Sitting down to plan an entire year of marketing campaigns, strategies, and tactics probably sounds tedious. It probably sounds so overwhelming you keep putting it off until it’s March and you suddenly remember you haven’t built the calendar. Here’s the issue with marketing calendars: How are you supposed to know exactly what your business is going to be like in 6 months let alone 11 months? Because the world is such a finicky place, a marketing calendar probably isn’t the best plan of action.

Disruptions in business cause disruptions in marketing calendars.

The smallest of blimps in your business plan can cause huge ripples in your year-long marketing calendar. How so? Planning out your campaigns probably seems like you’re getting ahead, but what happens if you plan to market a new product in October, but the product isn’t ready until December? The issue with marketing calendars is that they don’t account for these changes in your other business operations.

The real issue is that a year-long marketing calendar doesn’t give you the space to make on-the-go changes to your marketing strategy. How are you supposed to measure and update your strategies if you have to stick to a calendar? You can’t.

An agile, quarterly marketing calendar allows for quick changes and updated strategies.

As you start planning your content calendar, consider using a smaller chunk of time. A quarterly calendar gives you the perfect amount of time to develop, run, and analyze a marketing campaign. You can easily set goals and measure your results against those goals in a three-month span. The best part? You aren’t committed to something in October that you planned in January.

Keeping your calendar agile allows you to make changes on the go. The Google ad you created isn’t working. You can abandon it and set a new one. The landing page you created in February hasn’t collected any leads since March and it’s now May. Let it go and create a new one based on the failings of the old one.

You don’t have reinvent the wheel every quarter. Instead, you can take what works and make it better. You can take what doesn’t work and continue to tweak it until it does. Your marketing strategies need to stay agile. They need to stay relevant to what you’re offering, developing, and producing in the now. A year-long calendar doesn’t take into account the realities of all of your business operations. You need a shorter timeline that allows you to make mistakes, recover from them, and develop campaigns for what’s happening now.

Developing the strategies to build your marketing calendar.

Are you ready to start developing the strategies that go into an amazing marketing calendar? The digital marketing team at Iconic is full of writers, designers, and marketers who love crafting marketing strategies and plans. We geek out on design and love content that flows and connects with an audience. If you’re ready, we’re here to help you dominate the competition.

What are you waiting for? Contact Iconic Digital today.

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