Marketing To The Calendar

I was just looking at a National Days Calendar.

Who makes these up?

Seriously?!

There are some that have a worthwhile purpose. They serve to remind us of the importance of certain things, people or events. But National Dress Up Your Pets Day? I guess some just serve to remind us to have fun!

The question for a marketer is, how many of these dates do you include in your marketing calendar?

You do have a marketing, plan and calendar, yes? You know, that slim document that tells you what you’ll promote and how throughout the year.

New Year’s Day, Easter, Mothers Day etc are all common events that can inform your marketing. Ever heard of Cyber Monday? Knowing that it occurs gives you a milestone. If you want to promote a product for say Black Friday, you will need to have a chart of events that need to happen beforehand to be able to make it available. Create product, create sales copy, find traffic sources, identify JV partners, set up affiliate program etc etc.

If you don’t have a marketing calendar yet, the easiest way I know of is to pull out an annual planner and plug in the key dates for your area and markets. Then simply decide what you’ll do (if anything) that can ties into that event.

Maybe it’s a topical blog post. Perhaps you can tweak one of your products to target that event and offer it as a giveaway. Could you develop a related product to launch on that day?

Put your thinking cap on and you can find a way to relate your product or service to some of those calendar events and so benefit from marketing around it.

Now, to think about how I can relate internet marketing to National Hugging Day …

You?