How one can Create a Advertising and marketing Calendar You’ll Truly Use

It doesn’t matter what sort of enterprise I’ve labored for over time, my staff has all the time confused the significance of a advertising and marketing calendar — after which by no means made one.

A advertising and marketing calendar is crucial to protecting a staff organized and productive, however creating and sustaining one may be intimidating with out the best steerage. So, for those who’re studying this hanging your head in disgrace, don’t fear; it is a protected house. And in the present day, we’re breaking the cycle.

Let’s unpack how one can create a advertising and marketing calendar you’ll truly use.

What’s a advertising and marketing calendar?

A advertising and marketing calendar is a schedule of your upcoming advertising and marketing actions and essential dates. It covers a month, quarter, and even yr and paperwork product launches, social media posts, weblog articles, gross sales, and stay occasions. Social media calendars, content material calendars, and occasion calendars are additionally examples of forms of advertising and marketing calendars.

At its core, a advertising and marketing calendar is fairly easy. It’s only a schedule of your staff’s upcoming advertising and marketing actions and essential dates. Consider it like a trip itinerary however with fewer excursions and extra weblog articles — that are far more enjoyable anyway, proper?

Some firms might go for a single advertising and marketing calendar, which supplies them a high-level overview of all the things scheduled in a given month, quarter, or yr, whereas others favor a number of advertising and marketing calendars devoted to particular actions, like a social media or editorial calendar.

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Any complexity with a advertising and marketing calendar (like a trip itinerary) relies on how detailed your staff desires to get and the way you propose to make use of it, however extra on that shortly.

What ought to a advertising and marketing calendar embody?

Whatever the finer nuances of your advertising and marketing calendar, there are a number of “large ticket” milestones it is best to account for it doesn’t matter what. These embody:

• Campaigns
• Product Launches
• Gross sales
• Webinars/Stay Occasions
• Business Conferences
• Content material Publication
• Emails
• Holidays
• Experiments/Exams

These milestones can dramatically affect purchaser habits. Noting them on a advertising and marketing calendar will assist you plan and reply accordingly.

Relying in your staff’s wants and workflows, you might also wish to embody particulars just like the platform or channel, mission description, assignees, deadlines, standing, and useful resource hyperlinks in your advertising and marketing calendar — however the kind of advertising and marketing calendar typically dictates this.

Kinds of Advertising and marketing Calendars

In my expertise, many groups profit from activity-specific advertising and marketing calendars reasonably than only one normal calendar.

With the entire actions that fall beneath advertising and marketing, activity-specific calendars filter noise so you may give attention to the best info on the proper time. Having various kinds of advertising and marketing calendars additionally provides accountable groups extra freedom to customise the calendar as wanted.

For instance, my advertising and marketing profession has nearly all the time revolved round an editorial or content material calendar. “Sorry, can’t do lunch. I’ve to schedule an article for tomorrow,” was a standard sound chunk for me.

A peek at my content material calendar in HubSpot circa 2017. Picture Supply

Each month, I printed 15-20 weblog articles per week, so a devoted editorial calendar was a should. I created a calendar with the upcoming titles and their editorial/search engine optimization pointers, publish dates, URLs, draft deadlines, assigned writers, and campaigns.

Because the month progressed, I reviewed this calendar every day to know what was arising, what was full, and what was up subsequent. It was one of the simplest ways to maintain my work organized, provide transparency, talk with my writers and stakeholders, and hold the corporate’s weblog operating easily.

However this is only one sort of selling calendar it’s possible you’ll discover invaluable.

Another fashionable advertising and marketing calendars embody:

