Scheduling marketing activities

Every good marketer understands the importance of having a marketing calendar. The marketing calendar can help you stay on top of upcoming marketing activities. This can help you prepare for big marketing expenses and many other things that will be happening within the company.

Scheduling marketing activities will help you gain the publicity you need to successfully promote your business. The goal of marketing is to get the word out about your company and share your business ideas with the public. In turn, the public will purchase your products and help your business become successful. If you can stay in the public's eye, you will be able to continue getting the attention and the sales you need to watch your business grow.

How can you schedule marketing activities? It's pretty easy actually. Some marketers prefer to have a large calendar and write down all the things that are up-coming, others like to write up a to-do lists or an activity lists. You may have seen an office with stick notes all over it; this is even considered a marketing schedule. With the internet and other tools available, you can easily catalog your items into an electronic device and have instant notification messages sent your email account and cell phone when it's time to start focusing on a particular marketing activity.

What type of marketing activities do you need to schedule? There are 3 basic types of marketing activities, they are as follows:
1. Everyday marketing activities
2. One-time projects (like thank-you mailers and yearly fundraisers)
3. Idea generation
Each company has different marketing techniques they use on a daily basis. Some companies prefer to focus on creating a blog and participating in social networking sites to boost their company image. Other companies spend more time responding to editorials and writing articles to build their company image. Then there are other forms of marketing which are completely focused on boosting the sales of the business.

A marketing calendar must also have large events planned. Work with your public relations department to schedule a large fundraising event that will benefit the company. You may consider hosting this event with other companies and donating some of he proceeds to charity, this is a win-win situation for all the companies that are involved and it will help your company generate some positive publicity.

Your web site should be placed on your marketing calendar as well. The web site is something that requires daily maintenance. It must be constantly updated to include more information and keep the content new. When you don't pay attention to your web site, you can start to get broken links and other problems will surface. This can cause you to lose some great business because people are frustrated by the out-dated content and lack of attention you give your web site.

Some other marketing activities that must be on your calendar should include some of the following:

• New product design


• Referral program rewards


• Workshops


• Writing a blog or participating in discussion groups


• Customer research


• Brainstorming sessions for new product ideas and other marketing ventures

To get started with your marketing activities, make a list of all the different marketing activities you are currently involved with. This can help you figure out which ones are working and which ones you need to take off your schedule. Make sure to schedule brainstorming sessions on how you plan to boost your customer retention in addition to finding new customers to help your business grow. Make changes to your marketing schedule on a continual basis, this is a great way to improve your business and help it become successful for many years.