Building a Campaign Timeframe

• Do it 2-3 months before launch.
• Capture and articulate qualitative and quantitative performance goals
• Produce project plans that meet campaign objectives, identify dependencies and tasks,
• and assign ownership.
• Ensure team and partners understand what is expected of them
• Construct a timeline of marketing activities to meet artist team's goals, maximize
• reach, fan acquisition, and sales.
• Identify the required resources/partners to the campaign/project.

Best Practices for Timeframe Planning

• Use a program like Visio or OmniGraffle to plot a basic timeline, and work backwards from your known dates to create a full timeline.

Create the “event horizon”

• Identify the street date, plus any other relevant release dates, such as the start date for the tour, follow-on releases, a live DVD, etc. This gives us the event horizon and overall campaign window.

Work backwards to create milestones 
Let's say you know that 3/31 is the iTunes release date..

• Work backwards from there to set a date for an exclusive direct-to-fan pre-order - a month prior to iTunes, 3/1.
• From there, work backwards another month (1/28) to kick off direct-to-fan activities with the album announcement and fan acquisition activities
• Set a starting point, such as the release of an E4M widget with the exclusive acoustic version of the first single.

Set dates for delivery of online assets.

• Website revisions, launch dates, communications triggers (emails, profile updates, bulletins in all communications channels, etc.).

Give yourself enough time to get the “net” in place.

• The 1/28 direct-to-fan kickoff, was two months prior to the iTunes release/street date
• Be sure that you have optimized landing pages, search engine optimization, updated profiles, and a healthy email list.

Use bonus content as giveaways or direct-to-fan exclusives

• Used these assets to sweeten the direct-to-fan product offering.
• Take advantage of exclusivity to create timely buzz. For example, you might do a three week streaming promotion on your site or with a marketing partner. Week 1 is a new single. Week 2 is the video, and Week 3 is the full album stream. This could occur during the exclusive pre-order month and leading up to the street date, at the height of marketing buzz.