Do you feel that you are always "on the clock" and that you are missing out on business opportunities because of this constant urgency? Unless you want to plan your communication budget for the medium term... What if you decided to take back control of your time and your communication with the marketing calendar? In this article, we explain how the editorial calendar can help you free up your time efficiently. Then, discover the tricks for setting up a content strategy that is as precise as it is regular, thanks to the editorial calendar, without getting caught up in the passage of time!
What is a marketing calendar and why is it essential for your e-commerce?
A marketing calendar, also known as an editorial calendar, is a document (often a spreadsheet) that schedules the production and publication of all marketing content for a company over several months or even a year.
How is a marketing calendar organised?
In concrete terms, although the precise structure of a marketing calendar is entirely adapted to the company that will use it, certain more or less universal criteria are included in this content planning table:
- What is the target audience for the communications?
- what are the publication channels?
- What is the objective of the publication on the turnover or the notoriety of your e-commerce?
- what are the production stages?
- What will be the publication date?
- who is responsible for producing this content?
Why is an editorial calendar essential for your e-commerce?
The marketing calendar is a very powerful organisational tool that can get your business off the ground. What are the benefits of these annual forecasts on your business?
- Knowing what to publish when is a non-negligible mental burden when running all aspects of your online shop;
- Take a step back from your buyer persona and avoid the trap of non-targeted communication;
- budgeting and delegating your content production effectively;
- anticipate your presence on the various communication channels and avoid the blank page syndrome.
Over a whole year, certain periods can bring in 80% of your turnover, according to the ideal Pareto ratio. In order not to miss these opportunities, you must seize each calendar opportunity by anticipating them! Of course, when organising such campaigns, thinking ahead will allow you to set your objectives and put in place the resources to achieve them.
What are the steps to follow to build a marketing calendar for your e-commerce?
Now that you know what a marketing calendar is for in your content strategy, it's time to explore the steps to build it from the data you already have. The first step is crucial: knowing your target audience for those upcoming marketing campaigns.
Defining your avatars: the most important step in building an effective marketing calendar
To improve your marketing on social networks and your website, you need to know who you're talking to. If you don't calibrate your message properly, your readers won't recognise themselves in it and you'll miss out on sales. For the same product, you can have several different personas that are likely to convert into customers. For all the products in your online shop, you will target more than one persona. buyer persona.
To ensure that each persona is well catered for, your priority will be to identify them and segment them according to their characteristics so that you can send each persona a message that "speaks" to them on the channels they use every day.
Obviously, some content will be suitable for all your personas, but tailoring your communication to your buyer personas according to the events of theyear is the most effective strategy in social media marketing.
Segment your objectives to make your editorial calendar clear and realistic
What will each publication be used for? To convert? Inform? Federate? Share? Identify the precise objectives of your content. For example, a blog post can be SEO-driven to gain qualified leads, or inform your audience, or go viral by getting people to share it on social networks. Social media posts can be purely promotional, or display your expertise. Your editorial calendar should contain a balanced mix of all these contents, according to key dates and your marketing plan.
The different types of publications to include in your marketing calendar
After the "Who", you need to integrate the "What" into your marketing calendar, i.e. what kind of publications will you produce on which channels? Here is an overview of the content you should include in your marketing campaigns.
The articles
Articles are meant to be published on a website. On the blog part of your e-commerce or as a guest article to serve your backlinks strategy, quality articles can establish the authority of your site in your field of activity with your prospects, in addition to serving your natural referencing strategy with Google.
The videos
Videos have a significant conversion power. Unboxing, interviews, crash tests, customer testimonials... There are many opportunities to shoot videos and post them on social networks. The creation of this type of content represents a medium/long-term investment, but this strategy serves your inbound marketing as well as your commercial objectives. Videos are more credible as social proof before purchase for your prospects and enrich your advertising campaigns. Think about integrating them into your marketing calendar, video content is a real business lever!
The infographics
Attractive visual aids, infographics are a fun way to consume information. Unanimous, this publication format can be humorous or serious, stand alone on social networks or illustrate other content with a high viral potential. The versatility of infographics should convince you to include them in your marketing calendar!
Emails
It is THE means of communication that still converts a lot today. Email allows you to keep in touch with your audience. They have voluntarily signed up to receive news from you. Your email audience is therefore qualified by definition.
Beware, this is not a reason to send only advertising about your products! Take care to diversify your communication to offer added value to your readers. Otherwise, you risk boring your recipients who, at best, will no longer open your emails, and at worst will unsubscribe from your newsletter.
Social network posts
It is impossible to imagine a successful business without social networks today. Your marketing calendar will be particularly profitable for your publications on social networks. On Instagram, for example: in addition to punctuating your content between world days and trade fair dates, you can articulate harmonious visuals that accompany your captions.
Regularity, diversity and proximity are the watchwords if you want to keep the attention of your audience. For more efficiency in your marketing calendar, you can focus on one or two platforms among the many existing today: Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
TV or radio spots
These traditional communication media can be a winning bet, depending on your target and the time of broadcast. However, beware of the price/economic impact ratio! If you are targeting a young population, invest in social media advertising rather than television advertising, for example.
Plan key dates in your marketing calendar: be there at the right time!
Do you want to use the marketing calendar for your brand? It's all about timing! You know who you are addressing, what message to send and why. Now let's look at the "when". If you post content too early or too late, the consequences for your business can be catastrophic. Hence the importance of thinking about your marketing calendar beforehand.
