Every marketer has deadlines to meet and goals to hit. And if you want to be successful, you’ve got to have a plan for implementing your marketing strategy.
Getting organized before work begins saves you a lot of time and headaches in the end. That’s where a marketing schedule comes in handy. When all your important tasks and milestones live on a shared marketing calendar, your whole team can keep track of timelines and stay on pace with your goals.
Lucky for you, getting started is super-easy with our free marketing schedule template. Let’s take a closer look at what a marketing schedule is and how to create a marketing calendar for your team.
A marketing schedule is a calendar of key events and activities that need to be completed over a specific period of time. It’s great for mapping out important dates and deadlines so your team can easily see what needs to be accomplished for the month, quarter, or even year.
The format of your marketing schedule doesn’t really matter. It can be a gantt chart, calendar, Google doc, or Kanban board—just as long as everyone has access to it and can collaborate on tasks. Be sure to include a few key basics on your marketing calendar:
Having a clear schedule for your marketing initiatives will increase transparency, reduce stress and frustration, and improve overall efficiency for your projects and team.
Now that you know what a marketing calendar is and why it’s important, you’re ready to get down to the business of building one of your own. Here’s how to create a marketing schedule.
The first thing you’ll want to do is take inventory of all your marketing initiatives.
What recurring activities do you already deliver? This could include deliverables like email newsletters, blog posts, videos, webinars, and podcasts.
Then look to the future, and add any upcoming campaigns, projects, and initiatives you need to plan for to your list.
Take a look at the projects or initiatives on your list, and identify key tasks and milestones that need to be mapped out.
Want to create a high-level marketing calendar? You might focus on launch dates, important meetings, and major deadlines. Feel free to get granular if your team works better with more detail.
Good planning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You need other voices and perspectives to ensure your marketing schedule is on point. Bring your team into the process early to get their input so you can build an accurate timeline and account for key dependencies.
Remember, holidays, vacations, and other events or deadlines can create resource limitations that impact your overall timeline. Be sure potential constraints are part of your team discussion.
You’re finally ready to put the info you’ve captured and calculated into an easy-to-digest marketing calendar your whole team can share!
Go beyond the basics as you build your marketing schedule out, and add any relevant details, documents, or links your team needs to get the job done right. Want to break tasks down into smaller components? Task checklists are a great way to do this in TeamGantt.
Now it’s time to divvy up the work. Don’t leave any task or milestone unclaimed!
Use a RACI chart to clearly outline roles and responsibilities. That way there’s no question about who’s responsible for the work, who has final say on deliverables, and who needs to be kept in the loop on progress.
If you’re using TeamGantt to build out your marketing schedule, you can easily add new users and assign them to tasks. Just like that, everyone’s in the know!
Let’s face it: Projects change, and priorities may shift over time. With TeamGantt’s drag and drop feature, you can adjust your marketing schedule quickly and easily. Use comments to keep the lines of communication continuously open so no one’s left in the dark on important task updates.
As a marketer, you’ve got a lot of your plate. We’ve created a free marketing schedule template to help you save time on setup.
This online template cuts out the time of building a marketing calendar from scratch, giving you a high-level view of what needs to get done so you can start knocking out work sooner.
Here are a few ideas and examples for how to use your marketing schedule in TeamGantt.
A marketing calendar is a tried-and-true way of mapping out activities by day, week, or month. Toggle to your project’s Calendar view in TeamGantt, or sync tasks to your favorite calendar app.
Gantt charts (or timelines) are great for visualizing your schedule over the course of several weeks, or even months. Think of Gantt view as a bird’s-eye view of tasks and milestones. It also makes it easy to map out dependencies and see how tasks relate to and interact with each other.
Let’s take a look at 2 sample marketing schedules in Gantt view. Here’s how you might structure your marketing calendar in TeamGantt.
Pro-tip: Color-code tasks by activity type to get an at-a-glance view of the project work that’s scheduled for any given time frame.
Only want to know what you’re responsible for day-to-day? We’ve got you covered! Use the My Tasks view in TeamGantt to make sure you never miss a deadline.
Ready to build a marketing schedule of your own? We’ve created a free marketing schedule template for you in TeamGantt so you can jump right in!
Customizing the template is quick and easy, thanks to TeamGantt’s drag and drop simplicity. And since everything’s online, your whole team can collaborate on your marketing schedule in real time.
Sign up for a free TeamGantt account today, and save time on project setup with this free marketing schedule template!
