Timing and Your Marketing Plan

There's always lots of talk around what marketing tactics you could or should include in your marketing plan. But one subject that kind of gets glossed over is one of timing.

The timing of your marketing is an important factor in how successful not only your plan is, but how effectively you implement your marketing plan.

Keep in mind that different marketing tactics have different timing needs.

For example, tactics such as a bi-weekly ezine or newsletter, monthly teleseminar, and thrice-weekly blog posts are all ongoing. These regularly occurring activities help to create a consistent presence and keep you and your business top-of-mind.

Other marketing tactics are scheduled around your "events". For example, you finish writing your new ebook or new 8 week course and are now ready to launch it. You'll have to figure out when the launch date is and schedule specific marketing around that event. You'll want to make sure that the timing of these do not interfere with your regular marketing activities.

Timing of your marketing is also impacted by others' events. You may be invited to speak at a large workshop or telesummit. You have no input into the date of that event and need to time your marketing for this around marketing for your own event or activities.

Another thing to keep in mind around the timing of your marketing plan is the frequency with which you are communicating with people on your list and other places.

For example, I have a weekly ezine that goes out every Thursday. I schedule teleseminars on usually one or two Tuesdays each month and I need to send out emails to my list to let them know. That usually means one email to tell them, another email to remind them and one more with the recording the day after the teleseminar.

If I'm launching a new product or a service, I need to send out emails to people to let them know about it. Depending on the cost of the product or service, this could be anywhere from 2 - 6 emails.

You can start to see how if I didn't put some thought into the timing of these marketing emails, I could be bombarding my list with way too many emails in a short period of time. And I don't want to do that! It's not nice and not effective either.

These examples clearly show how timing is a big part of your marketing plan. That's why some kind of marketing calendar is so important. I have a hard copy calendar that I use a pencil to schedule ongoing activities and then try to fit in the other activities that I want to do. I use the eraser a lot!

My marketing calendar is the first thing I grab whenever I'm thinking about doing my next marketing tactic. As they say, timing is everything!