If you’re like most business owners, it’s easy to let marketing goals slide as one month slips into the next. Staying ahead of your marketing is the not-so-secret sauce to keeping your business’s revenue healthy and strong. Here are five ideas to help you leverage the calendar to meet your marketing goals.
Plan ahead. It’s not too early to plan for next year and it’s not too late to plan for next month or next quarter. The old adage “failure to plan is planning to fail,” fits when it comes to planning out your marketing efforts. Don’t push your marketing plans to the end of the week. Prioritize time to think strategically about what you can do to improve your marketing efforts. Your future self will thank you.
Consider your business’s seasons. If you’re a restaurant, you know you’ll be busier on weekends, and you know that January will be slow. Instead of fretting about the peaks and valleys, lean into them. How can you make your company’s active seasons even more profitable? How can you increase marketing to make your predictable down weeks continue to generate revenue?
Write down actionable items for each month. The standard marketing plan we recommend breaks the overall strategy down to about four actionable items for the month. This way, you avoid overwhelm and also have a way to hold yourself and your team accountable. For our retained marketing clients at WholeHeart Communications, we not only work with them to create their marketing plan, we also often take on the marketing action items so they can stay focused on business operations.
Use standard days and weeks to promote what you do. If you are a small retail business, start thinking now about what you want to do for Small Business Saturday. If you are a contractor that serves the educational space, make sure you know when Teacher Appreciation Week is happening. You can find fun and creative days to celebrate at daysoftheyear.com. Use these days as an excuse to educate about what you do, share a laugh, and connect with your potential audience.
Give yourself grace. You’re doing a lot in your business. Maybe you missed a big opportunity this year because the calendar slid past you. Take a deep breath, flip through to next year’s calendar and make your plan to make your promotion bigger and better next year.
While there’s no magic formula for slowing down time, following these tips can help you leverage your calendar and create marketing efforts to move your business forward. If you are interested in a team to help you with your marketing goals, we’re here to serve! Contact us at info@wholeheart.biz for a free marketing assessment.