There are a lot of occasions when you just have to get your advertisements out there by a certain point. Some of this might be dependent on various holidays or other events that you're trying to coordinate with. Other occasions might have to do with sales you plan on having or events set by your company.

For any kind of advertising you need to start early enough to generate interest before your sale or before your special. The tighter your schedule is the greater your risk of a single set back forcing you to lose precious days worth of time that could be used to give your sale further exposure.

The best way to combat this issue is by being sure you know exactly what the time frame is going to be for your marketing campaign. I've been very surprised in the past at how so many companies just play it by ear, or have only a vague timeline for when they're going to start things. What do you know, something gets started late, or pushed back, and suddenly they aren't getting their advertising out when they were hoping to.

This happens so much, and it's such an easy thing to avoid if you just plan things out in advance.

Okay, say you're doing a custom poster printing ad campaign and you want to be sure to have your poster up a month before the sale they'll be advertising for.

Now, what are all the steps going to be? First you have to design the posters, second you have to find the right locations to put your posters up, third you have to get the custom poster printing taken care of.

If you already have a designer on staff or know of someone to use you have on thing already done. The same goes for whatever printer you're using. If you haven't picked them out that's your number one job, and it might take awhile if you don't have any leads.

If you are hiring someone outside your company to design make sure you keep on top of them and are certain they know exactly what the deadline is. If you've used them a lot and can trust them, this isn't as much of a concern, but for those working with someone for the first time I'd assume the worst case scenario, and give yourself enough time.

For each step figure out the longest it could possibly take. This should be the times you're going off of so you know you won't have to worry about getting things late. If you're starting on it all extra early you can be certain that you'll get it all done in time.

The greatest thing you can do is give yourself a good buffer between when you have to have it and when you start. Never leave something as important as your marketing to the last minute. Know your time frames, and never let your marketing be late.