Why you should use a marketing calendar

Why you should use a marketing calendar?

A short and general statement why you should use a marketing calendar is to ensure the big picture is realized. To do so, you need a birds eye on what is going to happen. And it’s not only about you, it’s essential and useful to: Keep stakeholders informed.

It doesn’t matter if it is your client, manager, CEO, at a certain stage people like to be informed and want to know what is going on. But also for cooperating with colleagues it comes in very handy to have a source that contains the key information in one overview.

A marketing calendar provides exactly this:

• Ongoing projects
• Starting dates & deadlines
• Estimated results - Expectations solidified
• Estimated cost - Keep track on the marketing budget
• Who is in charge - Ownership clarified

This overview allows anyone to get fast a good overview on what is happening, when and with which efforts and results. The who is in charge doesn’t make much sense if you’re a single marketer in a small company, but for larger corporations it can be useful to know whom to contact for further questions.

In the end it is not only about keeping stakeholders informed, it is also very useful tool for your team and even yourself, having a single top level overview, containing all relevant key data.

So which projects and tasks should be displayed now?

Breaking it down a little more about the projects and tasks which you can place on your marketing calendar. There’s usually no need to place each and every detailed task going on but rather top level information. To be considered that a marketing calendar also needs to be updated from time to time, you shouldn’t end up in spending significant time daily here.

Giving a real life example - you can place how many social media posts you are doing within the month, displaying which day they will be published and adding the cost for promoting them. And also when you will operate paid campaigns or events will take place.

What to display on a marketing calendar:

• Social media posts
• Blog posts
• Email newsletters
• Events
• Campaigns
• Key tasks (e.g. building a strategy)

It is usually not a necessary must to add more detailed points like when the copywriting will be done, the graphics, how the promotion budget is split over the used channels and so on. But of course, if you want to add all these details, feel free to do so, it’s ‘your’ working tool and must work out to your needs.

Creating your own marketing calendar

Solutions like our CloudAnswers Marketing Calendar can be installed in Salesforce, and is also coming with a free trial version.

Here you are having all the benefits of Salesforce included, to keep your team and all stakeholders informed with ease, customize the settings and view to your company's needs and further.

And if you are not a Salesforce user? Then the most popular alternative is Excel and Google Sheets. There are many paid and free templates available, like Smartsheet’s free available Marketing Calendar templates just to name one example.

So what are you waiting for? Create your own marketing calendar and give it a try.