It’s mid-way through the year and what better time than now to plan your marketing activities through to the calendar year-end.
We’ve created a simple planning template that you can download and use to map out your activities.
Firstly however, before you go ahead and get planning, have a think about your marketing objective for the rest of the year.
Do you want to get more clients, make more sales, increase traffic to your website, grow the spend of your current customers or perhaps something else?
Whatever your objective is for your marketing activities, be sure to get clear and write it down before you go any further.
Once you’ve got your objective sorted, you can now think about the marketing activities you’ll undertake that will support your goal.
We find that most businesses have ‘business as usual’ activities, such as a regular newsletter, events they host or attend, or social media campaigns. Whatever it is for your business, be sure to firstly note these activities down in the left-hand column of the planning template.
These are the activities you’ll do no matter what and you know are tried and true and work. They serve your clients and customers well.
Next step: Go to your planning template and start to fill out the section called Key Dates. This section is about noting anything of significance in your industry, key holiday dates, events, anything that may be an opportunity for you to seize for your business or to simply note when planning the timing and type of your marketing activities.
Once you’ve listed everything you can think of, move across to the right-hand side of your planning template and colour-in the boxes to show when those key events are happening. This helps visually when taking a step back to plan your activities and when you will implement them.
Good work so far!
Next step: This is where things start to get exciting. Here’s where you can start to think about your objective, reflect on the key dates you’ve listed and look for any marketing opportunities you could create.
For example, is there an opportunity to run a specific marketing campaign over a six-week period using email marketing that aligns to something happening in your industry?
Or is there simply a period of ‘white space’ in your company or specific time of year that is optimal to run a specific campaign?
Spend some time considering the opportunities, list them down in the left-hand column and then map them out in the right-hand column, noting any budget requirements and who will lead the project.
Once you’ve completed these steps, you’ll have a six-month plan to December with all your marketing activities mapped out and ready to be developed and executed. You can even do this on an annual basis, so you have the year ahead all planned.
Good luck with your template and we hope you enjoy the marketing mapping process.
