Marketing roadmap template — editable, free
Most dates on a marketing roadmap belong to somebody else: a launch set by engineering, a conference, a submission deadline. This template marks each item as fixed externally or ours to move, groups eleven items across four channels, and saves a view of only the dates you cannot negotiate.
| View | Groups by | Visible fields |
|---|---|---|
The calendar (timeline) | Channel | Name, Date, Owner, Start, End |
Leadership (timeline) | Channel | Name, Channel, Start, End |
What we cannot move (board) | Date | Name, Channel, Owner, End, only Fixed externally |
All items (table) | Nothing — one flat list | Name, Channel, Date, Status, Owner, End |
Whose dates are these?
Mostly not yours, and that’s the thing a generic template gets wrong about marketing. A launch date is engineering’s. A conference is the conference’s. A talk submission closes when it closes. What the team controls is a minority of the calendar, and it’s the only part that can absorb a change when something moves.
So every item here carries one extra field: fixed externally, or ours to move. The third saved view filters to the first kind, which is the list to check before agreeing to anything.
What is in this template?
Eleven items across four channels — launch, content, events and lifecycle — at exact dates, because a campaign that starts a fortnight late has usually missed the thing it was for.
Two milestones, and they’re different kinds. Launch day is the anchor the whole launch lane is scheduled backwards from. The talk submission deadline is the other kind entirely: a small date that slips past everybody and can’t be recovered, which is the best argument for putting it on a roadmap rather than in somebody’s calendar.
Who else reads this?
More people than you expect, and usually without you in the room. A marketing calendar gets forwarded to sales, to support, and to whoever is planning their own quarter around your launch. Roadmap for stakeholders is about that reader — the third person the picture reaches, with no framing and no way to ask a question — and the field list changes once you design for them.
The format you send it in decides what comes back. How to share a product roadmap is specific: an image gets you questions, a file gets you edits, a live link gets you people reading it on a day you didn’t choose.
For the longer planning horizon behind the calendar, a 6-month roadmap template separates what is committed from what isn’t. For the version of this that reaches customers, a sales roadmap template has the dates taken off. And where the work runs across several teams at once, a design roadmap template shows the research that has to finish first.
Common mistakes
Treating every date as equally movable. Half the calendar is set by a launch or a conference, and the half that’s yours is the only place a squeeze can actually go.
Leaving submission deadlines off. Missing a talk submission empties the events lane for a quarter, and it’s the kind of date nobody notices until it has passed.
Scheduling forwards from today. Launch work runs backwards from the launch, and a calendar built the other way discovers in week three that the briefings needed to start in week one.
Planning a campaign against a ship date nobody has committed to. Check which side of the fixed column the underlying item sits on before you book anything against it.
Questions
Why mark dates as fixed or movable?
Because when something slips, the question is immediately which things can absorb it. A calendar where that’s a field takes ten seconds to answer; one where it lives in somebody’s head takes a meeting.
Should the product launch date be on here?
Yes, as an external date, even though another team owns it. It’s the anchor most of the launch lane is scheduled against, and marking it external says plainly whose it’s to move.
How far ahead should this run?
Two quarters is usually the limit for anything specific. Events run further because the deadlines are further out, which is exactly why they belong on the same page as the rest.
Related
- 6-month roadmap templateTwo quarters, every item marked committed, intended or exploring, so nobody mistakes the second half for a commitment.
- How to share a product roadmapImage, file or live link. Each gets a different reply, so pick by what you want back.
- Roadmap for stakeholdersBuild for the reader three forwards away, and show only the dependency they owe you.
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