A marketing calendar is essential for planning, coordinating, optimising, and executing your marketing efforts. It serves as a central tool where all campaigns, channels, and marketing tools for a given period are organised in a clear overview. It ensures that everyone in your team is up-to-date with ongoing projects, tasks, and deadlines. When managed properly, a marketing calendar helps you communicate consistently and purposefully with your target audience. However, despite its importance, many businesses and marketers make mistakes that undermine their success. In this blog, I’ll discuss five common mistakes when managing your marketing calendar and offer tips on how to avoid them.
In this article, you will learn:
Are your marketing calendars scattered across various Excel sheets? Do you track campaign briefings in Google Drive? And do you assign tasks to team members using yet another tool? This approach makes it hard to maintain an overview and manage deadlines effectively.
To encourage effective collaboration and gain an instant overview of yearly plans and ongoing marketing projects, we created Husky. It’s an integrated tool where you can manage everything—from planning campaigns and tracking tasks to communicating with team members. In the article "Is there an alternative to a marketing calendar in Excel?" I highlight seven benefits of marketing calendar software like Husky compared to using Excel.
"Better yesterday than today." If you’re a marketer, this phrase likely sounds familiar. There’s always the temptation to dive into action without a solid plan. The result? Your efforts become disjointed and fail to deliver the desired outcome.
Before you start, it’s better to consult your marketing calendar. How does this new project fit into your long-term planning? What’s the ultimate goal? Which tools and channels will you strategically use to achieve the desired result? Your marketing calendar should always be the backbone of all your marketing activities. With Husky, you get a concrete monthly overview that can be broken down into weekly and daily tasks, making it easier to create a feasible plan and monitor project progress. Using a tool like a marketing calendar ensures a continuous flow of marketing efforts that are clearly linked and aimed at measurable goals.
Marketing is usually a collective effort. It requires solid collaboration between different teams and departments. If unclear agreements are made, and there’s a lack of communication regarding the marketing calendar, confusion and task duplication are likely.
The solution? Use a tool where all projects are logically tracked, share this with all involved parties, and make clear agreements from the outset. Who can edit projects? How does everyone track their tasks? What is the internal communication process for campaigns? By defining roles and responsibilities across departments and teams, you avoid misunderstandings. Communicate clearly with one another and avoid an overload of emails. In this article, I explain how you can tackle this with Husky. Additionally, plan regular team meetings and status updates to discuss progress and quickly identify potential issues.
Marketing environments change quickly, and what’s relevant today may be outdated tomorrow. If you stick to a rigid plan, it becomes difficult to react to current trends and unexpected events. These are two things that occur frequently in marketing.
Develop your marketing calendar with a flexible approach. Leave room for spontaneous campaigns and last-minute adjustments, and schedule weekly evaluation moments to follow up on all your projects and assess where adjustments are needed. Be critical and don’t be afraid to make changes to your current marketing plan to seize spontaneous opportunities.
Copying last year’s marketing plan entirely? Don’t! While it can be a good starting point, it’s better not to replicate it blindly. Thoroughly analyse what worked and what didn’t, and remove the marketing activities that didn’t deliver the desired results. Also, consider new trends and leave out campaigns that are no longer relevant.
Once you’ve done that, focus on the campaigns you were satisfied with and adjust your strategy to current trends and evolving customer needs. Consider new marketing tools you want to implement, evaluate the budget you want to allocate for each project, and thoughtfully shape your new marketing calendar. By keeping your planning dynamic and continuously optimising it, you’ll stay relevant and effective in an ever-changing market.
Effectively managing a marketing calendar is crucial to the success of your marketing efforts. Common mistakes like using multiple tools, lacking a long-term vision, failing to build in flexibility, unclear agreements, and blindly copying last year’s plan can lead to confusion, duplicated tasks, missed deadlines, and lost opportunities. By opting for an integrated solution and regularly evaluating your strategy and planning, you’ll create a cohesive and flexible plan. This will keep you relevant and ensure consistent, targeted marketing that contributes to your ultimate goals.
The recommended way to discover Husky quickly and professionally.
Demo by a marketer with experience in marketing planning. After the demo we will customize Husky for your trial period.
Ideal to get started with your marketing planning after a demo.
The previous demo is not mandatory, but it is recommended.
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