Here is our definite list of key terms in the world of digital marketing. You may have come across many or all of them before but not have an idea of what they all mean. To help build your repertoire of marketing terms here are 50 to get you started.
A/B Testing
Also known as Split Testing, this is the process of comparing two variations of a single variable against one another to determine which performs better. Landing pages, email marketing and contact forms are all commonly tested in digital marketing. Examples of tests carried out are the call-to-action, colours and text. This takes out the guesswork of your optimisation to enable data-based decisions often with the aim of increasing your conversion rate.
Analytics
The collection of raw data to allow the user to discover and create meaningful marketing decisions. It is something that most digital marketers can make use of in today’s data-driven world. Google provide a popular, free tool in order for you to start tracking your visitors and collecting valuable data. This is particularly useful in the digital marketing world when it comes to working out where your leads come from in order to make adjustments to strategy and budgets accordingly.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Eliminating the process of humans sifting through and analysing big data, this process can now be done by computers, machines, or software systems to mimic certain aspects of human intellect. The evolution of analytics has made it possible for digital marketers to see a clearer picture of their target audience. Machine learning can be used to anticipate a customer’s next month and improve their journey.
Business-to-Business (B2B)
A transaction between two businesses. One example is a manufacturer and a retailer. This is referring to business conducted between companies rather than business being conducted between a company and an individual consumer.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
A transaction between companies that sell directly to individual consumers. This term grew in popularity during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, referring to online retailers selling products and services to consumers.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of people who exit your website after visiting just one page; not navigating to any other pages on your site after landing on it. A high bounce is generally considered to be a poor performance as it suggestions you are likely to have poor conversion rates as none of your users are staying on your site to view/purchase products and/or services. Bounce rate can is not just for your website though, it can also be used to measure your newsletter and email campaigns to work out whether your list are opening the links within your message.
Branding
The marketing practice of creating a name, logo and/or product that is identifiable to a specific company. Branding is very important in marketing, not just to make a memorable impression to the target audience but to make a business successful. Sometimes how one distinguishes themselves can be the sole difference between one company and its competitors.
Buyer Journey
The process a consumer goes through from research to purchase of a product or service. This usually consists of awareness, consideration and decision. It is an especially important framework to help improve sales, sometimes drastically.
Buyer Persona
A fictional representation of your ideal customers created from either, or a combination of, market research and real data about your customers. This is important in helping marketers define their target audience to help increase sales. A successfully crafted persona can aid the marketer in creating effective content to better target their ideal customers.
Call-to-Action
The button, text link, image or a form of web hyperlink that encourages a user to move from being a visitor to your business to become a lead or customer. Common call-to-actions include ‘Click Here to Buy’, ‘Purchase Now’ and ‘Subscribe’. An enticing offer in these messages can help increase the conversion rate of your landing page or website.
Case Study
Analysis of work carried out by a company for a client or customer, highlighting the targets, processes and results achieved. These are widely used in digital marketing for lead generation.
Competitor Research
An assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. This is to help the marketer identify opportunities and threats. Competitor research can help with determining who both your competitors and ideal customers are, identifying strengths of your own business and where improvement is required.
Conversion Path
A series of steps taken by a website visitor towards the desired end goal. With Analytics able of providing the users’ journey, a marketer can use this data to make changes to the website content with the aim of increasing the odds of converting a higher percentage of users.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of users who completed the desired action on a web page. For example, this could be completing a purchase of filling out a form. A marketer’s goal is often to increase the conversion rate of their clients’ web pages and website. This could be changing the on-page content, the call-to-actions or improving the quality of the visitors through their marketing and advertising.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The process of improving the desired actions on your web pages andwebsite. This could be accomplished by using different design techniques, the call-to-actions or improving the quality of the traffic through marketing and advertising methods. CRO is most commonly referring to websites, but it can also be applied to email marketing, social media,and other parts of your marketing.
Cost-per-Lead
The cost of your marketing to acquire a lead on average. This is a very common and often very important key performance indicator. It can be used as a pricing model where the client pays their digital marketing agency for a desired goal from consumers.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Software to help manage a company’s interaction with their current and potential clients or customers. This can include storing marketing and sales activities, keeping contact information, tracking emails, deals etc.
Demographics
Segmentation that can be according to age, gender, ethnicity, income, and education as well as other considerations. This can be used to help marketers define their strategies.
Email Marketing
Using email to promote one’s services or products with past. current and/or potential customers. Email marketing can be used to develop relationships between company and the potential consumer, as well as educating your audience on new products, services, discounts and other offers you may have. It is a form of direct marketing that can play a pivotal role for your business.
Engagement Rate
A metric used to track the user interaction on your content. A popular statistic used for social media in particular; tracking the number of likes, shares and comments are a good example.
Evergreen Content
Content that remains “fresh” forever, continuing to provide users with value regardless of when they come across it. The evergreen tree is a symbol of perpetual life and this term refers to content that can be referenced and remain of value long after it was originally published.
Google Search Console
Another free service provided by Google to help a marketer monitor and troubleshoot a site’s presence in Google’s organic results. This tool helps the marketer fix indexing issues, view traffic including keyword data, and help with mobile usability among other factors.
Inbound Marketing
A technique to draw visitors to your website or product and services, which could be via branding, search engine optimisation or social media, among other methods. The idea is to make the client as easy to find online as possible, putting them in front of their target audience by creating interest through content.