• Marketing campaign Calendar: This high-level calendar reveals each main marketing campaign you’re operating throughout a selected interval. Campaigns might be centered on the launch of a brand new product, a vacation, or perhaps a content material provide. The objects on this calendar will probably decide milestones in your activity-specific calendars (i.e., In the event you’re launching a brand new analysis report, it’s possible you’ll put a associated weblog article in your editorial calendar or a promotional electronic mail in your electronic mail calendar).
• Occasions Calendar: Do you host plenty of webinars? How about in-person occasions? That is the place for them. Like your campaigns, occasions typically have associated actions that present up in your different calendars. Take HubSpot’s INBOUND occasion. Whereas the INBOUND Group has its personal occasions calendar, the HubSpot Weblog Group additionally has INBOUND-related content material we observe on our editorial calendar.
• E mail Calendar: E mail advertising and marketing is way from useless. With this calendar, you’ll see what emails you’re sending and when to keep away from spamming your viewers. This calendar ought to embody the ship dates and occasions, audiences, and campaigns connected to every electronic mail. Tapping our INBOUND instance once more, that is the calendar that might be certain that we aren’t hitting contacts with a gross sales pitch too steadily.
• Editorial or Content material Calendar: It is a schedule of the content material you publish, probably your weblog. Like mine, I’d suggest it embody publish dates, draft deadlines, authors, and marketing campaign info. Relying in your technique, you might have considered trying one thing comparable for podcasts and movies.
• Social Media Calendar: It is a schedule of what you’re publishing on social media and when. In case your quantity is excessive, it’s possible you’ll wish to get much more granular, with calendars particular to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and so forth. This makes it simpler to see precisely what’s happening every platform to keep away from over-posting.

Professional tip: HubSpot has a social media calendar template to get you began, or you may attempt these social media calendar instruments.

Why use a advertising and marketing calendar?

In response to CoSchedule, entrepreneurs who’re proactive planners are 3 times extra prone to report success than those that aren’t. As a planner, this is sufficient to get me on board with utilizing a advertising and marketing calendar, however some groups want extra convincing. Fortunately, advertising and marketing calendars include many advantages:

Figuring out Priorities

Undecided what to work on? Advertising and marketing calendars are one of many best methods to determine work priorities.

Whenever you’re caught, simply take a peek at your advertising and marketing calendar to see what’s on the horizon (I’d suggest trying one to 2 weeks forward). This offers you a greater concept of what duties are time-sensitive and must be achieved to remain on observe.

For instance, let’s say it’s the final week of November and your small business normally runs a giant sale for the vacation season. Noting the sale in your advertising and marketing calendar reminds you to prioritize electronic mail promotion, social media posts, and some other actions main as much as the December launch.

Encourages Proactivity

On a associated word, a advertising and marketing calendar will help your staff keep proactive. When one thing is famous on a advertising and marketing calendar, it’s much less prone to “sneak up on you.” You’ll see it usually and be inspired to work forward, house out duties to satisfy your deadlines, and keep away from engaged on one thing final minute.

Group Alignment

With so many shifting items, it may be tough for advertising and marketing groups to remain on the identical web page. A advertising and marketing calendar creates one supply of reality on your most essential info and priorities.

If the product staff is releasing a brand new characteristic to your providing, for example, having the launch in your advertising and marketing calendar will flag it as one thing essential everybody ought to concentrate on. It additionally lets the staff know help could also be wanted from content material or social media to hit this milestone.

We just lately went by this at HubSpot with the launch of Highlight. Highlight is HubSpot’s bi-annual product showcase, which brings collectively our newest improvements throughout the shopper platform into one visually participating internet expertise for our viewers.

With its inaugural launch in April 2024, the product staff developed a complete advertising and marketing plan to faucet different groups, however they tracked progress on their very own calendar.

Group

Maybe this goes with out saying, however the largest cause to make use of a advertising and marketing calendar is to maintain you organized. It brings collectively your most significant info in a transparent, easy-to-understand format and communicates priorities at a look.

With out an up-to-date advertising and marketing calendar, essential duties could also be extra prone to be forgotten or achieved haphazardly.

How one can Create a Advertising and marketing Calendar

Okay, right here’s the exhausting half: Truly creating your advertising and marketing calendar.

Growing a advertising and marketing calendar takes time and cautious consideration to ensure nothing essential is missed. To make this rather less intimidating, I’ve damaged down 5 steps that can assist you get began.

Whereas it might not be potential to forecast all actions a yr forward, I recommend beginning with the large image after which zooming in on the following quarter and month.

Mapping out advertising and marketing plans month-to-month or quarterly offers extra flexibility and flexibility for issues the world won’t see coming. (Like oh, I don’t know, the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Let’s begin from the highest.

