Why is it important to keep a marketing calendar?
A marketing calendar is a schedule of content revolving around a specific time frame – and as content marketing trends and adapts to the upcoming algorithm changes in 2023, it’s even more important to keep a marketing calendar, as it will help you organise your marketing efforts, track the progress of your campaigns, and ensure you are maximising your content’s performance.
Your digital marketing calendar will help you plan your marketing activities in advance so that you can ensure you are consistently creating valuable content to promote your business while reaching your target audience.
Furthermore, a marketing calendar can help you identify any potential conflicts or gaps in your marketing efforts, meaning that you’ll be able to make a more consistent campaign capable of adjustments based on present results.
To conclude, it’s important to keep a calendar simply because it’s quintessential to your content strategy – and as every performance marketing agency likes to say, a good strategy means good performance, and good performance always leads to better results for your business.
What bullet points should be included?
To make an effective marketing calendar in 2023, simply follow these steps:
#1 – Determine your marketing goals
Define the goals you expect out of your marketing efforts. Do you aim to make more sales, increase brand awareness or generate more leads?
Your goals characterise your tactics. Always.
#2 – Study your target audience
Who are you talking to? Knowing the ins and outs of your buyers is the make or break factor of a successful content marketing campaign – ensure you speak the jargon your audience speaks, and you’ll create powerful content capable of deeply resonating with your audience.
#3 – Plan your content around the calendar
Think about any specific dates you don’t want to miss, such as Christmas and Easter, and vary your content around this and more. Make sure you can deliver a variety of content, such as blog posts, social media, email newsletters and more so that you can define the most effective marketing channels in your business and capitalise on these gains.
#4 – Map your content
Organise it in a calendar using software such as Google Spreadsheets (more on the software you can use later) so that you can better outline the type and frequency of your content.
Obviously, make sure that what you create is relevant to the dates. So, for Christmas, you want to wish a merry Christmas to your holiday or produce some other type of Christmas-related content.
#5 – Adjust
As you start publishing your content based on the calendar, keep an eye on the metrics and improve upon them based on what works and what doesn’t.
To make your life easier, we have created a bullet point list of the most important dates you should keep an eye on this year, month by month, and their relevance to your business.
January
January 2023 offers some key dates you shouldn’t miss.
- January 1st is New Year’s Eve – fresh starts, promises to stick to your diet once and for all, and a great time for marketers to reach out using resolutions and offers related to self-improvement.
- January 10th is the start of the Golden Globe Awards – so if you are in entertainment, this is the date you shouldn’t miss.
- US audiences honour the civil rights movement on January 16th with Martin Luther King Jr. Day – connect with customers and show that you care about these important social issues.
- January 22nd is the Chinese New Year. Time to show your appreciation for other cultures!
February
February 2023 comes with three significant dates:
- In the US, Black History Month is a crucial time for businesses that want to show their progressive mindsets and appreciate the movement that spanned over 100 years now.
- Valentine’s Day is on the 14th. It’s all about love and romance, on this day, and a great time to promote that side of your audience in a relationship.
- February 17th is Random Acts of Kindness Day. This is a great time to show how deeply you care for others.
- February 19th is the start of BAFTAs. You can create content around nominees and winners to connect with your audience in a much more casual way – or if you really want to stand out, why not try to connect with the nominees themselves?
March
- March 2nd is World Book Day. This is a very important date for schools and other places of education, but most importantly, it’s a great time to share knowledge.
- March 8th is International Women’s Day. Understanding the significance of this event will deeply resonate with your female audience – and you can take it a step further and create promotions exclusive to this event to drive sales forward!
- Mother’s Day falls on the 19th. Celebrating mothers all around the world gives marketers an opportunity to connect with this segment of their audience, and by sharing the struggles and wins of mothers, you can create content that is deeply resonant.
April
Everyone is joking around on April’s. April’s Fools Day is the day you are allowed to create humorous content or even prank your audience somehow.
However, April is also a good time to add to your marketing calendar because of the following:
- World Autism Awareness Date on the 2nd. This is a delicate date for marketers because it’s generally seen as immoral to try and make a profit out of Awareness Days. However, sharing the message around is generally speaking a great thing to do.
- Easter is on the 9th. Hide some easter eggs in your content.
- St. George’s Day is on the 23rd. This is the perfect date to cater for your English audience using local news or content relevant to the national image.
May
May is a bit of a quiet month, without any major holidays or festivities. People start gearing up for the summer holidays, and spring is in full motion.
Your content calendar for 2023 will benefit from adding these dates:
- Cinco De Mayo on the 5th. This is a particularly important date for your US audiences.
- 8th May: World Red Cross Day. A good time to honour medical staff around the world.
- 13th of May: Eurovision Song Contest’s finale. A good time to speak to multiple audiences using the very popular music contest.
