Summary: In session 38 of A Marketing Podcast, I provide an overview of how the year is going to unfold for the show. I also get started on the first theme of the year, digital marketing setup. In particular the setup of your brand elements and website. Including some basic SEO setup and considerations for your new website.<br> <br> The Plan for 2017<br> A themed approach to the year – one theme per month. The theory here is that you can plan for what themes you’d like to tune in for as well as know what’s coming to plan ahead in your marketing.<br> Themes:<br> <br> * January – Digital Marketing Setup<br> * February – Inbound Marketing<br> * March – Advertising your SMB online<br> * April – Search Engine Optimization<br> * May – Social Media for Small Business<br> * June – Keeping up with marketing trends<br> * July – Day to day marketing<br> * August – Marketing Automation<br> * September – Communications in SMB<br> * October – Customer Journey Mapping<br> * November – Festive Season Marketing<br> * December – A Year in Review<br> <br> <br> Small Business Digital Marketing Setup Checklist [DOWNLOAD]<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Before we get started on today’s topic, check out the setup checklist I’ve created that this month will cover.<br> With this month’s theme being all about digital marketing setup – I’ve created a checklist to walk you through the steps to complete your online presense to be ready for all your marketing efforts. It’s called the small business digital marketing setup checklist and you can find it here: <a href="http://www.amarketingpodcast.com/digitalsetup">http://www.amarketingpodcast.com/digitalsetup</a><br> <br> Visual Brand Elements<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> In order to perform any marketing, digital or otherwise, you need to have your brand taken care of.<br> Building your brand is an entire process to itself, I’m not going to cover that today, but what I am going to cover is the minimal set of visual digital assets you need for your marketing.<br> List of assets you need:<br> <br> * Company Logo – of course, no surprise there, however, the more sizes and colors you have it in the better<br> * Color Pallet – primary, secondary and tertiary colors<br> * Font Stack – know what fonts your brand should be using, and make sure you have a web font was chosen (Google fonts is a good place to start<br> * Brand Imagery – lifestyle shots, product shots, etc.<br> <br> <br> Setting up your website<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Obviously to do any digital marketing you want to have a website. Although, not technically required, let’s just say it’s easier to market your business with your own website.<br> You can rely heavily on a social channel but you want to have your own owned property where you control everything – that’s your website.<br> <br> * Most of you likely have a website already setup, but for those of you just getting started in business there are a few things to consider:<br> <br> <br> * Select a domain name – <a href="http://www.amarketingpodcast.com/godaddy">Godaddy is the way to go</a><br> * Web hosting – You can easily create an entire podcast on web hosting and all of the options available to you. I use <a href="http://www.amarketingpodcast.com/1and1">1and1 Hosting</a> for A Marketing Podcast. They have many options to choose from.<br> * Your actual website – the files that create the pages of your site<br> * Basic SEO setup – more in a minute on this one.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Web Hosting and your Website<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> To figure out what type of web hosting to use and to build your website,
