting in your newsletter, indicate which date(s). If you are promoting via social media, indicate those dates as well. Your calendar will soon start to fill up! If you are doing emails to your list, indicate when those need to take place.<\/p>\n