INFORMED: Evolving Toward A Strategy

Eighteen percent of businesses involved in the survey fall into this category, which TEKSystems describes as having experience with digital marketing approaches, but still formulating a strategy.

Top strategic digital priorities for this year: Social marketing (48 percent of respondents); company website design (46 percent), and content development (39 percent).

Key approaches for 2017: Social media (76 percent) and video (52 percent).

Top technology investment areas for 2017: Website (43 percent), content management (43 percent), and marketing operations (33 percent).

Gallina, of Trace3, says his company's chief marketing role is enhancing the company's brand, "so we try to publish a lot of thought leader stuff and we do all of that digitally," through blog posts and videos, he told ITBestOfBreed.

And Trace3 will be doing something new soon. "We're doing our first podcast in about three weeks," heeding suggestions from members of a company advisory board, who, according to Gallina, said they were "more likely to listen to a podcast than [read] a whitepaper."