When doing marketing, promotion planning is a part that takes a lot of time.

Promotion refers to promotion or promotional activities, including advertising conducted to sell products or services, but in the field, it is mainly used to refer to discount events or events.

These promotions often take a lot of time to plan because of the need to quickly get rid of inventory or because of seasonal and event schedules, but time flies by even if you don't do much work, and you miss out on seasons and schedules every time, so you can't get a decent promotion and miss out on opportunities.

>

Why is that?

Why do we always miss out on holidays like Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok, miss out on Valentine's Day, White Day, Pepero Day, and other holidays, and have to break even?

The first problem is the inability to make quick decisions.

Would this event be good? How about this copy? Can we use this image? Should we take product pictures again? We spend a lot of time on planning but constantly argue with each other, missing the crucial timing for ads to go in.

In other words, we are spending time and money on communication.

The reason why I specifically bring up the cost of communication is that promotions need to take place at the right time, at the right price, and in the right place, especially because of the issue of 'time', which leads to a lot of opportunity cost. The main reason for failure is often time, so it's never too much to say, and it's a very important area.

So, can we reduce this communication cost?

In my case, I try not to give decision-making power to internal people. It's actually an important factor we should remember, but the evaluation of the product or service I'm selling is ultimately done by the customer.

Therefore, I believe that all decisions are made by outside judgment, and I design things to be able to go through a wide range of tests multiple times. The point to note here is the variety of tests. It doesn't mean that we should do a variety of planning to do a variety of tests. It means that we should set the minimum number of variables to obtain accurate data and run these tests many times.

For example, if you show customers a questionnaire asking them which they would choose between A or B, the difference between A and B should not be too great. If there are many differences between A and B and customers show a lot of response to event A, it's not clear whether A is better than B. We should set only a few variables so that we can clearly know why something worked. Otherwise, we'll end up coming up with new plans for the next promotion.

Therefore, in promotions, it's more effective to have fewer variables in multiple tests from one topic, rather than having many plans.

Coming back to the point that we need to reduce this communication cost, and with the simple promotion planning method as a tip,

All results are evaluated and answered by customers. If we divide our time spent squabbling among ourselves internally and spend more time on implementation, we will surely achieve better promotion results, which will definitely have a positive impact on our sales.

The second problem is that we are not prepared.

This is a time issue similar to the first problem. However, the more important point is that many marketers are not prepared for situations where they are too busy with the daily grind and find it difficult to look ahead.

Not prepared?

In marketing, the most important thing is sales activities, i.e., getting customers to do what we want, so 'risk management' is something that marketers who are not getting the attention they deserve should consider.

'Risk management is the marketer's job?' You may wonder, but marketers often start marketing with the hope that something will explode, because they often come across success stories where marketers' success is a rising curve like launching a spacecraft. But the reality is that success is someone else's story. Our goal should be steadily rising indicators.

Most businesses have a peak season and an off-season. There may be businesses that don't have a peak season and an off-season, but except in special cases, there is an off-season. Even if it's not the off-season, marketers are inevitably under pressure to perform, no matter what special circumstances arise.

Marketers should be prepared for risks that could arise at any time, in order to create steadily rising indicators. And those risks disappear when we prepare.

So how do we prepare?

Many marketers naturally create their own marketing calendars as they gain experience. The styles and business sectors will differ, but the common point is that they use calendars to schedule things to some extent, and this alone allows us to gauge and move around the marketing schedule for the year.

To prepare, we need to start by recognizing, predicting, or measuring what might happen.

Therefore, a marketing calendar is inevitable.

So how do you create a marketing calendar?

The first step is to record the schedule. Korea has four distinct seasons (although it feels like there are only winter and summer) in a year, and the major holidays are Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok. We check the necessary schedules on the calendar based on this. In addition, if there are any important schedules for each business sector, we record them.

Once we have confirmed and recorded important event schedules, the second thing we do is estimate the sales period based on the schedule. For example, if we have the Chuseok holiday, we would set the sales period to about two weeks.

And finally, since planning, promotional materials, product composition, etc., need to be finished before the sales period, we can easily set deadlines for what marketers need to do. In other words, the final step is to set the time needed for preparation.

It's amazing how creating this marketing calendar makes the deadlines for the things I need to do visible, making it easy to prepare the schedule and seeing my promotions roll smoothly.

Marketing is always a race against time. It's a game where the winner is the one who plays with time better. More preparation reduces risk, and sufficient preparation broadens our vision of prediction and measurement, so that we don't get caught up in our work and achieve appropriate results.

That's why a good marketer's calendar has no empty space. If you have a lot of empty space, start by finding and checking major event schedules on your calendar right now.