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Download the Marketing Calendar Template I Use To Promote Shows

If you’ve followed the blog or the podcast at Sold Out Run very long, you’ve undoubtedly come across mentions of a marketing calendar. If you don’t already use a formal marketing calendar, it’s one of the easiest, most impactful improvements you can make to your marketing strategy. The marketing for every show is going to be unique, but there are some common tactics you’re going to use in many shows.

A marketing calendar is the best way to roll out your marketing campaign, and I put a vanilla “starter” version of a marketing calendar into a spreadsheet that I’m sharing with Sold Out Run readers. Download this and start tweaking things to make it fit your production.

I actually created two versions of the calendar. The first starts a full 8 weeks before opening night. You just enter the date your show opens (the spreadsheet fills in the other dates automatically) and you have 8 weeks laid out of a very manageable marketing schedule.

Sometimes we’re under the gun, though, and we don’t have a full 8 weeks to draw things out. So I also included a shorter calendar template that gets most of the same activity condensed into a 4 week time frame.

Is the marketing calendar really that helpful?

It’s just a simple spreadsheet, but it makes all the difference in the world.

I recently had Beth Williams on an episode of the podcast. I helped her with the promotion of one of her shows last year (full details at Open Book Project). I asked her on the podcast of all the various tactics and processes I introduced her to during those months – what made the biggest difference in promoting not just that show, but the shows she’s done since?

Her answer was the marketing calendar. In her words:

“It just helps. We’ve had issues in the past of making sure that we have press ready photography that a reviewer might wan’t – getting it all done at the right time and having a marketing calendar up front, we’re like okay this has to be done by this date because this person is going to want it here. It’s really helpful to get all the steps in place so that when you get to crunch time it’s all already done.” (full episode)

I tend to agree that using a calendar takes the job of promoting an entire production and turns it into a series of tasks you can get done when they need to be done. That’s probably why I talk about it so much:

• The Open Book Project: Putting Together a Marketing Calendar
• Your Editorial Calendar: the Linchpin of Promoting a Show

How to get your hands on the calendar

I’ve set up my system so that you get access to both marketing calendar templates when you subscribe to receive email updates about new blog posts (like this one).