Promotional calendars are a fun and versatile option for marketing strategies in every industry. They’re perfect for getting prospects and customers interested in your offerings, events, and your company as a whole, all while helping them keep track of all the important holidays and happenings in their personal lives.

But how do you make a promotional calendar and what are some calendar design ideas you can take advantage of?

Luckily, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s take a look at how you can design an effective promotional calendar.

What Is A Promotional Calendar?

Promotional calendars are unique calendars that businesses in all industry types use to provide a yearlong advertisement. They help businesses boost sales and market to a wide audience as calendars are heavily popular amongst many households.

Basically, a promotional calendar is your average calendar but with a marketing twist. Rather than just holidays, dates, and beautiful images, a promotional calendar also includes information about a company as well as offers and product or service details.

Why Use A Promotional Calendar?

Over 70% of people still use printed calendars, so while digital planners and the calendars on our phones work great, tangible, printed calendars are still a crowd favorite. By providing your audience with a branded promotional calendar, you're providing your audience with not only a helpful scheduling tool but also a reminder of your brand. Every day they view your calendar, and every time they jot down an important event, they’re reminded of your business. That’s a lot of brand exposure that builds results in keeping your brand top of mind when your customer or prospect is ready to make a purchasing decision.

This means through exciting and interesting images, a smart and strategic use of product placements, and an understanding of how to make the most of your promotional calendar, you create the opportunity for a lot of earning potential.

Steps To Designing Promotional Calendars

Expected Times: 8 hours 6 hours 2 hours

1. Choose A Theme

Planning and selecting monthly calendar themes is the first step to designing a promotional calendar.

For example, a bakery could promote a different image of their desserts each month, a nonprofit could share stories and images of fundraisers and their accomplishments, a travel agency can use images from around the world, or a veterinary clinic could feature adorable photos of their patients each month.

You can even get your audience involved and ask them a few months prior to the new year to submit their own image for a chance to be featured in your promotional calendar. For example, at Conquest Graphics, each year we create our Pets of Conquest Calendar where our customers submit images of their pets and then receive a free promotional calendar featuring their furry friend.

2. Outline Your Content

Once you choose the theme for your promotional calendar, it’s time to outline your content for each month.

When designing your promotional calendar, take into account your slow and busy months to help you choose what events, products, or services you’d like to promote for each month. For example, if October is extremely crazy for your company, you most likely don’t want to increase foot traffic and overwhelm your team by providing your calendar recipients with an October promotion. On the other hand, if September is a slow month, offer a discount code for your audience to use during that month to generate more sales during a month when sales are typically low.

You can also get creative with your promotional calendar design and connect seasonal changes, national holidays, and even local or pop culture events with your brand. For instance, a grocery store can market their turkeys during November to increase sales around Thanksgiving and their most profitable champagnes in January to effectively ring in the new year. Clothing companies and department stores can advertise their winter wear and bathing suits depending on the temperature during the corresponding months.

3. Incorporate Your Brand

Incorporating your brand elements is key to the success of your promotional calendar.

Always be sure to put advertising logos, slogans, and any other brand-related imaging on every single page of your promotional calendar to strengthen your brand awareness and to help keep your brand top of mind.

You also want to make sure your contact information, website URL, address, etc., is easy for your audience to find so when they become interested in something you’re promoting they can easily take action.

4. Choose Your Type of Calendar

Your promotional calendar doesn’t have to be a standard 8.5x11 wall calendar or use saddle stitching. You can design a pocket calendar, a desk calendar, and even a magnetic one that attaches to the refrigerator. It can also include coil binding or spiral binding rather than standard saddle stitching.

5. Choose Your Paper

Paper and coatings can have a big impact on the design of your promotional calendar, and you should select the best options that fit your budget as well as options that make your calendar design stand out.

For example, if you’re designing a promotional calendar for your high-end clothing store or even your law firm, then a thick velvet cover for your promotional calendar is the perfect paper option to give your calendar a soft touch and sophisticated appearance. On the other hand, if you’re designing a promotional calendar for your farmers market that includes recipes which most likely will be hung in a kitchen, then a gloss cover with a UV coating will make your calendar standout as well as better protect it from kitchen messes.

6. Choose a Great Printer

Once you have your promotional calendar design together, it’s time to find a great printer!

There are many great printers to choose from to print your calendars and it’s important to find one who fits your budget, makes the ordering process quick and easy and one who offers a calendar design template to help you get your promotional calendar print ready.

At Conquest Graphics we have over 100 years of experience in printing calendars, we can even help with the design of your calendar, we offer an online calendar design tool as well as templates you can download, and we can help with incorporating your promotional calendars within a direct mail marketing campaign.

Tips For Creating Effective Promotional Calendars

Include Company Events

Calendars are already designed to help us remember important events, and a promotional calendar is the perfect canvas to highlight your company’s own events.

For instance, a golf course can use promotional calendars to generate interest in their tournaments, a real estate agent could promote showings and open houses, a movie theater could list upcoming releases each month, or a nonprofit could feature upcoming fundraisers.

Promote Your Products or Services

Promoting different products or services each month within your promotional calendar will help draw attention to what your company has to offer and will increase awareness and interest in your product or service.

For example, a restaurant could feature an entrée each month, a retail store could include product descriptions each month, or a lawn care company could promote the variety of services they offer along with statics promoting the importance of maintaining a lawn.

Include QR Codes

When promoting an event, product, or service, one of the most effective ways to get your audience to make a purchase or sign up is to include QR codes. QR codes allow your calendar recipients to easily scan the code to navigate to your event sign-up page, a product page, or a service page on your website where they can gain more knowledge about your services.

Use A Calendar Design Template

Using a calendar design template will help you lay out your design as well as ensure you’re designing it perfectly so that it prints perfectly. Ask your printer about their calendar template options including an online calendar designer, PDF templates, or even complete InDesign templates.

Include Brand Elements

While incorporating your brand is a step of its own to the answer of how to make a promotional calendar, it’s worth mentioning again as a calendar design idea that will increase the effectiveness of your promotional calendar.

Featuring your brand on every page of your promotional calendar will capitalize on the fact that you are not only advertising your products and services themselves but also your company as a whole. As a business owner or marketer, you want to ensure that your company name is prominent so that you can successfully build strong brand awareness and increase your chances of generating greater sales.

If you’re interested in the benefits of a promotional calendar, click below to explore our calendar design templates and to get started on your calendar project today!

How to Design Promotional Calendars with Great Deals and Ideas for Customers

Promotional calendars are a very fun and versatile option for marketing strategies in every industry.

By Conquest Graphics