According to a new article my Smartinsights.com, these are some of the areas to pay close attention to this year. It's also a great idea to get a good game plan in place to make sure you are taking full advantage of them. Here are some of the main areas to pay close attention to: #1 Content marketing - this has featured consistently in the top 3 for several years. I think it's number 1 since content marketing can be applied by all types of business regardless of their sector or size and if the right strategy is followed can make an impact that supports communications across all touchpoint of the customer lifecycle . It fuels all digital channels from search, email and social media marketing. This makes having a defined content marketing strategy essential to competing in many sectors. #2 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning - This is an exciting 'new entry' into the top 5 and suggests that marketers now believe they will see a return from deployi