May also have a plethora of quirky events. For example, the 4th is Star Wars Day, the 22nd is World Goth Day, and the 31st is National No Tobacco Day. This is a good opportunity to vary your content a bit.
June
June marks the start of the Summer holidays for the majority of Europeans. It’s also Pride Month, a good time to talk to LGBT audiences and unnecessarily update your business logo to include the rainbow flag.
- The 18th is Father’s Day. This holiday is often ignored, but marketers targeting families should take advantage of this festivity to cater to hard-working fathers around the world.
And… That is it?
June isn’t exactly a busy month for markets. However, it’s a good time to talk about the summer and adjust your content plan as we delve into the second part of 2023.
July
Summer-related content tends to perform at its best around this time, from mid-July until the end of August when most people choose to go on a holiday.
- The 4th of July is Independence Day in the US. This is a popular holiday celebrated with fireworks, BBQ and other outdoor activities – all things you can incorporate in your content.
- FIFA Women’s World Cup starts on the 20th.
Generally speaking, July is the month most associated with summer. Your content could include things such as travel destinations, summer fashion trends and recreational activities.
August
August and the end of December are the two quietest months for businesses in Europe and the US.
There are only a few notable holidays, such as:
- International Youth Day (August 12th)
- Women’s Equality Day (August 26th)
August is also a great time to create “back-to-school” content, which relates to the start of the school year. So, if this is relevant to your target audience, you may want to share tips, school supply lists or even ideas for after-school activities.
September
September is associated with the start of fall. If September was a day, it would be a Monday.
This is the month businesses get back in full swing, and your content will likely intensify in frequency to reflect this.
There are somewhat important dates you should look into, such as:
- World Suicide Prevention Day, on the 10th. This is a good time to raise awareness on all things regarding mental health.
- The 16th of September is also the start of Oktoberfest.
October
Also known as Spooktober! Halloween is the most important thing happening this month, so it’s time for your content to get spooky!
November
It’s a good time to be Gillette – November starts off with Movember, where men grow their moustaches to raise awareness for men’s mental health issues.
- The 5th of November is the annual Guy Fawkes night, where fireworks and bonfires run high. This is a great time to commemorate important dates.
- The 11th is Rememberance Day. This is an extremely important observance in the UK you should always include in your UK marketing calendar.
- November 20th is World Children Day.
- November 24th is Black Friday. This is an extremely important date, especially if you are an eCommerce owner and want to increase your sales. This is obviously followed by Cyber Monday, an equally important date for tech retailers.
December
Christmas time is just around the corner, and marketers are obsessed over it – and rightfully so, when you account for the massive amount of money that everybody spends at this time of the year.
- Hanukkah begins on the 7th and ends on the 15th.
- International Animals Right Day is on the 10th
- Of course, you have to account for all the Christmas-related observances such as Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve.
And that concludes your marketing calendar for 2023.
Remember that it’s always a good idea to track the performance of your content and adjust your posting schedule as needed to maximise its reach and engagement. Ultimately, the most important thing is to create content that is valuable and interesting to your target audience.
What tools can I use to create it?
There are plenty of tools you can use for your digital marketing calendar. These are the most efficient ones in our experience as a performance-centric agency:
- Google Calendar: the most important benefit of this free, easy-to-use calendar tool is that it can be accessed from any device and benefits from all other parts of Google tools, such as Sheets and Documents.
You can create different calendars for content, set reminders and collaborate – costing you £0 the whole time. - Asana: This project management tool has a built-in content calendar functionality cleverly designed around managing teams. You can assign tasks, set deadlines and track progress all within a clear, user-friendly interface.
- Trello: This is a popular tool empowered by a visual interface that allows you to easily create a calendar using “cards” and “boards”. Trello also comes with many plugins and integrations to keep things all in one place.
- Hootsuite: one of the most popular social media management platforms also provides one of the most efficient content calendar creators. The software will allow you to schedule your posts in advance, collaborate with your team and track the performance of your content.
This is not by any means an exhaustive list. There are plenty of tools out there you can use to create an excellent Digital Marketing Calendar.
Digital Marketing calendar example
Try to structure your digital marketing calendar by setting yourself quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals.
These goals would be actions you need to perform, instead of results to achieve. So, for example, we could create a quarterly goal to post ten long-form articles, a monthly goal to publish four pieces, a weekly goal to use social media to get more traffic to these articles, and a daily goal to share these pieces to a newsletter.
Your digital marketing calendar could look something like this:
Of course, your activities should be adjusted depending on your target audience and your goals. Having a plan in place already sets you up for success.
And having a great plan guarantees it.
If you need help creating a kickass marketing calendar, why not rely on our trusted team of seasoned content marketers? We have helped businesses just like yours grow exponentially thanks to a performance-obsessed marketing plan.
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Miriam Valdes
