Super Ten Steps To Create a Successful Marketing Timeline

Marketing Timeline – A Marketing Timeline is a visual timeline of the marketing events and activities that are planned in order to reach projected goals. A Marketing Timeline outlines the marketing events in a sequential manner to help companies develop an effective and cohesive marketing plan. 

The 10 Steps To Create a Marketing Timeline outlined below will help your company create their own, more comprehensive timeline.

Step 1: Gather all of Your Marketing Information – 

This can be very time-consuming but it is worth it in order to start out with correct information. You need to look at what you have done so far, what you want to do, how much time you have left on your strategy period and what kind of results you want from this upcoming strategy period. 

Step 2: Group Similar Marketing Activities Together – 

Once you have the information gathered, it is time to organize it into categories based on the different types of marketing activities that make up your marketing plan. You can do this by grouping together related marketing activities such as press releases, print ads, public relations, internet advertising, and direct mail campaigns. 

Step 3: Determine How Much Time will be Required to Complete Each Activity –

 Knowing how much time each activity will take can help you determine the timetable for the entire marketing campaign. This information will come in handy when you are setting deadlines and getting your team together to work on the activities that make up your marketing plan. 

Step 4: Develop Back-Up Plans –

 If a deadline is missed or something goes wrong with an activity then it is important to have a backup plan in place so that you are able to stay on schedule with your overall campaign and still reach your goals.

Step 5: Create a Marketer’s Calendar –

 This is a valuable tool that can show you how many weeks of time are left before your current marketing period ends. A Marketer’s Calendar will also show the amount of time that has been left and let you know how much time is required to complete each activity. 

Step 6: Review Activities and Categorize Them by Required Time – 

After all activities have been grouped together by type, it is time to review the information within each activity to determine if the activities are completed on schedule or if there is extra time for each marketing strategy period. 

Step 7: Organize the Activities Into a Marketing Timeline – 

Once the activities have been categorized and reviewed it is time to create your Marketing Timeline. It is helpful to create the Marketing Timeline using stickies that can be moved around on a board. This will allow you to move activities into various time slots until they make sense and are in proper order. 

Step 8: Use a Calendar to Show When The Activities Will Take Place –

 For your Marketing Timeline to be effective you must have dates listed for each activity so that you know when each activity will take place.You may also want to include deadlines for each task so that everyone associated with the marketing campaign is aware of when a specific activity is due. 

Step 9: Create a Promotion Plan to Accelerate Growth –

 The last basic step in the marketing timeline is to create a promotion plan, which will help you to gain momentum and use short-term tactics that will promote more rapid growth within the next marketing period. For example, if your promotion plan states that you want your website to be optimized by October 30 th then it is best to begin working on that right away because the benefits of launching a new website are not worth waiting for. 

Step 10: Follow Up With Marketing Activities That Are Delayed –

 Make sure to stay on top of your marketing activities and schedule them so that they can be completed within the time frame indicated in your timeline. The marketing timeline is one of the most useful tools you can use when creating your marketing strategy because it will allow you to develop a cohesive and effective plan.