Plan an Entire Year of Content with this Retail Marketing Events Calendar Template

Plan an Entire Year of Content with this Retail Marketing Events Calendar Template You’re probably thinking that it’s a little too soon to be planning next year’s retail marketing calendar. But why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? In fact, there are a lot of benefits to planning your retail and e-commerce marketing campaigns  early. A few include: You’ll start filling your sales funnel  early, which means people will be closer to making a purchase decision by the time peak buying periods roll around. Working far in advance means you’ll have more time to build up plenty of marketing runway. You can be more creative, since you’ll have plenty of time to do it right. There will be fewer last-minute fire-drills, making your work life more manageable. While I’m not expecting you to have all of your retail marketing activities for next year planned, this template and infographic should help you build up at least a quarter or more of marketing campaigns. If you’re not ready to start planning yet – no problem. It’ll be here waiting for you when you’re ready to get started. There’s even a printable retail marketing infographic and calendar template to help you when it’s time to get planning. Retail Marketing Calendar Templates Before getting into the nuts and bolts of planning your retail marketing calendar, you’ll want to download these templates. You’ll find:   A Marketing Campaign Planning Template  to organize your entire retail marketing campaign. A Retail Marketing Calendar with all the upcoming holidays to plan your campaigns around. A Printable Retail Marketing Infographic  to keep up with all the key marketing dates. What is a Retail Marketing Calendar? Let’s start by discussing a little about what a retail calendar actually is. A retail marketing and events calendar is usually a spreadsheet that gives the marketing team a single source of truth for all the upcoming marketing activities. It’s the birds-eye view of the marketing strategy, new merchandise launches upcoming events and promotional schedules. A robust calendar should outline deadlines, tasks, and all required actions that must take place for content to publish on time. It's the document that makes sure your marketing activities go from imagination to reality. Companies who sell a product via a brick-and-mortar, e-commerce store, or pop-up shop can all benefit from a retail marketing calendar. Planning Your Retail Marketing Events and Campaigns When sitting down to start strategizing about your upcoming retail and sales campaigns, there are a few things you can do to make sure your initiatives are successful. Some marketers feel that these steps are a waste of time and take away effort that could be used to produce customer-facing content. However, marketers are 356% more likely to report success  when they engage in a few planning activities before launching a campaign. Here are a few areas to focus on: Recommended Reading: The Marketing Management + Strategy Statistics You Need to Know in 2019 Goal and Objective Setting The main goal of retail marketing is to bring visitors to the store†¦ be it a digital or physical location. Then, we need to convert these visitors into paying customers. Rarely does a visitor complete  a purchase their first time in the store. The buying cycle typically involves numerous interactions prior to making a sale. The individual will visit the store, see an ad or social media post, follow the company, sign up for its mailing list, visit the store again, put something in the shopping cart, abandon the shopping cart, click an ad, go cold for a few weeks, open a discount email, visit the store again, and finally complete their purchase. It’s a convoluted process†¦ and it can take weeks or even months. Defining goals and objectives can help you make sense of the often complicated marketing funnel. Let’s go through how to set goals that actually contribute to the bottom line. â€Å"Get more visitors.† This is not a very well-thought-out business goal. Why? Because it doesn’t specify much more than an outcome. Your marketing goals need to provide clear guideposts for what success looks like. In other words. Your goals need to be S.M.A.R.T. Here’s what your goal should look like instead: ‘We need 20,000 website visitors and 5% converted into leads, within the next 12-months in order to achieve our revenue goal of $1.2 million.† Recommended Reading: How To Set Social Media Goals To Crush Your Business Objectives Find Your Retail Marketing Goal With This Step-by-Step Process Start by figuring out how much revenue you need to generate and how much you want to grow. Step 1: Figure out how much revenue you need to generate and how much you want to grow. Your company sold $1 million worth of merchandise last year. You want to grow by 20% in the coming year. That means you need to sell $1.2 million next year. Here’s the equation: Total Sales Previous Year x Percentage Growth = Revenue Increase $1 million x .20 = $200,000 $1 million + $200,000 = $1.2 million Step 2: Calculate the average price of your sales. So, you sold $1 million dollars in merchandise last year and you had about 20,000 total customers. That means the average person spent $50 in your store. Total Sales Previous Year / Total Number of Customers = Average Price of Each Sale $1 million / 20,000 = $50 Step 3: Figure out how many customers you need to reach your revenue goal. Assuming the average sale of $50 remains constant... You’ll need about 24,000 customers next year. OR 4,000 more than you had last year. Total Revenue Next Year / Average Sale Price = Total Customers Needed Next Year $1.2 million / $50 = 24,000 Step 4: Calculate your visitor conversion rate. Not everyone who visits your store