| |
| |
|
Marketing Resource Center |
|
|
|
What You Need in Your Marketing Calendar
Marketing calendars are used by many businesses to help keep sales pipelines full of new prospective customers. Small businesses may just keep a simple calendar with handwritten items on the dates that marketing efforts need to be completed. These items might include attending a trade show, sending out an email campaign, or placing a buy for a magazine advertisement. Larger corporations typically have a more detailed marketing calendar planned out a year in advance. Regardless of the size of the business a good marketing calendar does have to have some key elements to assure the monthly activities in which the business is investing are paying off. Here are a few things you need to include in your marketing calendar in order to maximize your return on your marketing investment: 1. List all of the activities you plan to do by month. Activities should include efforts like direct mail, keyword search, media buying, PR, attending trade shows and networking events, and anything else you think will help bring awareness to your business and generate qualified leads. 2. Estimate how much it will cost each month to execute each activity. If you don't have enough information about the cost of an activity, make an educated guess and make your estimate higher than you believe it will really be. 3. Estimate the number of prospects the activity will expose your brand or message to and record these in the calendar as "impressions". For example, you may send out a press release and an industry trade publication prints it. In this scenario, the number of subscribers to the magazine would count as the number of "impressions". 4. Estimate the results each activity will bring to your company in the form of revenue. Usually this is measured in the form of new customers with an average annual value associated with the revenue this customer represents to your business. Depending on the activity, the results of the effort may assist in retaining an already existing customer for a longer period of time. The value of this activity may be a more challenging number to represent, but still make an effort to assign revenue to the effort. For example, hosting an open house for your business may bring in both new prospects and current customers. If the activity results in one new customer who will spend $5,000 over the next 12 months and 10 current customers with a combined value to your business of $50,000, you might want to represent the activity as having a $15,000 return. Remember, when completing a marketing calendar, you will likely include activities that you have done in the past. By doing so, you will have a results history to reference when filling in the numbers. Marketing activities that you have not done before should have results represented in the form of goals you would like to achieve for the investment you are making. 5. Summarize your totals. Each month, you should be able to see the total number of marketing activities you have going on, how many people will be exposed to your business, and what type of results you will be achieving. Reviewing and updating these totals with actual numbers will allow you to look at your marketing history and make better decisions about the types of activities you should spend more time and energy doing. Long-term Marketing Calendars can really impact the bottom line. In the short-term, it will help hold your team accountable to completing tasks and keeping the sales and marketing efforts in motion. If done properly, a Marketing Calendar will keep you on budget and force activities to be tied into results. The Marketing Calendar is the one part of your overall marketing plan that needs constant updating. Be sure to add impromptu marketing efforts that may have not made the calendar originally. These marketing efforts need to be tracked as well, and by putting them in the calendar, you will have a record of the activity for future consideration. Doug has served several companies as a CEO, Vice President, Director of Business Development and Sales Manager. Doug has launched three start-ups of his own, grew revenues of a large radio station group 614% in three years, and did time at a large Marketing Agency in Indianapolis prior to starting Edge Marketing. Doug serves as the Ringmaster for Edge Marketing overseeing the business operations. His passion is helping small businesses and start-up companies achieve their goals. Qualifications: Executive Director of Entrepreneur's Alliance of Indiana
MORE RESOURCES:
Marketing - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Tooting Your Own Horn "If he who has a thing to sell Goes and whispers in a well, He won't be so apt to make the dollars As he who climbs a tree and hollers!" -- AnonymousEvery day in your business, something happens that others should know about. You give exceptional service to a client; you reach out to a new type of customer; you demonstrate your expertise on an important topic. Fundraising Letter Envelopes: How To Make Them Irresistible Readers spend only a few seconds deciding the fate of your direct mail fundraising appeals. Either they open them on the spot, set them aside for later, or chuck them in the waste paper basket. Marketing: Can I Trust You? We live in an unprecedented era of communication. Because of this, your prospects are literally bombarded from all directions with marketing messages. How Prince Connects With His Target Market! While Internet legend (and young pup) Frank Kern would have you believe that I'm so old I should be confined to a wheelchair, I'm still on the good side of 100! And I can stil enjoy a good concert from time to time. My daughter - Rachel, my wife and I had the good fortune to score some last-minute tickets to the recent Prince concert here in Atlanta. 