1. Determine your key dates and milestones.

In fact, step one in creating your advertising and marketing calendar is deciding what needs to be included.

Advertising and marketing handles so many alternative duties it’s simple to neglect one thing, so don’t do that in a vacuum.

Seek the advice of with stakeholders and representatives out of your main advertising and marketing departments about what must go in your advertising and marketing calendar (e.g., product advertising and marketing, comarketing, or partnerships). Pay attention to the objects we mentioned earlier, together with product launches, holidays, business occasions, gross sales, and different important cases that may affect your advertising and marketing campaigns.

For this step, I like to recommend masking large milestones already decided for the whole yr. Initially of every quarter and month, you may revisit and refine occasions as wanted.

2. Set your practical targets.

Together with your landmarks locked in, ask your self what you hope to get out of your advertising and marketing calendar. What do you wish to accomplish with it? What would you like it to do for you?

Your solutions to those questions will dictate what needs to be included in your advertising and marketing calendars and the way refined they need to be.

Purposeful targets could also be issues like having the ability to:

• Tag assignees
• View assignments that haven’t been accomplished but
• Click on out to view stay posts
• Share hyperlinks to repeat and belongings that associate with a calendar merchandise

The HubSpot Weblog Editorial Calendar on Asana permits our staff to see these particulars and plenty of extra.

It’s sensible to seek the advice of different leaders and implementors to grasp their targets. They’ll use your advertising and marketing calendar most steadily, so that you need it to be helpful to them. Speak to your writers, video producers, social media managers, occasion planners, designers, and anybody else getting their arms soiled.

What may this appear to be? Effectively, let’s say your social media staff would love a advertising and marketing calendar that paperwork all of their content material and tracks what’s gone out. Figuring out this, you’ll create a devoted social media calendar that features particulars on the platform, assignee, artistic, copy, and even hyperlinks to printed items.

3. Break down your key dates into touchpoints/wants.

Now we’re entering into the nitty gritty with ways. I like to recommend zooming in to your nearest quarter and even month. Getting granular with one thing greater than three months away is a little bit of a attain, so protecting timelines brief will assist hold them lifelike.

Ask your self what every of your upcoming milestones will entail. What promotional belongings will they want? What groups will you’ll want to faucet?

In fact, you received’t know precisely what your advertising and marketing push will appear to be — heck, perhaps there can be some new, funky pattern you’ll wish to check out — however having a imprecise concept of the workload can be useful in making a timeline.

As an illustration, throughout HubSpot’s Highlight launch, our product staff had a complete content material plan main as much as the large day, together with movies and emails.

Highlight promotion included movies like this on LinkedIn that includes HubSpot Head of Product Andrew Pitre.

The staff additionally created a complete social media package to assist others at HubSpot unfold the phrase.

Take into consideration social media, running a blog, electronic mail advertising and marketing, promoting, video advertising and marketing, and different widespread levers you pull in massive campaigns. Jot these down for every of your milestones.

4. Set up tough timelines and schedules.

You have got your key dates and potential to-dos, now it’s time to truly get them on a schedule!

Contemplating the typical time it takes to plan and create deliverables, develop a tough timeline for every key date, and map them for the weeks and months forward.

Be aware of staff bandwidth and keep away from overloading or overlapping a number of initiatives. Even when one thing is famous prematurely, that doesn’t imply your staff will magically be capable of do double the work.

If you end up dealing with a ton of overlap, word that you’ll want to handle and resolve the bandwidth problem when these timelines start.

5. Doc your schedule within the instrument of your alternative.

Excellent news: All of the exhausting stuff is behind you. Congrats!

Now, you’ve simply obtained to make it official.

The ultimate step in creating your advertising and marketing calendar is getting the entire key dates and particulars enter into the instrument of your alternative. This might be as primary as a paper calendar. However for simple sharing, accessibility, and updating (all components it is best to search for in a calendar instrument), it’s greatest to go digital.

In our subsequent part, we’ll overview some examples and my private suggestions.

Advertising and marketing Calendar Examples

There are lots of choices for formally documenting, sharing, and sustaining your advertising and marketing calendar, with various complexity. To assist information you, I’ll stroll by some fashionable options and my suggestions.

