The goal of communication is to connect with people. The goal of marketing is to get a group of people to connect with your company, products, and services. Making connections requires steady and consistent communications.
Marketing communications come in many forms. From traditional media like advertising, brochures, trade shows, and face-to-face meetings to online media such as natural search, Google AdWords, web sites, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.
To realize the power of all of these communication mediums you must coordinate all your communication activities. One of the best ways that I have found to lay out these activities and coordinate them is with a marketing calendar.
When I work with organizations I get them to put all of their planning marketing activities on a calendar. People are often surprised at how many activities they are doing. How much overlap there is. And where the big gaps are in the schedule.
If there is no suitable calendar software, I often use a spreadsheet to record all the activities. Whatever tool you are using, I use this process to create the calendar:
- Write down every month of the year.
- For every month beyond the current quarter, record major events. This should include trade shows, training, major announcements, and deadlines for producing the annual report.
- For the current quarter, I create an entry for each week.
- For each week, I write down each of the events for each day. Be sure to include the internal tasks that must be completed for an external event.
In the calendar above we show some sample activities. Many activities are themselves part of a process. For example, if you are going to host a webinar in the middle of April, the preceding events are:
- A month before the webinar, update the corporate web site events calendar with the date, time, location, subject, and write-up for the webinar.
- Two weeks before the webinar send an email to all people who might be interested in the webinar.
- One week before the webinar, send another email campaign to the people in #2 who have not responded yet.
- One week before the webinar, all presentation materials must be written, reviewed, and approved.
- The Monday before the webinar, send an email reminder to every person who has registered.
- The day of the webinar, send an email reminder to all registrants.
- Give the webinar.
Having a single place where all events are recorded keeps everyone in the organization aligned. Critical steps in promoting events get looked after. Communication happens when you planned it. Regular communications gives you the chance to connect with your customers and prospects.
What is on your marketing calendar today?
