Focus: Marketing Calendars
As part of your Tactical Marketing Plan you will need to develop a marketing calendar. This is an important step in getting all of your marketing initiatives organized into an easy to use document.
Here are 5 considerations in developing your calendar.
1. After you have developed your annual tactical marketing plan and your direction is clear, organize your marketing initiatives in a spreadsheet in a calendar format. I have created an outline which will help you through your calendar development. Request a consultation via email to beth@rushmarketinggroup.com
2. Determine the messages that you want to communicate to your customers. You can develop as many messages that you want but the messages must be coordinated for each method of communication with the customer. These messages can be on a number of subjects including new products and services, price changes- increases or decreases, special promotions, new distribution/locations, products changes, new customer policies such as credit, returns, how to order, how to use your products/services etc.
3. Determine the marketing promotional offers that you want to communicate to your customers to drive sales revenue. These offers must be customized for your type of business and customers. Offers can include discounts, free products or services, premiums, service specials, free information, special treatment etc.
4. Determine all of the methods of contacting customers including media advertising; direct response marketing; personal sales contacts; your online presence such as your website, ecommerce, blogs, social media, E-contacts; newsletters, press releases, etc. Then you will fill the spreadsheet calendar with all of the messages and offers by method of contact and by month. You can use a coding methodology for a more compact format.
5. A critical part of the calendar is the results tracking. Keep everything together so it is easy to review. For all marketing promotional initiatives include the budget, results and ROI. It will make all decision making on how to spend your annual budget much easier.