How to Organize Marketing Tasks Effectively: From Yearly Marketing Plan to Weekly To-Dos
How many marketing tasks in your plan are mission-critical? According to Asana, teams spend 60% of their time at work on activities about work, such as sharing status updates. What can your team accomplish without these time-wasting, mundane tasks? A lot! And it all boils down to how you organize marketing tasks at work.
Lack of organization increases the risk of time wastage on low-value work. Plan your marketing tasks in advance. Then, break everything down to weekly to-dos and prioritize high-value work. This approach ensures you spend more time on marketing tasks that matter.
This blog covers everything you need to know about organizing marketing tasks at work into a weekly to-do list, converting an annual marketing plan into an actionable quarterly plan, and prioritizing key marketing tasks.
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What is a marketing plan?
At its core, a marketing plan is a roadmap for your marketing campaign. It allows you to organize, execute, and track your marketing strategy over a specific period. You can use your marketing plan to establish a timeline, prioritize marketing tasks, and visualize how your team will achieve overall business goals. According to CoSchedule, proactive planners in marketing are 331% more likely to succeed than their peers. Learn how to write a marketing plan that successfully combines all the elements in your marketing strategy.
A comprehensive marketing plan should highlight your mission statement, key performance indicators (KPIs), buyer personas, promotional strategies, and top competitors. It should help you measure the success of your tactics and keep your team on track throughout the campaign. All marketing plans have a target market, differentiation, budget, and price strategy. Ensure you nail these four core components of successful marketing plans. Inexperienced marketers can seek inspiration from industry leaders, online resources, or marketing plan guides with examples.
How do you convert an annual marketing plan into an actionable quarterly plan?
Your marketing plan should help you measure the success of promotional strategies and tasks. But minor missteps and delays accumulate over time, leading to complications. If you already have an annual marketing plan, now you need to build an action plan.
A quarterly marketing plan is more adaptable than an annual plan because you can review goals every 90 days. It also simplifies task management and tracking progress. So, how do you convert a year-long marketing plan into an actionable quarterly plan?
Analyze your buyer personas to determine the appropriate distribution channels for your content. For example, social media is the best channel to reach consumers aged 16-35 years. So hit your target audience with short videos on TikTok and photos on Instagram.
Step 1: Lay the foundation
You’ll need to break down your annual marketing plan into four three-month periods. For each quarter, identify buyer personas to target and list the marketing tasks needed to capture the target audience. Review analytics and KPIs from the previous quarter to visualize hidden issues. This approach can help you prioritize your marketing tasks more efficiently. Remember, you’ll need the tools and financial resources to complete all marketing tasks and measure your performance.
Step 2: Identify the target customer
Your quarterly marketing plan should target a specific niche or potential customers. In this section, describe the ideal customer for your product or service. Who are you targeting this quarter? Create a buyer persona with details about the customer, such as age, job title, gender, and location. Then, identify the best marketing channels to reach the target customer.
You’ll also need to identify the problems facing the customer. How does your product or service benefit the customer or solve their issues? Craft your quarterly marketing content to convey this message to the target audience.
Step 3: Customize marketing activities
Quarterly marketing plans require highly targeted tactics to achieve the desired outcome. You’ll have to customize marketing activities featured in your annual plan. To start, analyze your marketing channels and content. Does your value proposition appeal to the target audience?
According to CoSchedule, successful marketers combine social media ads, email marketing, and blogging. Determine social media channels frequented by the target customer and the appropriate content to grab their attention. Conduct a content audit and review what’s not working. Finally, consider if your marketing campaign requires paid ads and SEO work. Brainstorm these issues to create a comprehensive list of actionable quarterly marketing activities.
Step 4: Identify your KPIs
The last step of converting your annual marketing plan to a quarterly plan is to select KPIs to track your progress. Identify the appropriate KPIs based on your marketing goals. Do you want to boost sales, generate more leads, or increase organic traffic? These KPIs can help you measure marketing activities and visualize hidden issues in your quarterly marketing plan. So, you can fine-tune your strategies to meet your marketing goals.
