Start with the trading pattern, not the content
Most venue marketing calendars are built from the outside in: national days, seasonal hooks, whatever the platform is rewarding this month. The result is a busy feed and a flat Tuesday.
Build it the other way round. Open your sales by day and session for the last comparable quarter, and mark the periods that are genuinely soft. Those weeks are your brief. Everything else — content, artwork, offers — is produced to serve them.
Step 1: map the 13 weeks
Write the next thirteen weeks down the page. Against each, note three things: what's already happening (events, bank holidays, local fixtures, school terms), how that week traded last year, and whether it needs volume, spend per head, or nothing at all.
Be honest about the weeks that don't need help. A campaign on an already-full Saturday costs you margin and buys nothing.
Step 2: give each week one commercial job
One job per week. Not three. Typical jobs for a venue:
- Fill covers on a specific soft session.
- Raise spend per head — upsell a course, a bottle, a pairing.
- Sell a fixed occasion — a ticketed night, a set menu, a private booking.
- Recruit demand for later — pre-orders, deposits, waitlists for a peak date.
- Hold brand attention — no offer, just proof the place is good.
Then check margin before creative. If the offer that would fill Tuesday destroys the margin you were protecting, change the job.
Step 3: choose the mechanic, then the assets
A mechanic is what the guest actually does: book a table, buy a ticket, turn up between set times, order a named dish. Once the mechanic is fixed, the asset list writes itself.
- In venue: poster, A-board, table talker, menu insert, team briefing line.
- Social: announcement post, story sequence, reel, reminder close to the date.
- Website: an events or offers entry, and the booking journey pointed at it.
- Direct: email or SMS to your existing list, where you have one.
This is the point where artwork and campaign creative gets produced — after the commercial decision, not before it.
Step 4: work backwards from the decision moment
Guests decide at different distances. A birthday dinner is planned weeks out; a Wednesday after work is decided at 4pm on Wednesday. Set your lead times accordingly:
- Bookable occasions and ticketed nights: announce early, remind repeatedly, push hardest in the final week.
- Soft midweek sessions: light early presence, heavy activity 24–48 hours out.
- Peak dates: open bookings well ahead, then switch messaging to scarcity.
Step 5: plan the capture in one or two sessions
Weekly content chasing is what kills calendars. Look across the thirteen weeks, list every asset that needs photography or video, and shoot them in one or two planned sessions arranged around service. Batch the artwork the same way.
Step 6: leave 20% of the plan empty
Something will happen — weather, a local event, a supplier problem, a night that unexpectedly takes off. Keep roughly a fifth of the plan unallocated so you can react without pulling apart the work already scheduled.
Step 7: review monthly against trade, not engagement
At the end of each month, put the plan next to the sales for those sessions. Did the soft Tuesday move? Did spend per head rise on the week you targeted it? Engagement is a diagnostic, not the result. Adjust the remaining weeks accordingly.
Our Momentum and Creative Partner packages include this review as a standing monthly item, with a quarterly 90-day action plan.
A worked example
Say weeks 3, 6 and 9 are soft Tuesdays and week 11 holds a bank holiday weekend. Week 3 gets a named midweek menu with a fixed price and a booking mechanic. Week 6 repeats it with different creative and a reminder push 24 hours out. Week 9 tests moving the same offer to a set time window. Week 11 gets no discount at all — bookings open early, messaging shifts to availability, and the assets are about proof rather than price. Weeks 4, 7 and 12 stay empty on purpose.
Frequently asked questions
Why 90 days rather than a year?
Ninety days is long enough to plan properly and short enough to still be accurate. Annual plans usually survive until the first trading surprise; a quarter can be built against a trading pattern you can actually see.
How far ahead should a campaign be announced?
Work backwards from the decision moment. Bookable occasions need weeks of lead time; a soft midweek session is decided the same day or the day before, so it needs activity close to the date rather than early.
What if the venue has no content to post?
Plan the capture as part of the calendar. Decide which weeks need photography or video, book it around service, and shoot several campaigns in one session rather than chasing content weekly.