will make a purchase or become a customer. You need to figure out your conversion percentage to make an accurate approximation for how many total visitors you’ll need to bring in to meet your revenue goal. Taking the numbers from above, your store had 1 million total visitors last year and 20,000 of them turned into paying customers. In that case, you converted 2% of visitors into paying customers. Total Customers / Total Visitors * 100 = Conversion Rate 20,000 / 1,000,000 * 100 = 2% Step 5: Calculate the total number of visitors you need to reach your growth goal. The final step is to figure out how many visitors you need to bring in as a marketer to reach the revenue goal of $1.2 million dollars in sales. Assuming you continue to convert 2% of visitors Total Customer Needed / Conversion Rate   = Total Visitors Needed 24,000 / .02 = 1.2 Million Visitors That’s your north star as a marketer. Everything you do should be focused on driving 1.2 million people to visit your store. Brainstorm Ideas to Reach your Visitor Goals 1.2 million visitors (or whatever visitor number you calculated using the formula above) aren’t going to just magically appear. You’ve got to do some great marketing to bring them to your store. To start your brainstorming session, use this simple three-step process. Step 1: Get your marketing team together in a room. Have everyone spend ten minutes writing down as many ideas as they can. Don’t worry about the quality of those ideas yet - you will vet the ideas in step 3. Step 2: Spend ten minutes reading each idea out loud. Have each team member score every idea on a three-point scale. Threes are home runs, twos are possibilities, and ones you can skip altogether. Step 3: Spend ten more minutes reviewing each idea that everyone agrees is a three. These are your best ideas and the ones you should go with. By following this process, you can wrap up your campaign brainstorming in half-hour to an hour (depending on how much time you spend discussing ideas at the end). Map All Your Best Projects on a Retail Marketing Calendar After you’ve figured out all your best marketing ideas, it’s time to get planning. The template provided in the download above provides a basic foundation to get started. Simple populate the excel spreadsheet with all your ideas, when you’re going to launch them and who will be involved. Remember each individual project should have a goal to drive a certain number of visitors. Here’s how to use it: I’ve created a fictional company that sells basic kids clothing and accessories. This activity plan gives a high level for each campaign that is coming down the pipeline. In the next tab on the spreadsheet, you’ll find an area for the granular campaign details. Begin filling out details for each project under the campaign. I started by creating a fictional influencer outreach campaign where 4 influencers will create sponsored content on their Instagram feeds. Provide a short description of the project, the budget, the goal, and due dates for each task needed. Next, you can fill in the due dates on the calendar template provided. This provides further clarification of due dates for each task If you’re kinda sick of managing a bunch of different spreadsheets†¦ And you’re never really sure if people are on top of their tasks†¦ Try planning your retail marketing activities in instead. Rather than having to constantly update a spreadsheet, gives you a single version of truth so everyone can finally get on the same page. Start by creating a marketing campaign by choosing the first option called â€Å"marketing campaign†. Once you’ve done this, you’ll see the campaign populate on your calendar. Next, add each individual project that will make up the campaign. I’ll start with the influencer campaign similar to the one in the spreadsheet template. Next, give your campaign a title and due date. Now, instead of creating static due dates in a spreadsheet, assign and delegate tasks in so everyone knows what their contributions are and when to do them. After you’ve assigned the tasks, each individual will see them pop-up on their daily to-do lists. Once you’ve added all the projects, everyone on your team will be able to see how all the pieces of your retail marketing campaign fit together. Here’s what a fully populated marketing campaign in looks like. You’ll see every project, due dates, tasks and project progress all in one place. Use ’s Hubspot Integration for The Ultimate Holiday Calendar A lot of retailers are leveraging the power of Hubspot. Which is great – lucky for you we integrate seamlessly with all things Hubspot. Here’s how it works: Connect your HubSpot account directly in to sync your email marketing, pages, and blog posts into one place. Once you’ve connected your Hubspot account, you can create Hubspot projects directly in . When adding a new project, you’ll see a couple of Hubspot options you can add to your calendar. Enter your title, add labels, owner, etc. Click the Create button when you are ready. Next, choose your URL, if you're managing multiple sites, then the Page template you're wanting to work with. Once finished, you will see the HubSpot Page editor added to your project. You can change the Post Title, Author, and Scheduled Time in . To edit further, click Edit in HubSpot. Key Dates in Retail Marketing Retail marketing ebbs and flows with seasonal changes, holidays, events and special occasions. Knowing key dates allows you to plan in advance and prepare to increase sales with strategically timed marketing campaigns. This printable infographic will help you identify key marketing opportunities for better social media content, email promotions and more. I’ve also provided a few examples under each to show how you can launch similar occasion-based marketing campaigns around holidays and key dates.