We’ve all had the experience of running into an old friend and exclaiming, ”We definitely need to get together.” If you don’t get your calendar out there and then, it doesn’t happen. It’s the same with marketing campaigns. You need to have tasks on a calendar.
There are obvious marketing projects that get placed on a calendar, like public relations and trade shows, but many others aren’t. I would argue that every aspect of marketing should be on a calendar. For example, the key to search engine marketing is content, which is most often added through a blog. However, how many companies blog with consistency? Companies that attend trade shows put things like the show date and booth ordering deadlines on a calendar, but skip the pre-show marketing and post-show follow-up.
I propose that all marketing plans should contain a marketing calendar, because we all know…what doesn’t get put on a calendar too often gets pushed off until it doesn’t get done at all.
Photo credit: danielmoyle http://flic.kr/p/b4mSFp