Now, your marketing calendar should have those weeks marked which cover seasonal and time-sensitive services. This way you’ll know when to begin marketing those services.

If we’re coming up on time to apply pre-emergent weed control, send a short note or postcard about 2 weeks before that “window” of service opens. And let your customer (or potential customer) know why it is important to do this service inside this small “window of opportunity.” Then follow up with another note or phone call in a week.

If they have already signed an agreement that includes this service, then send a postcard explaining why its important and announce when you intend to provide the service. This kind of communication goes a long way toward building customer loyalty.

And get this…time-sensitive services have a built-in psychological trigger (aiding the sales process.) That trigger is called “scarcity.” In this case, time scarcity. By letting potential customers know that to be effective, these services must be completed by a certain date, you give your marketing a certain urgency.

Customers will respond much more quickly and definitely to a time-sensitive notice than to open ended marketing. So use these services to your marketing advantage.

Need some examples of time-sensitive issues? Here are a few, depending on what your company does (or is licensed to do.)

• -pre-emergent weed control
• -aeration
• -overseeding/slitseeding
• -annual flower beds (2 opportunities here)
• -pruning/shrub trimming
• -irrigation winterizing
• -gutter cleaning
• -bulb plantings
• -various fertilization programs
• -fall decorations/Christmas decorations

Look over your list of accounts and write a list of every service you have performed. Place a check mark beside any service that may be considered time-sensitive. These are the services you should market to all your customers in this way.

Don’t pass up this “built-in” sales opportunity.

Have you ever seen a successful contractor build a house without a plan?  Probably not.  Consider that your marketing is just like a house – if you don’t start with a plan, how will you know if you have achieved your desired goal?

My wife and I bought a small house in need of some minor, cosmetic remodeling.  So minor, in fact, that we thought we didn’t even need to create a plan for it.  We thought we knew what we needed to accomplish and we could just barrel through it and be done without defining what our end result would look like or what steps needed to be done.

Well as you can guess, a simple three-week makeover turned into a 4-year remodel, with no space in the house escaping changes.

What happened?  We didn’t have a plan to spell out exactly what needed to be done.  So alot of things were done which we hadn’t originally intended to do.  And alot of things were done twice, because we did them in the wrong sequence and wasted alot of time and energy.

So what does my house fiasco have to do with your marketing?  Well, your marketing is a lot like that little house.  If you don’t start with a plan, you’ll not know if it is successful, you’ll not have a goal to achieve, you’ll waste time and money and effort, and the whole “marketing thing” begins to drag on and feel boring and tedious.

But, if you start with a plan, you can see and know progress, you’ll know at any point if you’re on track or not, and you can be confident enough in your progress to make necessary changes.

What a Marketing Calendar Is

So, what’s a marketing plan look like?  Well, for now it should be something simple enough that you’ll use it, right?  I suggest, as many marketers do, that you assemble a 52 week calendar to outline your marketing thrust for each week.  Each week on the calendar will have one, maybe two marketing tools on which you will focus.  Sometimes your focus for a tool will span many weeks.

My office is very computerized – the less paper, the better(I believe in the power of the PC to keep my files organized and accessible) but my marketing calendar is on paper.  In my paper based planner.  That just works best for me.  You need to do what works best for you (that means do it in such a way that you’ll actually use it!)

You will constantly revise it (which is why I use pencil in my planner) by adding more of the marketing tools which seem to work and removing the marketing tools which don’t work.  You will take notes on your calendar to show results of your marketing each week.  Or to show changes to your marketing thrust.

And I save my calendars.  They are a treasure trove of research info.  You will be able to look at previous years and see trends in response to your marketing.  You will see that some marketing tools are more useful in certain months.  You will see that some tools were of no use at all.  With all of this research at your fingertips, you’ll be able to plan each marketing calendar with greater and greater precision.

Starting Your Calendar

So, how do you get started?  First, you need to have a list of at least 10 marketing tools you can use right now in your business.  This list will change as you discover new tools and weed out tools that don’t work for you.

Second, you need a specific marketing budget, even if it is zero dollars to begin with (such as with a new bootstrap business.)  Surprisingly, there are a number of marketing tools that cost no money to implement.  Your marketing budget should be expressed as a percentage of revenue.  For example, if you had a marketing budget of 3% and you made sales of $10,000 for the month, your budget would be $300 for the next month.  As business increases so does your marketing budget.

Third, place your marketing tools on the calendar for the next 52 weeks with a brief description of how you will use each one and how much of the marketing buget each will require.

Fourth, at the very least, review your marketing calendar at least weekly to prepare for the next few weeks of marketing action.  Are you getting ready to send out a mailing?  Get your sales copy ready now.  Are you having a promotion for organic fertilizer?  Be sure to line up access to the necessary supplies if the promo is wildly sucessful.  Keep in mind that some of your tools will overlap weeks, and some may even run all 52 weeks.

Lastly, at the end of each week, record the results as they relate to each tool’s effectiveness.  How many new leads did you get from your website?  Your local paper ad?  How many upsells did you get from your last customer mailing?  Record these on your marketing calendar and when you prepare your next calendar you will know which tools were successful, ans which months you need to work in more tools.

As simple as this calendar is, it really can be your single most effective marketing and business building tool.  Just keep it flexible, keep it close to you, and keep using it.   Many of the tactics explained on this site will make reference to your marketing calendar, so go ahead now, and get yours started.