How to Create and Use a Marketing Calendar to Boost Sales in 2012
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There are so many moving parts when you are running an online business. Sometimes, when you are a solo entrepreneur, marketing tasks can begin to slip when things get busy. Having an indispensible tool such as a marketing calendar can help to keep you on track with the consistent tasks that you must do each day, week, month and quarter to keep your marketing campaigns on track and keep customers coming in the door.
Let's take a look at how easy it is to create and use a marketing calendar that will be customized for your specific online business.
Do a big 'brain dump' to gather marketing ideas
You get started actually creating your marketing calendar, get out a piece of paper and pencil and start brainstorming about the various activities, events and programs that you participate in each year for your business. Think about what role the major holidays play in your business, and how some advance planning can help boost your returns.
After doing a big, 'brain dump' on paper, organize those events by month. Then in a sort of backwards-engineering way, add in the tasks that lead up to each event. Is there a particular conference, seminar or festival that you want to get involved with next year for the first time? Now is the time to add it to your list. Think about all of the preparatory steps involved with making it happen and build those into your list.
Create or customize a marketing calendar template
Armed with your list, you can download a blank template of a marketing calendar on the Internet, or you can take the time to create one yourself using a basic calendar template within your spreadsheet software. Add the major events and then add the activities leading up to them in afterwards. Then fill in the regular daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly marketing activities that are not tied to a specific event.
To find these activities do the same backwards-engineering exercise that you did for the major events. You will come up with a list of tasks that will need to be performed on a consistent basis in order to keep your pipeline full. This might be the time when you begin to consider out-sourcing. If you can find an intern, or hire a low-cost virtual assistant to handle some of these tasks and free you up to focus on building and growing your business.
Create the habit of consulting your marketing calendar daily or at least weekly
It will do you no good to go through the motions of creating a calendar only to have it gather dust in a folder on your desktop. Check in daily or weekly to see what tasks or projects you should be working on, how close you are to upcoming deadlines, what progress you can make towards some big goals that are coming up in the future. Allow yourself to be accountable to your marketing calendar so that you can measure your progress. Imagine how satisfying it will feel after about six months to open it up and see all that you have accomplished. Then at the end of the year you will have a snapshot of how you did, and how you can improve for next year.
If you like these ideas for online marketing, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog to discover lots of ways to make Internet marketing fun.
Let's take a look at how easy it is to create and use a marketing calendar that will be customized for your specific online business.
Do a big 'brain dump' to gather marketing ideas
You get started actually creating your marketing calendar, get out a piece of paper and pencil and start brainstorming about the various activities, events and programs that you participate in each year for your business. Think about what role the major holidays play in your business, and how some advance planning can help boost your returns.
After doing a big, 'brain dump' on paper, organize those events by month. Then in a sort of backwards-engineering way, add in the tasks that lead up to each event. Is there a particular conference, seminar or festival that you want to get involved with next year for the first time? Now is the time to add it to your list. Think about all of the preparatory steps involved with making it happen and build those into your list.
Create or customize a marketing calendar template
Armed with your list, you can download a blank template of a marketing calendar on the Internet, or you can take the time to create one yourself using a basic calendar template within your spreadsheet software. Add the major events and then add the activities leading up to them in afterwards. Then fill in the regular daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly marketing activities that are not tied to a specific event.
To find these activities do the same backwards-engineering exercise that you did for the major events. You will come up with a list of tasks that will need to be performed on a consistent basis in order to keep your pipeline full. This might be the time when you begin to consider out-sourcing. If you can find an intern, or hire a low-cost virtual assistant to handle some of these tasks and free you up to focus on building and growing your business.
Create the habit of consulting your marketing calendar daily or at least weekly
It will do you no good to go through the motions of creating a calendar only to have it gather dust in a folder on your desktop. Check in daily or weekly to see what tasks or projects you should be working on, how close you are to upcoming deadlines, what progress you can make towards some big goals that are coming up in the future. Allow yourself to be accountable to your marketing calendar so that you can measure your progress. Imagine how satisfying it will feel after about six months to open it up and see all that you have accomplished. Then at the end of the year you will have a snapshot of how you did, and how you can improve for next year.
If you like these ideas for online marketing, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog to discover lots of ways to make Internet marketing fun.