How to Create a Marketing Calendar

Why mapping out campaign timelines and promotional dates is essential but few do it correctly. Below we'll go through the Top 4 steps we need to insure your marketing works. 

In this article we’ll be going over how to plan out your marketing calendar. A marketing calendar is exactly what it sounds like; a plan that covers your marketing activities for the duration of the campaign. Having a plan in place that outlines your marketing activities in the lead up to the campaign assures that a steady stream of promotion enters the marketplace, keeping you in the minds of your current customers while bringing in new ones.

Its important to make sure all email, social accounts, youtube and other marketing efforts like 3rd party advertising or google ad word words all start at the same time. Google (who owns Youtube) and Facebook (who owns IG) all track how many views, like, shares & time on game/page/video you get within the first hour of it's release. This gives your page/video/game a "popularity" or authority score and determines how much these different networks organically share it with others. Knowing this these are 4 foundations four major keys to a successful Marketing Calendar"; Create unique posts, post them consistently and identify your key Platforms.

#1. Consistency:

Posting promotional Ads consistently is key to keeping your brand front-of-mind and gaining momentum with your game. The key to gaining this momentum is figuring out the best time to post. To find this we need to ask- when is your audience online the most? Go ahead and find out when your audience is most active on social media- your Facebook or Instagram business account analytics can tell you this information easily. If you’ve gathered that your highest performing posts are on Mondays and Fridays, set your campaign to post and engage with your followers then. for more information on this visit: https://coschedule.com/blog/marketing-calendar-template/

#2. Unique posts:

The major key to your audience not getting bored is to post about your campaign regularly- but with different content each time. This means you need to preplan your gamification campaign well. Let's imagine you have a 6 week campaign; you now know what day and times your audience is online, and you’re committed to post about it 2 times a week, and mention it in your instagram or facebook stories twice a week as well. That means you will have a minimum of 12 posts, and 12 story mentions. You want to have these posts ready before your campaign goes live. Having a slight structure to your post can help you come up with ideas faster. Let’s say you rotate between 2 post ideas. The 1st post could be about the game itself, next, a story mention which could be something funny that relates to the game, the 3rd could be the leaders board, current winners and prizes coming up, or you can have a surprise leaderboard post when a new high score has been set, creating a challenge to all your players. Have fun rotating between these types of posts. This is a key way to stay consistent and fresh at the same time so your audience doesn’t get bored. Great example of this is: https://zapier.com/blog/graphic-design-tools-for-social-media-images/

#3. Key Platforms:

Knowing what social platforms your customers are on and why is key to posting the right messages for those social streams. The way you promote a game on Facebook and Instagram is going to be different than how you promote through Linkedin and Twitter. Instagram and Facebook are more about social connections, so the Ad, picture or video post should promote the idea that you can compete against others, have fun, and share your experience or high scores easily. Linkedin revolves around business networking, so ideally your post should mention why your business chose a Gamify campaign with a link for others to play as well. Twitter can be used to quickly highlight a statement or link a game. Your posts can be similar across all platforms but formatted and timed to maximise their exposure. colour-coding the platforms on your calendar according to when you are going to post will help you plan and time your posts successfully. For instance FB may be blue, linkedin red, instagram purple, and so on. This will help maximise your reach and keep your campaign front of mind.[Text Wrapping Break][Text Wrapping Break]in summary- it is important that have a campaign timeline, and a minimum of  3 colour coded and personalised posts per week.
Social Plate-form's and Best Times to Post According to Sprout. 

#4. Double-down on whats working:

Set a time to review your campaign. After 2-3 weeks you should have a good idea on what platform is getting the most engagement. You may find out Facebook is working better than Instagram or that Linkedin is getting more traction than the others. Create posts similar to your high performing ones, and allocate more funds to them. The last 3-4 weeks of your campaign is usually when companies get 80% of their engagement. 

We’ve created 1,000's of games here at Gamify and often the difference between a good and great campaign is having a well planned out marketing calendar.

While you’re putting marketing calendars together here are some questions that can help you come up with additional ideas.  Questions like - 

• Who is your audience? 

• Do you want them to engage, promote, or redeem prizes?

• How frequently will you promote your campaign? 

• What types of media will you use?

• Which Social Media platforms are best suited?

• What resources do you have on hand that can enhance your campaign? Do you have prizes you can give out?

• Are there people in your company that could be great promoters? 

Mapping content on a calendar- 
Your content calendar should contain:

• The name of the project

• Project live date

• Posting dates and times

• Social platforms colour coded

• Accountability listed (who is in charge of what?)
  
  Basic Campaign Cycle:

You campaign cycle should consist of 3 steps:
Plan > Launch, and Promote

• Plan: If you haven’t gathered by now, good Marketing is 80% research and planning. Like Benjamin Franklin says, “If you Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail” Proverbs 29:18 also says, “without vision, people perish”

• Launch: Once your Timeline is established, the campaign is ready to go live

• Promote: With the campaign running, the designated content is ready to be promoted across all allocated streams (and remember to double-down on whats working best) 

Once you’re on the other side of your campaign and the Marketing Calendar is complete, make sure to review your results, and whether or not you are successful is good information to be kept and recorded in order to revert back with future campaigns. This will help you map out with ease in the future on what works and what needs to be changed.

ps. Please let me know if you like this content. Our content is customer and viewership driven, meaning we make more depending on what you ask us. Over 2020 a lot of people have asked us to do more Videos & examples of gamification in work & education so thats what were going to be doing more of. Let me know if theres a video or course you would like us to do.

You’ve now completed the 5 stage instructional videos outlining Gamification Marketing, click on some of our other resource content to learn more.

- Infographic from CoSchedule