Commercial events
These are real bargains for your e-commerce. However, be sure to think carefully about your message so that it is heard in the commercial hubbub of these busy periods. Among the events to note in red in your marketing calendar, remember :
- Black Friday
- Cyber Monday
- the French Days
- the sales
The dates of your niche
Send an email on the occasion of each customer's birthday, offer discounts in relation to trade fair dates in your theme, organise your campaigns on social networks in line with key dates for your audience. In addition to having sufficient stocks of strategic products, anticipate your communication thanks to the marketing calendar.
The celebrations of the year not to be missed
These are the most obvious dates, but use them intelligently so as not to create a bad buzz (if you sell hoovers, avoid jumping on the occasion of Valentine's Day or Mother's Day for example).
- Valentine's Day;
- Mother's Day;
- Father's Day;
- Christmas ;
- New Year's Eve;
- the start of the school year ;
- etc.
Chestnut trees, the ideal opportunity for social networks
Also, use seasonal events in your communication to complement the big events of theyear. These are recurring dates during relatively quiet periods of theyear, and they allow you to add authenticity to your business. Indeed, on the occasion of a world day or an international day, recall the values of your business in relation to these events.
All the dates we've just reviewed should be marked in your editorial calendar to create impactful content, but also original, surprising or tailor-made promotions for your prospects and customers! There are websites specialising in social media marketing that offer a calendar template per year, so do your research to establish your social media calendar and marketing plan for the year!
Budgeting your communication is child's play thanks to the marketing calendar
The marketing calendar allows you to plan the dates of your content, but also to plan the budget allocated to the production of these texts, visuals or videos. You can choose to spread your annual budget evenly throughout theyear or increase resources during your peak periods and reduce them during slower times.
In any case, it is wiser to spread smaller budgets intelligently on a regular basis than to blow your budget on one event without thinking it through.
Decompose the production of its content to make it SMART thanks to the marketing calendar
One of the many advantages of the marketing calendar is that it allows you to establish backward planning very quickly. Depending on how far ahead you plan your editorial calendar, you will need to think about the different production stages for your publications.
Keep in mind the human factor in your processes: slow marketing is often virtuous! Allow time for your editors and graphic designers to avoid delays due to unforeseen circumstances and include integration and publication time in your schedule.
Generally speaking, filter the objectives of your marketing calendar with a SMART grid. As a reminder, an objective is viable when it is :
- specific: X publications to target X€ of turnover or X followers on the Instagram page;
- measurable: in €uro, in subscribers, in interaction rate with your content, in conversion rate, etc. ;
- achievable: break down the steps into smaller tasks to make your big goals more digestible;
- realistic: hence the importance of anticipating in order to better budget and plan a coherent and regular communication;
- Temporal: your marketing calendar can be produced over a quarter, a half-year, a year... And each piece of content must contain several production deadlines in order to be published on time.
Visualise your business year at a glance with the marketing calendar
Thanks to a simple spreadsheet, you can have a summary of theyear's content in front of you. By organising content types, events or recurring milestones by colour code, you will know exactly where you are in your annual content strategy. What information should be included in your Excel or Google Sheet file to build an effective marketing calendar?
- the type of content: video, article, inforgraphic, Facebook post etc. ;
- the subject or theme: world day, holiday, dates, event, promotion, etc. ;
- the avatar, the channel: target 18-25 on TikTok, target 25-40 on Instagram, etc. ;
- The author, or persons involved in the production of this content ;
- expected date of publication ;
- the brief;
- progress status: a colour code can give you a clear idea of your planning.
How to use the editorial calendar to optimise your content production?
Maximising your content production through the editorial calendar also means using online tools, which we suggest in this article. For social media marketing or monitoring your SEO, use technology!
Frame the work of each actor with project management tools
Effective communication that allows for process refinement is a real challenge in the smooth running of your editorial planning. You can, for example, articulate your thoughts in the form of a mind map to give your ideas organised without having to format the document.
Everyone needs to know what they have to do and when. To track and manage the progress of your writers, graphic designers, videographers and other service providers, take advantage of the power of free tools:
- Trello
- Notion
- Monday
- Click Up
These tools are the best known, it's up to you to create your own working dynamics so that everyone is comfortable in their area of expertise!
Make the most of automation
It is possible to schedule all your social network posts with native applications like Facebook Business Manager or multi-channel applications like Hootsuite.
This way, you can "beat" the production of content and plan two hours to schedule all your social media posts over two months, for example. Make the most of this automation to plan ahead and get ahead without getting caught up in time. Similarly, newsletters and articles are very easy to schedule, even several weeks in advance.
For the more advanced, the use of automation tools such as Zennoposter can take your business to the next level and free you from time-consuming or unnecessary payroll work thanks to robots.
Jasper for your content marketing
Artificial intelligence is no slouch when it comes to producing content for your social networks, blogs and other textual content. A tool like Jasperformerly Jarvis, can make production easier with predefined templates that allow you to tailor the A.I. to the desired goals; adapting writing styles and other subtleties. In this way, you will be able to speed up the implementation of your editorial calendar much more quickly.
Conclusion: The marketing calendar frees up your time by maximising the power of your communication
We have seen how useful a marketing calendar can be for your business:
- anticipation ;
- effective and appropriate communication ;
- better knowledge of its target;
- optimisation of human and financial resources.
This article gives you all the tricks to successfully set up your editorial calendar in just a few hours: the types of content to use, the dates or events to exploit, the balance between promotion and information...
Finally, we have given you tools that will maximise the production and planning of your content. You can automate or centralise briefs and deadlines with your communication actors.
If you're short of time to implement a successful long-term content strategy using the marketing calendar, consider contacting our Ingenius experts. We'll be happy to get the ball rolling so that you can exploit the full benefits of an editorial calendar! We can prepare a calendar template for you to fill in according to your social media strategy!
