Why A Marketing Calendar Makes Your Business More Profitable
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History often repeats itself. Why someone quits their first diet is likely why they’ll quit their next one…
The communication problems from someone’s first marriage will likely surface in their second.
New financial years are strategically important because…how well you plan and set yourself up for the business year ahead will reap its rewards multiple times over during the next 12 months.
Every year end I’ve spoken to several business owners who are still so busy wrapping up their last financial year they haven’t even begun to think about what’s coming for the next 12 months.
Just like the New Year’s resolution you might have failed to complete last year, are you going to simply carry them through for this year?
May I offer a suggestion?
As you develop a marketing strategy, it’s important to start thinking of how that’s going to fit in with your strategic goals.
So many business owners I know are forced into a continuous publishing cycle. But to what end?
If you look at magazine publishers – EVERYTHING is planned out in advance based on the yearly cycle as well as their product or offer cycle.
They know in advance EXACTLY what type of content they need to create and what product or program they are offering for the month of February and why.
If you think more like a publisher, you’re going to be much more successful in your marketing strategy implementation.
Here’s why….
1. Ability to Create a Theme
By creating a marketing calendar, you can develop an overall theme for the year or the quarter based on the products and/or services that you’re promoting, as well as the time of year. Planning it all in advance makes it easier to be prepared and to come up with the ideas, content, and images that you want to use to promote.
2. Makes It Simpler to Find Your Message to Market Match
By planning out your marketing year in advance, it means you’ll also be planning your product and offer creation.
If you provide services, you’ll already know in advance which services you’ll be focused on each month and what activities you need to bring in the clients.
This will make it so much easier to know what kind of content to create and in what tone you need it to be, because you’ll understand in advance when you need it, and what it’s for. When you have a plan, you can research it, find out what your market needs are and where that sweet spot is where you can deliver at your very best.
That’s giving the market, your customers, exactly what they want.
That’s when you have a message to market match.
3. Keeps the Audience Primed for Your Offering
By planning your marketing calendar, you actually create a situation where you make it easier to keep content ideas flowing in such a way as to keep your audience engaged.
Some people think planning makes content boring, but the truth is, planning makes content effective, appropriate and engaging for your target audience. It gives you time to create appropriate titles and outlines, to ensure that your marketing message is exactly what needs to move your audience from where they are to where they need to be to buy your product or service.
4. Enables You to Create Quality User Experiences
By planning your content in advance, you have more time to make the content true valuable to your audience. Whether you’ll be writing it and editing yourself, or hiring others to do it for you, it’s important to plan in advance what type of content will be needed in order to produce the best user experience that engages them with your business, your brand and your product or service.
5. Keeps Your Marketing on Topic
It’s easy to get off topic sometimes if you haven’t planned your marketing in advance. By mapping out what content and offers you’ll be creating before you create it, you’ll have time to nix ideas that go off topic, or move them to the right time and place.
If you try to produce all the content you need for your marketing at the last moment, you may end up with ad hoc marketing that misses the mark altogether.
6. Acts as a Map to Help You Reach Your Business Goals
Your marketing calendar is just like GPS or a map. You can look at it in one glance and see where you’ll be in the future – how much revenue is coming in, how much you need to invest and how much profit you expect to make toward your business goals – and you can look more deeply into it and find out what you’re supposed to be doing right now.
You won’t go into each day blindly trying to deal with what is at hand or without a clue what results your actions will produce. This will be huge for some of you who are constantly overwhelmed and putting out fires in your business rather than being able to step back and work on the big picture strategic direction.
7. Attracts More Leads and Sales
Having a prescribed marketing calendar will make your marketing appear more regularly in front of the right audience, thus increasing the number of leads and ultimately customers and patients.
Your audience will be reminded that YOU are the expect in your field and you’ll be front of mind when they need your product or service.
8. Sets Expectations and Deadlines
Even if you are just setting deadlines for yourself, it’s important to do so. If you have no expectations of yourself or others it will be difficult to build a truly profitable business.
Finally, by having a strategic marketing calendar you’ll ultimately have a more organised and planned business that will make more money in the long run. Guaranteed.
Marketing that is strategic, consistent, congruent and delivers exactly what the market wants will see a lot more success than marketing that is haphazardly pushed out without any notion of a strategic goal or a plan.
If the thought of all this is overwhelming then we have a solution for you.
All you have to do is get these ESSENTIAL marketing tasks dialled into your calendar.
We can help.
Click here to download your marketing checklist. We show you exactly what you need to be doing all year round to ensure you have your best, most profitable year yet.
Best of all you’ll be getting it all mapped out in 30 minutes or less. I look forward to helping you grow a massively profitable business. 🙂
This is what one of our clients said…
“I can’t believe how much I’ve been able to step away from the business. I’ve been able to take this whole month off – I’ve barely checked my emails for more than 15 minutes each day. My favourite moment was when right in the midst of the holidays – after about 2 weeks – I get a notification to see that my new program has been launched and all my program materials done with a big beautiful announcement on social media. Before using Jess and her team, all this would not have been possible!”
– Mandy Burlinson, Studio Owner and Head Trainer, Perfect Fit People
Photo credit: retro calendar by Blue Gum Media