How To Create A 12-Month Marketing Calendar
What type of business owner are you? Are you the type of business owner that is extremely busy and is doing everything last second? Or are you the type of business owner that is planning months in advance? Well, today we are going to learn how to map out a 12-month marketing calendar for your business! No matter what type of business owner you are, this method of creating content is going to work for you!
Getting Started!
I want you to look at your calendar to get some inspiration. Are you using holidays and seasonal times to create a sense of urgency to get people to buy? For example, a Labor Day flash sale to increase engagement.
Notice what has already been working. How often do you want to offer that promotion or conversion event and when do you want to offer this again?
When I say conversion event, I am talking about some type of promotion or sale that will get people excited to invest in your product or service.
Instead of thinking that you had one promotion and now it's done, consider repurposing that successful promotion for your business!
Map It Out!
Once you've looked at your calendar and what promotions you want to offer, you need to map it out. Go through each month on the calendar and write down only the name of the promotion and the date – no content or details right now.
What month are you going to implement your first promotion? Give yourself anywhere from 8-12 weeks to prepare. This prep work is going to be key! Don't think you need to rush and get something out this month.
Give yourself 90 days in between each promotion so you can focus your time and energy on the promotion that is ahead. You will make more money if you are prepared and put the right energy into the promotion.
Over time, you will know how many events you can do with the time and manpower you have. This year, you might start with 4 events, but next year it might be seven! Once you find your groove, you can diversify and come up with bigger ideas.
You should still be selling every day, but these are fun ways to make sales have a sense of urgency. Again, you should be selling every day!
So Many Promotions!
What can a promotion look like? Here are seven different ideas for fun promotions:
- Referral Special
- What can you do to increase referrals? Host an event where people can bring a friend.
- Double Your Money Event
- Whatever your customers spend, give them something else that's worth even more than they spent! If they pay you $50, they can get into your course or program worth $100 for a free trial.
- Upsell Specials
- You already have amazing customers that are purchasing from you. What other things do they need and are asking for?
- Social Media Content
- This is a double win! It's social media engagement and it increases the number of people seeing your offers.
- Giveaway Promotion
- What is something that you can give away that introduces your business to everyone? Your book, or your best selling product?
- Collaboration and Partnership Business Event
- What could you do with someone who is a perfect complement to your business? It could be an IG story swap or tagging you in a post.
- Customer Loyalty Promotion
- Anytime we do things to thank and help our customers, it's another opportunity for your customers to love us and ask where they can get more of our business!
You can reuse all of these promotion ideas multiple times a year. That's actually much more than seven promotions per year!
These seven ideas are just the start of all the promotion possibilities. How about birthdays, or one million downloads? There's always a reason to celebrate! How can you create something to celebrate?
Tips To Implement
The idea of creating the 12-month marketing calendar sounds great, but implementing can be difficult! Here are some tips to help you easily implement this new system:
- Don't forget your intention – what are you trying to get out of this? Do you need more likes on Facebook? More sales? Increased brand awareness? Connect your goal with the type of promotion you're doing.
- Break down the project itself – start to write down the individual projects to get the promotion up and running. Put tasks and deadlines on each event. What do you need to do now?
- Create a “lesson learned” file – the 12-month marketing calendar is not just a one-year thing! Keep in mind what worked and what didn't. The “lessons learned” file will help you tweak and change the promotion so it works even better for your business next year!
All of us can be organized business owners with a 12-month marketing calendar. Our content is planned and prepped and we know exactly what we are doing to promote our business. If you want even more help to prepare your 12-month marketing calendar, The Content Machine™ has many other tips and implementation hacks for you.
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