Easy Spreadsheet

Suppose you’re on the lookout for a easy, low-budget possibility. In that case, you may create your advertising and marketing calendar in a easy spreadsheet utilizing Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets (The HubSpot Weblog used G-Cal as their editorial calendar for an embarrasingly very long time).

Let’s have a look at an instance from the mixing instrument Zapier:

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On this simple, no-frills design for a content material advertising and marketing calendar, you’ll see columns for:

• Month
• Content material sort
• Matter/Title
• Writer
• Publish date
• Promotion channels
• Key metrics
• Notes
• Hyperlinks

It’s simple to search out and replace the knowledge you want with out being too technical. One thing like that is nice for getting began and will simply be tailored to your wants.

Word: Whereas not a standard 30-day calendar view, you may type the “publish date” column chronologically to make sure you view issues so as.

HubSpot affords comparable spreadsheet templates for a social media calendar and editorial calendar. Examine them out!

HubSpot Calendar

Talking of HubSpot, you are one fortunate marketer for those who’re a HubSpot Skilled or Enterprise person. In your HubSpot portal, you’ll discover my favourite instrument for making a advertising and marketing calendar utilizing HubSpot Calendar.

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HubSpot Calendar is an easy-to-use digital advertising and marketing calendar you’ll discover in your Portal (Advertising and marketing > Campaigns).

With it, you may add duties for weblog articles (like I did again in my day), emails, touchdown pages, or customized wants and simply mark them full after they’re achieved.

This advertising and marketing calendar may be seen by day, week, month, and even as a chronological record. It shows objects color-coded by marketing campaign and completely different icons, so it’s a breeze to know what’s taking place at a look.

In my view, if most of your advertising and marketing actions are achieved by HubSpot, HubSpot Calendar is essentially the most environment friendly and handy possibility for creating your advertising and marketing calendar.

Why? Not solely are you able to create duties on your most typical actions, however you may robotically view different actions accomplished on the platform, like social media adverts and web site pages.

In contrast to different calendar instruments the place your actions are probably being accomplished on exterior platforms, HubSpot provides you a really holistic view of all of your efforts. You may as well simply entry the finished belongings from the calendar.

Third-Social gathering Apps

In the event you’re not a HubSpot person, and a spreadsheet isn’t your type, loads of different calendar instruments can get the job achieved.

Prior to now, I’ve used ClickUp and Trello (one other favourite), however Asana and Monday are additionally fashionable choices.

In the event you’re utilizing a third-party app or software program on your advertising and marketing duties, there’s additionally likelihood it has a built-in calendar instrument to assist hold you organized. Sprout Social, for instance, has a built-in social media calendar for its customers.

Whatever the resolution you select, guarantee that it’s:

• Straightforward to make use of/replace
• Shareable
• Accomplishes your whole practical targets

Schedule and keep it up!

It’s not sufficient simply to make a advertising and marketing calendar; you’ve obtained to keep it up.

A advertising and marketing calendar is not any “set and neglect.” It’s a residing and respiratory doc that have to be reviewed and up to date usually to truly be helpful.

So, I’ll depart you with two essential ideas for sustaining a advertising and marketing calendar:

1. Make reviewing/updating your advertising and marketing calendar part of your routine.

In my expertise, your staff ought to all the time overview your advertising and marketing calendar at the start of the quarter, at the start of every month, after which each week. So, work this into your present conferences and stand-ups.

This routine ensures everyone seems to be on the identical web page about priorities and what they need to work on. It additionally permits your staff to boost flags, ask questions, or focus on adjustments.

2. Go away room for flexibility.

Let’s face it, life occurs. Priorities change, as do ways, social climates, purchaser behaviors, and plenty of different issues. So, depart room for flexibility in your advertising and marketing calendar.

Simply because one thing was placed on the schedule a number of months in the past doesn’t imply it’s nonetheless transfer in the present day. Have common conversations about what’s in your advertising and marketing calendar, and be prepared and prepared to pivot. Agility is vital.

With these reminders and the steps outlined above, your staff needs to be able to usher in a brand new period of group and productiveness with a advertising and marketing calendar. I do know I’m!