Jay Levinson, the creator of Guerrilla Marketing, says that there are two times that are best for developing a marketing plan: right now and whenever your business started. Obviously, you can't go back in time, so start planning now.

Marketing can get complicated. You need to time when you'll do what kind of marketing. Sending out direct mail pieces, renting billboards, and running radio and television commercials takes timing. This means you first need to plan what you need, when you'll need it and how long it will take to get what you need.

A marketing calendar is your best bet for organizing your marketing activities throughout the year. Once you create a marketing calendar, you can update and revise it however you need as the year goes on. If you find you don't have the software needed to create an upcoming poster, you can either go out and buy QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign (two popular pro designers' software) or you know to start looking for agencies to take on the design. Having a plan can eliminate any last minute scrambling.

A marketing calendar doesn't have to be complicated. You can create a simple spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel to track your marketing efforts. You can use months as headers across the top of the document and use the very left column to list marketing initiatives. Then put an “X” in the corresponding boxes on the line and column that matches up the marketing initiative with the month you've planned it for.

For instance, if you're planning on sending out postcards starting in February and going every other month, you'd put an “X” in the row across from “postcards” and in every other column starting with February. See, easy! This makes it easy to see which months are filled with marketing activities and which could use some more.

A marketing plan can also help you get your materials in order: for instance, if you're attending a trade show in May, you'll need to have your poster printing done in April. You'll be able to track what you need and when you need it done.

A marketing calendar helps you do three things with your marketing campaign:

1. It helps you organize, categorize and prioritize your marketing activities.

2. It allows you to spread out your marketing efforts evenly across the year. You'll be able to literally see what months you have too much marketing planned for, and which months you have not enough marketing planned. You'll have natural occurrences of periods of not-so-much marketing so don't force it if it's not conducive to your marketing needs. You'll also have periods of lots of marketing, like around holidays.

3. You can easily assess your marketing campaign. You can evaluate your marketing efforts by giving each initiative or each month a grade of A, B etc., or you can use a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being extraordinary. Then you can weed out the F's or the 1's and 2's, and not do those marketing activities again. You can also up the frequency of the activities of the A's and the 10's.

That's about all there is to do to actually get your marketing plan down on paper (or in Excel). You can plan your marketing tactics yearly, quarterly, or whatever works for your business. Keep updating your plan so it continues to help you market your business and product more successfully.