Inbound Link
A hyperlink pointing from an external website to yours or your client’s. These can be obtained naturally or via link building. This has been a big service in the digital marketing world since early this millennium as they have been important to rank websites and individual pages higher in search engines, for specific search terms.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A measurable value to judge how effective a marketer is achieving key business objectives. These can be used on multiple levels to evaluate the success of targets. In digital marketing this could be the number of sales, leads or inbound links.
Keyword
These refer to the search terms that your website and web pages appears for in search engines. In link building they are often used as anchor text, as this has been important in helping to rank higher in search engines such as Google since the start of the millennium.
Long-tail keywords refer to terms that are have smaller search volume but are considered less competitive to rank for. You can see which keywords and the positions your website ranks for within Google Search Console. You can see the monthly search volumes of these by using Google’s Keyword Planner.
Landing Page
The web page in which a visitor lands on when first entering the website. In digital marketing, you can send users to specific landing pages by ranking them in Google Organic results, or other methods such as a newsletter or referral link. In these situations, the landing page often has the intention of converting the visitors in some way, such as a purchase or sign-up.
Lead
Someone who has registered interest in your product or service in some way. This could include completing a form, subscribing to a newsletter, or leaving their contact information with you. Optimising a website to increase the conversion rate to produce more leads is part of a modern-day marketer’s role.
Lead Generation
Generating leads is a crucial part of a marketer’s job for their company or client. It is the start of a potential customer’s journey.
Lead Nurturing
After a digital marketer is referred leads to the website, the next part of the process to develop those. This can be done by a series of communications, such as phone calls or emails. The intention is to qualify the lead and keep them engaged with the intention of turning them into a client down the line.
A business-oriented social network. More than 400 million registered members that is mainly used by professionalsfor several different purposes, such as recruiting business or staff.
Lifetime Value
An estimate of the net profit a future customer will provide. This is usually calculated by revenue from existing customers during a certain period of time minus the cost of marketing.
Margin
This is the profit gained from the sale of a product or service after subtracting the marketing fees to recruit them.
Market Research
Analysis to determine the viability or a new brand, service or product through research conducted directly with the target audience and potential customers. The aim is to get their opinions and feedback to garner a consensus of the overall interest. This can be conducted in-house or by a third-party company who specialises in this service.
Mobile Marketing
More searches take place on Google from smartphones than desktop computers these days and mobile marketing is a designated service to this audience. It is the practice of optimising your company or client on mobile devices with the intention of attracting potential customers.
Mobile Optimisation
Designing a website to make it work on a mobile device. With Google’s index now being mobile-first it is more important than ever for your website to be functional and attractive on a mobile device. This includes a responsive design, site speed and ranking higher in mobile web results among other metrics.
Niche Business
A specific segment of a market in which a specialised product or service can be sold. The benefits of discovering one of these is reduced competition, establish a stronghold and the ability to provide expertise before the market becomes more popular.
No-Follow Link
A hyperlink from a website not wanting to pass search engine authority to its target destination. This tag was originally created by Google to combat link spam in 2005. It tells the search engines’ crawlers not to pass credit onto the hyperlink in question, thus having no significance on that page in the organic results.
On-Page Optimisation
Refers to all actions taken to improve the performance of a webpage or website in the organic search results. This can include changing the content on the page, the HTML, and tags. Numerous tests and edits can be made to improve performance, such as structural text elements, graphics, videos, internal linking, URL structure and file sizes among several other factors.
Off-Page Optimisation
The process of obtaining incoming hyperlinks and other factors to impact how a webpage or website performs in organic search engine results.
Page View
The loading of a single web page by a user. The data collected helps marketers analyse their business’ performance to help determine a strategy to improve performance.
Public Relations (PR)
The practice of intentionally managing the spread of information from a company to the public. This is often done to gain exposure in front of their target audience to increase public interest. The aim is to create or obtain free coverage for the client to help increase branding and/or sales, rather than directly paying for marketing or advertising.
Qualified Lead
Someone who has opted to receive communication from your business, showing keen interest in your product or service.
Return on Investment (ROI)
A performance metric used to evaluate the profit or loss from marketing spend. The aim is to directly measure the amount of return in relation to the cost of investment. The calculation of the return on investment is the investment divided by the cost of the investment and is usually expressed as a percentage or ratio.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The practice of improving a webpage or website in organic search engine results. This can be done in many ways, with the more common being on-page optimisation and link building. In all there are numerous components that make up the overall practice, both on-page and off. It has become a huge industry within digital marketing this millennium, worth millions.
Top of the Funnel
The first stage of the buying process. Imagine a funnel, where the wider part is the top and the spout is at the bottom. At this stage, the user entering the funnel may only be looking for more information at this point.
Unique Selling Point
The factor that makes your product or service stand out from your competitors. This could be the quality, experience, or unique features for example.
Unique Visitor
This is a user who visits a website for the first time within the period of the cookies time. A user who visits a webpage on 10 occasions is classed as having been one Unique Visitors but 10 site visits.
User Experience (UX)
The experience a user has with a specific website or business. This can be from discovering the brand all the way through to purchase.
Whitepaper
Content that is aimed at educating the audience and potential audience by providing in-depth and valuable information, analysis and/or research about the topic in question, on which the company has expertise in.
Word-of-Mouth
Essentially free advertising provided by consumers to potential customers, often as a result of having an excellent experience with the company or product.