Trust us, we get it, marketing can seem overwhelming and even a nuisance when you have to tend to the daily activities of running a business. As with anything else in business, you can have the most awesome marketing ideas and strategy that look great on paper until it is time to execute. Then what? Suddenly everything you have planned needs DETAILS, which seem to take your time, effort and energy to complete! What is the timeline, what about the budget, did you get all the materials you need to complete the project, who is doing what

Suddenly that fantastic marketing strategy seems impossible and usually gets left to collect dust and die to leave room for more important business matters.

like managing people or fighting the fire of the day. That’s when the actual marketing planbecomes vital to successfully accomplishing things. When you develop a strategy taking the time to break down your plans and cut them into bite-sized pieces, less overwhelming bits, is necessary so that you can execute your marketing on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis without fail.

Strategy into Action:

An excellent way to turn your marketing strategy into an action plan is to create a marketing calendar. Breaking down your activities for the next month, three months, six months. Yes it likely will change and that is perfectly ok but it gives your compnay a cohesive plan and direction. A marketing calendar allows you to figure out the following:


  • What: What marketing projects or events would you like to get done this month? What does each project entail (i.e., materials, outside services, etc.)? Beginning with the end in mind and answering the what in your marketing calendar allows you to get into the details piece by piece rather than just blindly jumping in without a plan.

  • Who: Who is handling what project or whom do you need to partner with to get your project done? Giving the right person a piece of your plan can save you time and money. You do not have all the resources internally or do it all yourself, plan your resources and manage the right people to get it done more efficiently.

  • When: When defines your marketing activity timeline, the start, and end of each marketing event or project. When also allows you to realistically plan for how much time a project will take. Again we reiterate, BE REALISTIC. For example, you may want to create a direct mail piece, but need to create content, you can plan to spend 1 hour brainstorming content for your piece, plan on the time it will take to have written and designed. On your marketing calendar, you can say on Monday; I am going to take 1 hour to write my piece, hand off to my team. Give them a due date of a week later to allow for changes and such. Put it in the calendar and before you know it you have a campaign ready.

  • How: How much money do you need for each project? How helps to define and in many cases redefine your budget for marketing.

So we’ve talked about the how, why is it so important? A marketing calendar keeps you and your entire team on track, assures you are all headed in a defined direction, and holds everyone accountable. Without an action plan- in this case the marketing calendar, your strategy is more likely to stay just that a great idea. Without the execution you may end up looking at your strategy one year from today and realize that all the great ideas have never left the paper. You may think, well is it really so important that we pull it together, it’s just marketing? At the end of the day if you aren’t communicating with your prospects or clients, trust us, someone else is. Don’t communicate, lose revenue, it’s really quite that simple.

Marketing calendars break down what may seem overwhelming, into realistic projects with timelines while outlining project priority. It would be near impossible to build a website from scratch in a day, this takes planning and time, however, it more realistic to create a piece of the site each day, starting with content and moving forward with the design. The smaller the projects, the easier it is to complete. Remember that marketing calendars can be revised once complete to suit deadlines and other more important business activities.

To wrap it all up, a marketing calendar can help you do the following:

  1. Allow for a realistic timelines
  2. Assigns projects to the right people
  3. Better defines the details of the project or plan
  4. Allows for adaptability in your plans
  5. And most important, will ensure things get done!

Ready to get it done and get it done right! Give us a call; we are ready to help you to your path to success.