One of the most confusing years we witnessed has passed, and at this point, I’m curious what 2022 has prepared for us. Although, I should be careful about saying that… If 2021 taught us anything, it’s that we can’t really control everything, but there are a few things we can still manage properly.
Among those is building a successful marketing campaign.
An important step to take if you want to gain control over your campaigns is creating a marketing calendar that has a holistic view, guiding your entire year.
A marketing calendar will dictate your overall strategy and help you stay focused on the events that are important for your advertising campaigns.
So, without further ado, let’s see what exactly a marketing calendar is and how to use it effectively. 
A. What is a marketing calendar?
B. Why is a marketing calendar important?
C. What does a marketing calendar include?
D. Types of marketing calendars
E. Download your ready-to-use marketing calendar
A. What Is a Marketing Calendar?
A marketing calendar is a plan meant to help you organize and prepare your marketing promotion strategies for a given period of time, be it the next quarter, or the entire year.
Because it can be used as an advertising calendar as well, it will help you take into account annual cultural events, important holidays, and your company’s product launches so you can prepare in advance for each big ad campaign.
Moreover, once you have every vital event marked on your calendar, it’s easier to align all team members, so all the communication channels will send the same message.
B. Why Is a Marketing Calendar Important?
A marketing calendar is about market research and important marketing campaigns.
The essential aspect of a marketing plan calendar is its value to lead a marketing team by showing all the scheduled activities to avoid missing an important event.
The even better part is that you can note in your marketing calendar when your team needs to start thinking ahead about the next big promotional activity so they avoid starting to work on it too late.
For example, if you’re planning a marketing strategy for Black Friday, planning your advertising campaign in October is way too late, as we’ve learned from our guests in our first webinar. The ideal month for starting and preparing for such a huge campaign is July or August.
If you don’t mark this in your marketing plan calendar, you will probably miss starting your advertising campaign so early in the year, given that Black Friday is at the end of November.
It’s also useful when it comes to unexpected changes.
While you plan for every big event throughout the year, there will always be some urgent, unforeseen matters that need your attention. This is why a marketing calendar will come in handy. You can look at upcoming events that need advertising campaigns and see when you can dedicate a bit of your time to something that is not scheduled.
Knowing about display ad design statistics will help you decide faster which type of ads you should use to hop into the latest trend with an engaging ad or deal with that unforeseen event I previously mentioned.
Last but not least, a marketing calendar helps you keep your advertising campaigns and everything around them cohesive, which is ultimately very important if you want to attract and retain customers.
C. What Does a Marketing Calendar Include?
Without overcomplicating it, you should include a few basic things in your marketing calendar:
- Project name. This will help people know what they will be working on.
- Team members. Assign each task the team members that will be involved in each project and write down their names to know who is responsible for what.
- Launch date for each project. This is basically the deadline of the project, which can help you create a precise timeline for the tasks.
- Tasks. Mark all the important tasks that keep everything moving.
D. Types of Marketing Calendars
When it comes to planning your advertising campaigns, you can do it in various ways. It all depends on whether you want a short-term plan or a more extended one.
Besides the all-in-one marketing campaign calendar that includes a global view of everything that’s next, you can also have other types of calendars as well, such as:
- Content marketing calendar, which includes your editorial calendar that dictates what content gets published and when.
- Email marketing calendar, which is another form of content calendar example, where you schedule when emails are sent.
- Social media marketing calendar, which is a good asset to have if you post on various platforms and wish to align everything with the other departments.
The general type of marketing or advertising calendar can be planned in various forms. It can be a:
- Project-based calendar. A marketing calendar for one project or one single event.
- Campaign calendar. A marketing calendar template meant to help you with a campaign that contains multiple projects. This will help you keep track of the tasks and team members necessary for a particular campaign.
- Quarterly calendar: A perfect marketing calendar template for when you want to take it one quarter at a time.
- Annual marketing calendar: A comprehensive calendar that offers you the big picture of your yearly marketing projects and campaigns. It’s highly recommended to have this calendar at the beginning of the year, as each team will have an idea about what’s next, whether it’s social media, advertising, or content marketing. Having this overview, teams can break it down into smaller tasks in their own calendars whenever necessary.
You can create one of the calendars mentioned above in a spreadsheet or Google Calendar, but there’s also the option to download our printable PDF and mark all your ideas in there.
Since there are many things to do in an ad campaign and many departments that need to sync their work, following a marketing calendar is even more effective when you pair it with creative automation. This process allows you to scale visual content production while maintaining brand consistency, personalization, and quality.
E. Download Your Ready-to-Use Marketing Calendar
Since we want to help you plan in advance, we worked together with our design team and created this advertising calendar for 2022.
This way, you can glance over the upcoming events from the following months and prepare ahead of time.
Feel free to edit the calendar however you want. You can keep all the events we’ve already included and add some more, perhaps delete some of them and replace them with others. It’s up to you to decide which events make sense for your business.
You can download the PDF version and use it in a digital format or print it for the office.
Moreover, we thought it would be helpful to include in this PDF a few articles related to some important events if you need some extra guidance.
If you need a quick view of the important holidays for each month, you can skim through them here, or go to a certain month by clicking on it.
January
January is all about new beginnings and starting fresh. Christmas and all those super cozy pumpkin spice latte feelings are gone. Not sure where to start? Here are a few things you can focus on during this month.
