How to create your marketing calendar

We've created a step-by-step guide to help you create a comprehensive marketing calendar for your facility

Creating a marketing calendar for your sports facility involves planning and organising your marketing efforts throughout the year to attract customers, increase engagement, and promote your services effectively.

What is a marketing calendar?

A marketing calendar will help you keep in line with your goals and marketing initiatives. It should include activity details such as timelines and deadlines as well as themes and campaign logistics.

Why use a marketing calendar?

As a busy team running a sports facility, there are multiple projects and activities you're trying to coordinate at any one given time. Having a calendar is a clear way of keep on track with your activities as well as a central place of reference that all members of your team can see what initiatives you'll be running over the year.

What should you include?

• Operational key dates and activity that need communicating, such as closures or maintenance updates
• Dates and timeslines
• Any relevant project links
• National or local events and awareness days
• Key points in the year where you need to drive revenue or bookings
• Campaigns and promotions
• Feedback and NPS surveys

Where do you start?

1. Set Goals: Determine what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. This could include increasing bookings, engaging with the community or promoting your events.
2. Know your audience: Understand who you're looking to target as this will help you This includes:
   
   1. Demographics
   2. Interests
   3. Location
   4. Behaviour
3. Identify your key events, seasons and operational dates: Make sure you include your when you're implementing your annual price changes, holidays, events and seasonal activity. This could also include sports seasons, school breaks and community events.
4. Outline your promotional campaigns: Based on your goals and the events you've identified, outline the promotional campaigns you want to run throughout the year. This could include:
   
   1. Booking drives
   2. Discounts or promotions
   3. Block bookings upsells
   4. Special events (tournaments, workshops, clinics)
   5. Social media campaigns
   6. Referral programmes
   7. Review and feedback drives
5. Allocate resource: Make sure your team know who is accountable what activity - this could be one person or several. You'll also need to think about what budget, if any, you have available for these activities.
6. Create a calendar: You can use a spreadsheet, shared calendar software or project management tool to create a visual representation of your marketing activities for the year. Each activity should have its own details such as:
   
   1. Name
   2. Start and end dates
   3. Objective
   4. Target audiences
   5. Channels (social, email, posters, banners, website)
   6. Content (videos, images)
   7. Budget
7. Create the content: If you need any content such as photos, videos or images then start getting this together - the earlier the better! Having them organised in a calendar will help you prioritise what needs doing first.
8. Schedule and execute: With dates set for your activity you can start executing.
9. Monitor and analyse your results: Measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by using your key performance indications (KPIs) such as website traffic, social media engagement, conversion rates. Analyse your changes and make tweaks as you see fit.

Remember to stay flexible - things can change operationally quickly and unexpected opportunities can arise throughout the year. Make sure you're regularly reviewing an updating your calendar to ensure it remains relevant and effective in achieving your business goals.