What marketing tasks should you do every month?
Managing quarterly marketing plans with several competing and overlapping tasks can create complexities. You can break down your action plan into manageable monthly tasks. Here are five critical marketing tasks that you should do every month:
1. Analysis
Set ambitious but attainable goals at the beginning of the month. At the end of each month, analyze your KPIs to determine your monthly performance. Review your marketing tasks and their stats. For example, did your social media campaign attract more first-time buyers in the last 30 days? Which strategies delivered the intended outcome? What didn’t work? Why not?
2. Monthly marketing planning
Analysis visualizes the current state of your marketing campaign. But it doesn’t indicate where you are going as a team. Your plan is like a map. You traveled from Point A to Point B. In the next 30 days, you want to reach Point C. How do you get there?
Pinpoint your marketing objectives for the month. Be specific on what you need to achieve. For example, you want to gain 1,000 new Facebook followers. Create a monthly plan to reach this goal. For example, giving away Mother’s Day gifts for 100 lucky followers can attract new fans to your Facebook page. Plan everything you’ll need before you commence your monthly marketing campaign.
3. Social media marketing
Social media is the most efficient marketing channel. Your customers spend most of their time on social media. So, you can't promote your products or services without a social media presence. Analyze your target customer to determine the appropriate social media platforms. Then, post attention-grabbing photos and videos to convey your message to the target customer. Your monthly plan should guide social media marketing efforts. For example, post videos twice a week on Facebook and share an Instagram story weekly. Ensure your content supports your marketing goals.
4. Email marketing
The importance of email marketing cannot be overstated. You’ve already built a comprehensive email list, why not use it every month to meet your marketing goals? You can execute email marketing independently to promote your products or services or combine email marketing with other strategies to achieve your goals. For example, you could launch a Facebook Giveaway and promote it via email. Craft your emails to encourage loyal customers to enter the Giveaway or share the page with friends and family. Email marketing is versatile and timeless.
5. Review and report
Everything you do for the month should support your marketing goals. At the end of the month, review your activities to determine whether you achieved this objective. Did your blogs, emails and media content deliver the desired outcome? Create a monthly marketing report to visualize the performance of your marketing efforts with KPIs.
Your marketing report should include data from different sources and tools, such as SEO, email marketing, and social media. Assess the overall performance based on KPIs and tie all the numbers to your marketing goal. What worked? What didn’t? You should also review your marketing dollars versus the results. How much did you spend to acquire one new customer? Can you reduce this cost next month? Write down the numbers to get a clear picture. Then, refine your marketing strategies accordingly!
How do you organize your marketing tasks into a weekly to-do list?
A to-do list is a schedule that highlights what needs to be done and when it should be done. It simplifies marketing task management by providing a roadmap for the entire team. You can organize marketing tasks at work into weekly to-do lists to ensure the team focuses on what really matters.
1. Leverage task management apps
Nowadays, there's an app for everything. Task management apps such as Asana, Todoist, Trello, and ClickUp provide robust features for organizing marketing tasks at work into weekly to-do lists.
Todoist: This to-do list app has a user-friendly interface that allows you to manage tasks across marketing projects. You can share your to-dos with team members and view the details of ongoing marketing activities.
Asana: Using Asana, you can organize marketing tasks into a weekly to-do list and create task workflows. Then, visualize your campaign’s progress with dashboards.
Trello: This Kanban-based platform is intuitive and user-friendly. It has three boards for “to-do,” “doing,” and “done.” Use Trello’s visual tool to view all tasks with ease.
ClickUp: Use this productivity tool to organize your to-dos, assign and track tasks, and manage your campaigns. ClickUp also provides team collaboration features to help your team beat tight deadlines.
These apps allow marketers to list tasks by priority or urgency and add comments for the teams. They use different strategies to motivate teams to achieve marketing goals. For example, Todoist awards point for completed tasks.
2. Use online calendars
Online calendars are flexible solutions for creating to-do lists. You can use free or paid calendars such as Google Calendar, Calendly, and Outlook to convert tasks into weekly to-dos. These platforms come with robust tools to help manage tasks and beat deadlines. For example, Google Calendar has a two-way sync with Todoist that allows you to visualize, organize, and prioritize marketing tasks directly inside your calendar.
