Digital marketing and the way people interact with your brand online changes and evolves all the time.

One day, your website that is not built in a mobile friendly way is working just fine, and then a big change happens seemingly overnight, and your company’s site traffic plummets as well as it’s conversions.

Your job as an entrepreneur is to build a product that solves a problem, find a way drive revenue, right?  You don’t have to stay up to date on everything that is happening with the latest digital marketing. But you’d be remissed if you thought you didn’t have to know anything at all.

Here is a list of 3 things you should understand about the state of digital marketing in 2016.

1. It Takes Time and Money

Similar to winning the lottery, going viral isn’t a normal occurrence.

And it definitely doesn’t happen unless you create something that can catch.

Some entrepreneurs operate under the assumption of “organic traffic” and “SEO hacks” are easy and free.

But the thing they need to know about digital marketing is they don’t just happen.

Digital marketing costs money. But if you spend the money and time to do it right, your digital marketing will have a powerful ROI.

It costs money to hire professionals to write quality content, send out emails, perfect social media, and everything else that is required in the digital marketing world.

It also takes time to make an impact. You don’t publish 2 blogs and become an authority in the space. It can take months or years to fully build up an audience that trusts you as a source.

But the keys are staying consistent and tracking results (so you know how and where to improve).

2. Content Rules All

Without content, there would be nothing. It can’t be stated enough.

Inbound and digital marketing is built on the foundation of drawing people in through providing value. It’s simple quid pro quo.

You provide the value through content.

Think about television. Why do people watch T.V.? Because they like the content. The same principles apply to content for businesses.

3. Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

Mobile browsing continues to grow. And as a marketer, it doesn’t make any sense to ignore or even upset half your audience.

Today, all websites must be optimized for mobile viewing, also called responsive web design. And if they aren’t, they will be penalized.

This includes everything from reading emails, checking social media and browsing websites. Everything.

Mobile websites are a must have for anyone’s inbound marketing strategy – not only for attracting visitors but keeping them. Because they will move onto the next site that is responsive to mobile.