Why Planning Ahead Matters
Eleventh-hour planning is a marketer’s worst nightmare.
The event is next week! Where’s the registration link? Participants just requested graphics! How many emails are you sending? Where are the media assets? Should you make a reel or post a carousel? Who do you need to tag? Your copy isn’t approved yet!
Disaster.
It’s true: more and more, people are waiting until the last minute to sign up for things. But that doesn’t mean your marketing has to be last minute, too.
Picture this: You’re scrolling mindlessly on Instagram. Oh look, there’s an event at this organization I really love! This workshop looks right up my alley! But oh… it’s tomorrow. Actually… how much does this cost? Should I make this last minute plan? Is it worth it?
Cue overwhelm. You scroll past without signing up.
Now picture this, instead: You’re scrolling mindlessly on Instagram. Oh look, there’s an event at this organization I really love! This workshop looks right up my alley! I remember getting an email about this… that really cool person is facilitating. I think it also comes with free tickets to the show right after. Yeah, it says so in the caption. OK, I’m in. I’ll grab my spot now!
You click the link in bio and sign up right away, because you’ve already been primed to make the decision.
Thoughtful marketing strategy doesn’t focus on immediate conversions from single communications; it looks at the sum of all parts of a plan. When you plant many seeds, over time and in advance, your audience is likely to feel more prepared to make a final decision to participate.
Why Last-Minute Content Makes Marketing Harder
- No runway to build anticipation. People need time to see, consider, and act.
- Limited creativity and quality. Tight deadlines leave no time for creative brainstorming, testing, or refining. Your assets end up rushed and inconsistent.
- Lost opportunities for partnerships. Collaborators and affiliates can’t help you promote something they only just heard about.
- Increased burnout and chaos. Scrambling burns out your team, creates mistakes, and erodes trust.
How to Share Information Earlier: A Checklist
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Lock in event basics at least 8 weeks out. Date, time, and what should be confirmed. This ensures you can share a Save the Date for This Thing (More Details to Come) to those in your audience who still book things in advance. (Yes, they still exist. Amy is one of them.)
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Begin collecting interest/commitment at least 6 weeks out. OK, now you should have some more information, and with it, a call to action. Ticketing or registration not live yet? Start an email “interest list” to collect names and contact info for those who want the link when it IS live.
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Loop in partners and collaborators at least 5 weeks out. Give collaborators a little more than a month to build sharing about your event into their own calendars. Pro tip: make and provide media kits with ready-made social media graphics/videos and copywriting they can share across social and email to make it easy for them to support your promotion efforts.
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Finalize plans at least 4 weeks out. Know the details. Copy finalized and approved by all the parties involved. Official link to sign up, apply, buy a ticket, or participate. Now, you have time to make consistent, creative, high-quality content for the next month leading up to the event, without worrying about whether or not your information is accurate…
- Set a rhythm. Now, you can assure your team that there can be consistent content going out about your event for several weeks leading up to it. Touch upon different motivating factors for your audience with your different touchpoints — clarifying event details, qualifying leads, highlighting benefits and differentiators, managing objections and answering questions… Here’s where you can amp up the “last-minute” nature of your communications in advance. Include countdowns and final chance reminders that will always work best when your audience has been primed to receive them.
GGM takes the chaos out of marketing.
We turn your ideas, scattered details, and brain-dumps into clear, proactive plans. Our team is skilled and proactive:
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We build structured content calendars across multiple channels so nothing is left up to chance.
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We create assets in advance, with plenty of time for revisions and approvals.
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We anticipate information bottlenecks to avoid unnecessary delays.