campaigns-and-content-a-digital-marketing-roadmap-to-the-futureDigital marketing continues to evolve at a dizzying pace. Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, your chosen marketing tactic becomes dated and ineffective.

It’s a challenge for any business.

One thing that can help is to look at what the experts are predicting for the future. Over the coming years, the direction digital marketing is taking is going to change considerably, and keeping an eye on the trends will help you to adapt your strategy accordingly.

Here are some of the main areas where digital marketing is changing, and where you may therefore want to change your focus over the coming months.

Digital Marketing will Take Over TV

TV has always been the leader when it comes to advertising spend. But all that could soon be about to change.

According to many predictions, including research from Forrester that was reported on Business Insider, digital will soon take over TV in terms of the amount spent on advertising. This has been predicted for a while, but it looks like it is now happening.

Forester predicts that by 2019, interactive spend will be over $100 billion, which is $10 billion more than on TV.

Now is the time to ask yourself whether you are directing sufficient resources to your digital marketing. If not, it could be time to change that.

Greater Focus on Multi-Channel Marketing

There are many predictions about where digital marketing is heading, and one that regularly crops up is an increased focus on multi-channel marketing.

Not so long ago, it used to be fine for businesses to publish content on their blogs and simply direct their target readers towards it. Now this is changing, and you have to ensure you have a multi-channel approach.

The fact is that people use various resources to research products and services these days. They will watch videos, read reviews on third-party review sites, and find out what other people are saying on social media.

It therefore makes sense that you should have a presence on as many platforms as you can to ensure you get noticed.

This is even more important now that getting your content noticed on the social networks is becoming a bigger challenge all the time. There is so much else happening on the social networks that sometimes your voice can get drowned out.

You may therefore want to put more focus into social media advertising campaigns if you have not yet considered these.

Growing Importance of Mobile

We all know that mobile is already important, but it is now primed to take over—perhaps as soon as 2016.

Google’s increased focus on mobile has been made clear this year. Following Mobilegeddon and the necessity to have a mobile-friendly website if you want to show up in the mobile SERPs, now is the time to give your mobile strategy the attention it deserves.

Search Algorithms Will Get Smarter

SEO has been a huge part of digital marketing for years. The importance of SEO has never been greater, and reputable SEO resellers and SEO agencies are kept busy by the demand from businesses of all sizes.

One thing that has been true for years is that the algorithms will continue to get smarter, and this will continue to be the case.

An example of this came in November 2015 with the arrival of the Google Phantom III update. This was not officially announced by Google, but it seems to reflect the changes that were made previously to the Quality Rater Guidelines.

It suggests that the focus on user intent is now more important than ever, so you really have to think about what you are publishing and whether it will be of value to the searcher.

The algorithms are going to continue to get more advanced, and this means you will have to make even more effort to stick to Google’s guidelines for valuable content if you want to enjoy success.

Stay Up to Date with the Trends

No one can say for certain where digital marketing will be a few years from now. In fact, the only thing we really know is that it will be very different from what it is today.

Make it your aim to follow the latest trends in digital marketing, and this will help you to stay ahead of the curve instead of falling behind. There are great gains to be had by realizing the trends early on and staying ahead of your competitors.

And if you have yet to focus sufficient resources on digital marketing, now is the time to do so.

Lucy Rogers has been in marketing in one form or another all her working life. She is excited to see where the industry is heading and shares her thoughts on a range of business blogs around the web.