How to use a retail marketing calendar to generate sales for your product business
A retail marketing calendar is a tool that helps you plan out your business activities through the year. It helps you see what you need to be doing (preparing, doing, or analysing) and when, all with a view to generating sales and maximising your profit.
What exactly is in this magical merchandising tool, though?
Everything.
Actually not quite everything. It doesn’t have that night out you have planned with the girls, or Auntie Dot’s birthday. Keep those for your personal one.
Instead, it’s everything you need for your business. It keeps all that useful information in one place, making it easy to see what’s what and to make decisions.
Let’s look at everything it covers in a bit more detail…
It’s a calendar, so it includes dates (woah, ground-breaking).
It wouldn’t be much of a calendar otherwise, would it? It will have months, weeks and days. You might think going down to the level of days is a bit detailed, but they’re excellent for making social media super simple.
But did you know there are three ways your financial year can run? You can opt for:
Calendar year (Jan-Dec)
Tax year (Apr-Mar)
Fiscal year (Sep-Aug)
Do you know which you follow?
It also includes KEY dates and events.
That’s right. Your retail marketing calendar doesn’t just include any old dates. Once you know the format you’re using (calendar, tax or fiscal year) we add in all your important dates and events. I’m talking things like…
Christmas! What day of the week does it fall on this year? And do you have an extra day to get orders out?
Mother's Day! When do you need to launch your products to benefit from this peak in sales?
Black Friday and Cyber Monday! What will you promote and how will you make it profitable?
Your calendar includes your products and/or services.
Once you have your key dates in the calendar you can use them to plan ahead. Perhaps you want to launch a product range for Valentine’s Day, or you’re planning to run a summer fitness camp. Maybe you sell accessories, and one product category you’ve identified is accessories for the wedding season.
Picture the scene…
It’s September. You run a business selling hats (and lucky you, you have this amazing calendar!).
You know there’s not much point talking about your Easter bonnets right now (sensible) and at home in the UK it’s getting chilly, so you launch your range of knitted hats, in line with your competitors (good plan).
Your Australian and New Zealand customers are just heading into the start of summer, though, so you launch your straw hats to that market (genius).
See how product targeting can vary? You didn’t miss a single customer because you considered them all (nice work).
Your retail marketing calendar includes sales
Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell!
Your calendar can help you plan what sales you will take this year and see what you made last year, all in one place.
You can use it to see what your like-for-like (LFL) sales will be, by looking at when key dates fall.
Like-for-like sales are what you see when you compare this year’s sales to last year’s sales, ONLY looking at products or services which were available in both years.
For instance…
You added a new product range last year and as a result you can see this year that your sales are up by 15% overall. But if you look at the sales of the products you had last year, then in total these are down 2%. That shows you that it’s your new products which are driving your sales.
Or, another example could be that this year Christmas Day falls on a Monday (depending when you’re reading this that might be true!). Last year it was on a Sunday, so you have an extra day of sales this year. To compare how your week was like-for-like, you’d look at your sales from Monday (18th) to Sunday (24th) THIS year and Sunday (18th) to Saturday (24th) LAST year.
All this helps you to understand when (and perhaps why) your business experiences peaks and troughs, and means you can plan to use those quieter times wisely, perhaps for creating, designing or preparing new products and stock.
The calendar helps with markdowns and promotions
Sometimes we have to promote our products at a discounted price. Maybe you’re clearing old stock, perhaps you want to drive sales or you might decide you need to match a competitor’s offers.
Your retail marketing calendar will help you to understand when you should run a promotion or sale (you might call this bit of the tool your ‘promotional calendar’, if you like). It might be that you plan in a promotion for a key date, like Black Friday or the Boxing Day sales. Equally, you might be launching new products and have a sale as you go out with the old and in with the new. Or perhaps it’s more strategically linked to your sales plan, reacting and adding promotions to help you to drive more sales.
Sales plan. Strategically react and add promotions to help drive sales.
Sound interesting? Why not learn more about understanding markdown in our free resource?
Your retail marketing calendar can help with social media, too!
Let’s be honest, lots of us are winging it on social. We throw something onto Instagram or Facebook, so that we've ‘done’ something. Yep, guilty as charged.
And do you know what? I think if I’d actually planned those posts in advance it would have taken me less time and effort, and they’d have looked more considered and consistent with my brand. Hmm.
Imagine this, though! You've used your calendar to plan when you’re going to market your products, shout about a launch, announce your sale or focus on a product area. You spend one morning writing ALL your social content and marketing for the month ahead, and then you schedule those posts, knowing that what you're putting in front of your customer is well thought-through. This way you’re way more likely to drive successful marketing or promotions than if you throw ideas randomly at your social media accounts in a panic. And that means more sales, and more profit in your pocket. I’d call that a result.
So, ready to get stuck in with your retail marketing calendar?
I thought you might be! Head on over to get your FREE copy right now and start planning!
