In business, digital marketing used to be relegated to just a side dish. It was nice to have, but it wasn't the central focus of your marketing campaign. Most businesses spent the bulk of their marketing dollars on email marketing and other non-digital forms of advertising.

Voice Search

"Alexa, find me the digital marketing future." "Siri, help me get to more customers." Voice search is becoming the primary way most people use search engines. In fact, experts are predicting that half of all search will be done with voice by the time 2020 rolls around. To get ready, make sure your keywords are voice-friendly.

How would people actually say what you sell? (Hint: It's probably not the words "new and improved," "device," or "millennial.") Create your content the way people actually speak, so that when they search for you by asking their devices, your business will be among the top answers.

Chat with Your Customers

No, this doesn't mean texting them, "Hey U Up?" in the middle of the night. Investing in chatbots means that visitors to your website can get their questions answered 24/7, whether you're there or not.

In fact, experts agree that chatbot usage is going to continue to increase over the next several years, and it's likely to become more sophisticated as AI technology expands.

Meet Your Customers Where They Hangout

Are your customers older baby boomers and Gen Xers? If so, they're primarily on Facebook. Are they millennials and from Gen Z? They're mostly on Instagram and Twitter. Regardless of where your customer base hangs out on social media, it's critically important that you hang out there too, and market to them.

Aggressively marketing to all of your social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and others) is a do-or-die element of your digital marketing strategy.

Micro-Moments lead to Macro-Sales

According to Inc..com, there are four kinds of "micro-moments" that happen where you can grab your customer's attention. They are, "I want to know … ," "I want to go … ," "I want to buy ... " and "I want to do … "

How can you take advantage of these small windows of opportunity? By having a 10- to 13-second video ad on social media. Video continues to be the medium of choice in digital marketing, and when you create a short ad that tells people how you can help them know, go and do, and direct them to your website for more information, you capture the micro-moment.

One way to take advantage of video is to use it on your website (in addition to on social media) to explain or showcase your services or company. This is particularly useful if your product or industry is detailed or complicated, such as software or financial services.

Just make sure that it's brief, precise and gets to the point quickly.

The bottom line is this: Digital marketing is here to stay and will evolve at a rapid pace. When you shift your marketing resources to focus mostly on digital - with a side of traditional - you can maximize your marketing dollars.