January 1 New Year’s Eve
January 9 World Nerd Day
January 10 Clean Off Your Desk Day
January 14 Organize Your Home Day
January 17 Martin Luther King Day
January 17 Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day
January 17 Kid Inventors’ Day
January 26 Australia Day
January 27 Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 27 Chocolate Cake Day
January 28 International LEGO Day
January 28 Data Privacy Day
January 31 Grammy Awards
February
The month of love marks another big holiday that is around the corner. While focusing on Valentine’s Day campaigns, keep in mind that 2022 February is extra special because it has that perfect strike: 02.02.2022.
Here are some other notable days:
February 1 Chinese New Year
February 1 National Freedom Day
February 4 Winter Olympics 2022 (4-20)
February 4 World Cancer Day
February 6 Super Bowl Sunday
February 11 Make a Friend Day
February 13 Super Bowl
February 14 St. Valentine’s Day
February 17 Random Acts of Kindness Day
February 20 Love Your Pet Day
February 21 Presidents’ Day
March
This month is all about women, so start launching those ads and publish your best content on the subject.
But don’t forget about these other days worthy of your attention:
March 1 World Compliment Day
March 3 World Book Day
March 3 World Wildlife Day
March 4 Employee Appreciation Day
March 8 International Women’s Day
March 14 White Day
March 17 St. Patrick’s Day
March 17 Holi Festival (17-18)
March 18 Global Recycling Day
March 20 International Day of Happiness
March 20 First Day of Spring
March 21 World Poetry Day
March 26 Earth Hour
March 27 Oscar Night
April
April deserves your attention as it celebrates a few different kinds of holidays and events, the most important one being Easter.
April 1 April Fool’s Day
April 3 Ramadan Start
April 7 United Nations World Health Day
April 15 Good Friday
April 16 National Stress Awareness Day
April 17 Easter Sunday
April 18 Easter Monday
April 22 Earth Day
April 23 World Book Day
April 28 World Day for Safety and Health at Work
April 29 International Dance Day
April 30 International Jazz Day
May
This month cannot go by without dropping a May the 4th be with you. It’s also the month when you can start working on those hot summer campaigns.
There are also a few other days that should earn your engagement.
May 1 End of Ramadan
May 1 Labour Day
May 5 Cinco de Mayo
May 9 Europe Day
May 15 International Day of Families
May 16 International Day of Light
May 17 World Baking Day
May 20 World Bee Day
June
While everyone starts going out more and enjoying the well-deserved summer vacations, you shouldn’t forget there are a few days that stand out this month.
June 1 Global Day of Parents
June 5 World Environment Day
June 13 International Children’s Day
June 18 International Picnic Day
June 19 Father’s Day
June 21 International Yoga Day
June 21 First Day of Summer
July
When it comes to marketing and advertising in July, there are some outstanding opportunities to engage with your customers—from important ones like Independence Day to World Emoji Day.
July 1 International Joke Day
July 4 Independence Day
July 5 Workaholics Day
July 7 Global Forgiveness Day
July 7 World Chocolate Day
July 11 World Population Day
July 13 Embrace Your Geekness Day
July 17 World Emoji Day
July 30 International Day of Friendship
July 30 Islamic New Year
August
The hottest month of the year indicates the summer is almost over, and the back-to-school season begins. This also means you should start focusing more and more on your big marketing campaigns for autumn.
While planning those significant events, you can also take advantage of these days that set August apart.
August 8 International Cat Day
August 12 International Youth Day
August 19 World Photography Day
August 26 International Dog Day
August 26 Women’s Equality Day
September
This is also probably the last month before those busy autumn and winter days of important marketing campaigns.
September 5 International Day of Charity
September 5 Labour Day
September 8 International Literacy Day
September 17 Oktoberfest Start
September 21 International Day of Peace
September 26 European Day of Languages
September 27 World Tourism Day
September 29 World Heart Day
October
With October comes the cold and the finishing touches for your busiest months of the year.
Don’t forget about other days you could celebrate as well.
October 1 International Coffee Day
October 1 World Vegetarian Day
October 2 World Smile Day
October 2 International Day of Non-Violence
October 5 Worlds Teacher’s Day
October 10 World Mental Health Day
October 16 World Food Day
October 24 Diwali
October 25.World Pasta Day
October 31 Halloween
November
When November starts, it’s safe to say that we’re officially entering the holiday season. Your main focus will naturally be on important events like Black Friday, but there are a few more you should consider adding to your calendar.
November 1 World’s Vegan Day
November 11 Singles Day
November 11 Veterans Day
November 13 World Kindness Day
November 19 International Men’s Day
November 24 Thanksgiving
November 25 Black Friday
November 28 Cyber Monday
November 30 St. Andrew’s Day
December
You can deny it as much as you want, but you will still feel the different vibe December has compared to other months. For marketers, it’s also the busiest month of the year, as everything has to be done before going on holiday.
To make things easier, you should follow your marketing calendar, which can include these days:
December 3 Make a Gift Day
December 10 Human Rights Day
December 12 Green Monday
December 18 Hanukkah
December 21 Winter Solstice
December 24 Christmas Eve
December 25 Christmas Day
December 26 Boxing Day
December 31 New Year’s Eve
Conclusion
Marketers and advertisers are more overworked than ever, which is why having a plan like this can help you have a clear view of what’s to come. You can create a logical plan to keep track of what needs to be advertised and when.
In this fast-paced world, timing is essential, and while it may seem difficult to think about everything you’re going to do in the upcoming months, it’s worth doing it.
A well-done marketing calendar not only guides your next tasks but helps you spur new ideas for the next advertising campaigns.
What events will you be adding to your marketing calendar?