Google Calendar also allows you to add multiple color-coded calendars and view your schedule by the hour, month, day, and week. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can use Outlook’s free email and calendar service. Like Google Calendar., it simplifies task scheduling, allowing your team to get started quickly.
3. Create virtual to-do lists
Virtual personal assistants like Siri and Google Assistant allow users to create to-do lists. Instead of writing or typing your tasks, you dictate what you need to accomplish and set reminders. For example, you only need to say, "Hey Siri, add content creation to my to-do list.” If you don’t have a to-do list, Siri will create one for you and add the task to the list.
Your virtual assistant will remind you what to do and when to do it. Google Assistant integrates with online calendars and task management tools, allowing you to add items to your to-do list on the go.
How do you prioritize your marketing tasks?
Teams waste too much time on unnecessary work. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize tasks on your to-do list by urgency and importance. This tool can help you reduce time wastage on low-value work.
List all your tasks by urgency and importance. Then, place them in the four quadrants.
⮚ Quadrant 1: Place urgent and crucial tasks in the "Do” quadrant.
⮚ Quadrant 2: Place non-urgent but mission-critical tasks in the “Schedule” quadrant. Your team will work on these marketing tasks later.
⮚ Quadrant 3: Place urgent tasks that are not important in the “Delegate” quadrant.
⮚ Quadrant 4: List all unimportant, non-urgent tasks in the “Delete” quadrant.
The Eisenhower Matrix simplifies task prioritization. You'll need to combine tried-and-tested strategies to ensure your team focuses on the most urgent and mission-critical tasks. Here are three tips for your consideration:
✔ Leverage automation: Mundane tasks make it difficult for your team to achieve marketing goals. Automate these tasks to allow your team to focus on what matters.
✔ Consider outsourcing: Tasks in the “Delegate” quadrant are urgent but not crucial. Outsource these tasks to third parties with the resources to complete them quickly and efficiently. These tasks don’t affect your marketing goals. So, outsourcing them reduces your workload.
✔ Delete tasks: Not everything on your to-do list adds value to your marketing campaign. Scratch off unimportant, non-urgent tasks to concentrate on what matters.
Apart from the Eisenhower Matrix, you can use batching methods to get more work done. First, identify related marketing tasks and group them together. So, your team will focus on the batch with the most urgent tasks before moving to the next.
Batching is ideal for small teams with limited human resources. For example, your five-member team can create promotional videos and photos on Monday and post the content on social media on Tuesday. This approach saves more time than switching between unrelated marketing tasks.
How is your marketing department organized?
The organizational structure of marketing departments ensures each stakeholder understands their role, but that can vary depending on the company’s size. Most departments have teams for social media, SEO, customer acquisition, content creation, product marketing, and web design. Each marketing team has several roles. Some companies hire account managers, content creators, SEO strategists, lead acquisition specialists, video producers and editors, web developers, UX/UI designers, and graphic designers.
As a marketing manager in a company of any size, you can build a marketing team without increasing your headcount. Think of small companies with two or three marketing employees. They outsource everyday marketing tasks to freelancers and focus on mission-critical activities. Don't be afraid to ask for help from other departments or outsource some marketing tasks to external parties. And understand the most transferrable skills to ensure you hire top talent for each role.
Spend less time on busy work.
Marketing teams spend too much time at work on activities about work. Tasks about work don't help your team achieve marketing goals. To eliminate unnecessary activities, organize your marketing tasks from your annual plan to weekly to-dos. Convert your annual marketing plan into an actionable quarterly marketing plan. Then, identify your monthly activities and sort them into a weekly to-do list.
Use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize your marketing tasks and restructure your department to cut costs and reduce waste. As a marketing manager, you can rely on Tiny Marketing to support your team and ensure you focus on tasks that contribute to your marketing goals. To navigate the ever-evolving marketing landscape, listen to our podcast: the Tiny Marketing Show.