5 Ways to Market for Immediate Results Sales are down, and I need more customers now! Sound familiar? Maybe you are the one who said it. I know what you're thinking, there's no magic pill for delivering immediate results and no spontaneous marketing effort that will skyrocket sales. Promotional Products As a promotions director for a lot of super markets, one of my key responsibilities was finding promotional products for the events we make. I worked with distributors to order, design and customize these items to promote the super markets image to the general public. Small Business Marketing; Abstract Philosophical Discussion Our bodies work like our small businesses. They work best by word of mouth, networks, referrals, etc. How to Take Your Law Firm to the Next Level How to Take Your Law Firm to the Next LevelThird in a series of three articlesSO you've done such a good job at bringing in new clients to your firm that you're swamped with business, your firm is large and growing, and all parts of your marketing system are in place and running smoothly? Congratulations!If you can confidently answer "yes!" to the following metrics, then you're ready to take your practice to the next level:? Is your firm's mission perfectly aligned with your market?? Do your marketing efforts create exactly the relationship your customers most want and need?? Are your services well packaged, presented with a What's In It For Me? punch, and priced at various levels?? Do you know exactly where and how to promote your firm's services?? Does your marketing system routinely and predictably create the kinds of new customers your business requires?What happens next in many successful firms, however, is not good news. Instead of sticking with what's created success in the first place, the focus shifts away from a marketing mindset. Five New 5 Ps! NO! When I say "5 P's", I'm not talking about the big 5 P's of marketing everyone's familiar with.Here I'm NOT referring to Product, Price, Place, Promotion and Package!But I'm talking about the FRESHEST 5 P's I believe will be extra useful for your websites and newsletters. Digital Printing vs. Press Printing - A Comparison Guide When it comes time to print your brand identity materials, there's one overarching question for you to consider - whether to print the resulting materials on a digital printer or traditional press. There are many differences between the two processes, some of which are outlined below. Creative Online Marketing For Salespeople and Business Professionals New to a sales career? Want to market yourself but don't have the money to do so? Tired of cold calling and prospecting? Wish there were an easier way to get the word out about your services?Does this sound like you? This was what I felt like when I got my first sales job selling copiers ten years ago. My sales manager back then was into the traditional methods of getting new business; that is, prospecting, cold calling, booking appointments, doing product demonstrations, and closing sales. So What Do You Do? Once you have the attention of a business prospect, at some point in the conversation, the prospect will ask you, "So what do you do?". In most cases, you will only have 60 seconds, to catch the interest of the prospect. The Top Ten Ways to Get Beyond Networking And Generate Cash-Building Exposure Gain the exposure you need to succeed with these ten tips:1. Present yourself as a specialist and/or an authority in your field. Key Marketing Questions - Planning Your Marketing Campaign So you started a business. How's it going? Did you think about marketing when you began planning for your business? Marketing is how you get the word out about your business. Have You Captured Me Today? There are many Web sites I visit every day and will probably never return to again. It's not that I didn't like the site, or that I wasn't interested in the topic, services, or products offered. Smart Ways To Rocket Launch Your Profits If you really want to pull more profits from your business, you really need take some of the actions listed here. 1. Did You Know Your Mind-Set IS Your Problem? How To Save Yourself From The Pits of Marketing Cyber Hell!"Your Mind-Set IS Your Problem!"Did you know that the one major thing that stands between You and Success is Your Mind Set? Yes it is true. Sometimes our "Own Stinkin' Thinkin'" gets in the way of our Success, or our ability to achieve success. Spring Cleaning: How To Do It In Your Business To Make More Room For Success With the arrival of Spring, I decided to get outside and into my garden.I had neglected to do some basic maintenance during the previous months and wondered if my plants suffered any permanent damage as a result. Trade Show Videos Need to be Planned A few months ago, we attended the recent Austech 2005 Expo. It was a large trade show that showcased over 500 manufacturers selling machines, equipment and systems. Maslows Marketing Filter One of the basics of all marketing and advertising training is a teaching of "Maslow's needs pyramid". This pyramid shows the different motivators and needs in a person's life and how they are built one upon the other.
|
| home | site map | Advertising Articles |
| © 2006 |
