Marketing Made Easy #7: Creating a Content Marketing Calendar (+FREE Calendar Download)

When it comes to creating effective marketing, timing is key. Ensuring you are creating a consistent stream of high-quality, well-timed, valuable content is essential in engaging your audience and boosting your brand. By using a content marketing calendar, you can help keep your content exciting and relevant for your audience.  

Our guide takes you through the best ways to plan your marketing content in 2025, plus, we’re offering a free download of our social media content calendar, so you never miss an opportunity to create great content! 

A well-organised content marketing calendar is an essential tool for any business that wants to streamline its marketing efforts and maximise its impact. It can help you with planning, scheduling and managing your content strategy, so that every piece of content aligns with your goals and resonates with your audience. 

Here’s why a content marketing calendar can be beneficial for your business: 

• Consistency is key – having a steady flow of content will help to keep your audience engaged and your brand visible to potential new customers. 

• Improve planning and save time – a content marketing calendar is a great organisational tool to help you stay on top of and prepare content in advance, limiting last-minute cramming. This will result in less stress, and higher quality content. 

• Maximise your impact – by carefully planning your content to coincide with national events and customer interest, you can ensure the best impact on your audience. You can also use your calendar to schedule your content at times when engagement is likely to be higher. 

• Enhance collaboration and creativity – having a clear plan laid out can improve communication between your team and encourage collaboration on campaigns. 

• Improve goal and performance tracking – a calendar enables you to monitor the performance of your content over time, helping you identify what works so you can make decisions for future strategies. 

Planning your marketing calendar for 2025 may seem like a daunting task, with a whole year’s worth of content to come up with. But by breaking your annual content plans into quarterly content plans and tackling one at a time, throughout the year, you can make planning your campaigns simple. 

Step 1: Identifying your audience – Before you can plan your marketing calendar, you need to understand who you are targeting your content towards. Think about who your target customer demographic is, what’s important to them? How can you engage them? 

Step 2: Choosing your platforms – As part of identifying your audience, you should also consider which platforms they are most likely to use. Older generations may interact more with email marketing, whereas younger, Gen Z customers might opt for social media content. The type of content you choose to create may also naturally fit better with one platform more than another. For example, if you want to encourage user generated content and word of mouth referrals, social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok may be the best option.  

Step 3: Setting your goals – When setting your marketing goals, it is important to create specific and measurable targets. Instead of saying ‘grow our Instagram following’, say ‘increase following by 20% over 6 months’. This makes it easier to measure your success and figure out which strategies work best for your business. 

Step 4 : Planning your content – Once you’ve identified your audience and chosen your platforms, it’s time to start planning your content. Whether it’s boosting engagement, reaching new customers, or driving revenue, your content strategy should be tailored to achieve these objectives. 

Aim for a balance between evergreen content, which remains relevant over time, and timely content that aligns with current events or trends. You could also audit your existing content to identify what has performed well in the past and use those insights to inform your strategy.  

Step 5 – Setting a posting schedule: Once you’ve planned your content, you need to figure out your posting schedule. This will involve determining how often you will post, on which platforms, and on which days and times. For example, for B2C businesses posting on social media, 6pm to 9pm is the time when you will likely see the most engagement. For B2B businesses, 11am to 1pm is often more effective.  

When creating your content marketing calendar, aligning your content with important dates is a great way to keep your material fresh, relevant, and engaging. 

Start by identifying key dates that will resonate with your audience such as holidays, industry-specific events, or awareness campaigns, as well as the obvious big events like Christmas and Easter. You can then incorporate relevant dates into your calendar to craft timely content that connects with your audience’s interests and needs. 

Try to find events that are relevant to your business. For example, a bakery might plan a marketing campaign for National Biscuit Day (29th May) but an event like World Bicycle Day (3rd June) may not be so relevant.  

It is also important that you choose the right tone for your marketing campaign. Whilst competitions and games are great for more fun and lighthearted holidays in your content marketing calendar, more serious events such as Black History Month (October 2025) or Mental Health Awareness Week (12th May) might require a different approach, such as hosting workshops and providing resources.  

• Wordsearch Day – 16th January 2025 

For this niche event, you can get creative, making your own themed wordsearch for customers, hiding special discount codes or offers within your puzzle.  

• Random Acts of Kindness Day – 17th February 2025 

This is a great way to showcase your business’s values and give back to your customers and the community, whether you decide to run a charity event or encourage a ‘pay it forward’ campaign where customers can cover the cost of a small treat for the customer behind them. 

• Wear a Hat Day – 28th March 2025 

Although this might not directly translate into revenue, fun events like this can make your brand stand out and be more memorable to customers, which can boost your brand image. 

• International Haiku Poetry Day – 17th April 2025 

International Haiku Poetry Day is a great chance for your business to embrace creativity, connect with your audience, and add a touch of poetic charm to your brand. You could invite customers to write their own haikus and share them on social media using a unique hashtag, and offer prizes such as discounts, gift cards, or free products for the best entries. 

• World Laughter Day – 3rd May 2025 

Inject a little bit of fun into your content marketing calendar with some laugher-based activities. From running a joke contest, to creating events, such as collaborating with local comedians to run a comedy show and increase footfall to your business. 

• World Bicycle Day – 3rd June 2025 

Help make the world a greener place by encouraging your customers to travel by bicycle, offering discounts for cyclists, or by organising a charity bike ride. 

• World Chocolate Day – 7th July 2025 

You can use this day to treat your customers and indulge in all things chocolate. Partner with a local bakery, café, or chocolatier to co-host events, create co-branded chocolate items or run a chocolate giveaway on social media. 

• World Photography Day – 19th August 2025 

This is a great opportunity for some free promotion in the form of user-generated content. Encourage your customers to get creative and take photos of themselves using your products and post them on Instagram with a personalised hashtag, for the chance to win a prize. 

• Zero Waste Week – Starting 1st September 2025 

Showcase your green initiatives by supporting Zero Waste Week. This could involve offering discounts on reusable items such as bags and cups and hosting educational events or workshops. 

• International Coffee Day – 1st October 2025 

Collaborate with local businesses such as coffee shops to offer new coffee-based products or host a coffee-tasting event with special promotional discounts for attendees. Or, if your business is more services based, why not create some light-hearted social media content of your team sharing their go-to coffee order or taking a group coffee break.  

• Small Business Saturday – 29th November 2025 

Small Business Saturday is a fantastic opportunity for small businesses to showcase their unique products, increase brand awareness, and drive sales. Try hosting in-store or online events and celebrations, encouraging people to ‘shop small’. You could also team up with other local small businesses to give each other a boost. 

• Free Shipping Day – 14th December 2025 

This is a great opportunity to boost your pre-Christmas revenue. By offering customers free shipping on orders made on this day, you can encourage purchases that may otherwise have been abandoned baskets. 

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