There are vast digital marketing terms to recognize, but these are the ones that you should begin to comprehend.
Here you have it, your ultimate list of must-know digital marketing terms. Whether you’re new to online marketing or just need to brush-up on few terminologies, our post will share the most significant marketing terms.
If you are a beginner to the digital marketing industry you might find that the industry jargon (terminology) some digital marketers use can be puzzling, and at times you might not know what they are chatting about.
This is why, we put this article together for your best understanding. There are handfuls of digital marketing terms to learn, but these are the ones that you should begin to understand with.
There will be 4 digital marketing categories: General, Inbound, Social Media And Email.
General Marketing Terms – Essential Digital Marketing Terms
These terms are identified as marketing mainstays. No matter your working field, you’ll want to know these marketing terms and know them well. Be it for client’s presentations or simply considerate a colleague, these definitions will help you constructing your repertoire of marketing terminology so you’ll be insightful to talk shop with the best of them.
A/B Testing (or Split Testing)
A/B testing is used in email subject lines, Google Adwords, e-newsletters , social ads, calls-to-action, and landing page copy. A/B testing, also known as split testing, is when two versions of a landing page (promotional pages) are shown to visitors to see which one performs better.
The diversity between them can be as minor as a button color or page layout change, graphics change or as major as a change in copy. The chief reason to conduct A/B testing is to know which version—of a landing page, CTA, etc.—has the wider chance of giving you the results you’re looking for.
Analytics
Analytics data is used for websites, as well as in social media and email campaigns. When reviewing or tracking performance of any online campaign, analytics provide meaningful data. Website analytics provides you with data such as website visitors, time on site, pages viewed, demographics, and much more.
B2B (Business-to-Business)
The term B2B is pretty straightforward and describes a business conducted when selling a product or service between two businesses.
B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
A business that sells / interacts directly to consumers is described as B2C. They control their product from start to finish, from development to the final sale. When you head out for a new pair of shoes / sun glasses / earrings at popular store, they’re the ideal example of a B2C business.
Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization is everything you can do to perk up your organic search rankings that do not involve your actual website. This includes anything you can do to create high-quality backlinks and further drive your exposure.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization involves actions you take on your website (webpages) to improve your organic search engine rankings and can include improving header tags, meta tags, internal linking, image optimisation or optimizing your website content.
Organic Traffic
This is the traffic your site receives from unpaid search results, hence it is considered organic / natural. This is one of the main goals of SEO and content marketing because it provides an influential platform for long-term growth.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the number of people that click on a link out of the total number of people who saw the email, social ad, or call-to-action (CTA) on a website page. For example: Let’s say that we have a CTA on a blog post, and that CTA was seen by 900 unique people but only 45 people clicked on the CTA. This means that the click-through rate is 5%.
Conversion Path
A conversion path is a series of events that are set up to move website or social visitors down a path that converts them into a lead. A conversion path on a website consists of a call-to-action > landing page with a sign-up form > thank-you page > thank-you email.
In a conversion path something is promised to the visitor in return for their contact information. This could be an ebook, consultation, white paper, etc. The lead magnet needs to be something that potential leads find valuable enough to provide you with their contact information.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of people who take the desired action on your website or social media ads. A conversion rate doesn’t just mean converting non-customers into customers.
It could also include converting a website visitor into a lead or a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) into a sales-qualified lead (SQL). For example: You have a Facebook ad running for an upcoming webinar and 10,000 people see that ad but only 1,300 signed up for the webinar. The ad resulted in a conversion rate of 13%.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer acquisition cost is the amount of money it takes to convert one person into a customer. This figure focuses mainly on marketing costs. When this numerical value is determined, companies can predict how much they will need to spend in order to generate a desired number of customers.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Customer lifetime value is a prediction of how much revenue a customer will bring during their lifetime as your customer. This measure is used to determine how much a company should or could spend in order to acquire a new customer.
Churn Rate
Your churn rate is the amounts of customers you have lost during a particular time period. If you start the month of April with 100 clients and end with 95, your churn rate would be 5%. This is a very essential figure for renewal-based (membership) businesses.
Closed-Loop Marketing
Closed-loop marketing takes place when your sales team is reporting to the marketing team about what happens to the leads they’ve received. Marketing is then able to determine which of their leads sources should be focused on based on their capability to be converted by the sales team.
27 Must-Know Inbound Marketing Terms
These days a big part of digital marketing focuses on inbound marketing (in-house SEO service). Inbound marketing strategies involve techniques that bring the consumer to you, rather than sending out a sales team to find them.
There are a countless of must-know terms and definitions that relate to this expansive and swiftly growing field. Not sure what’s marketing is? Don’t know where you’ll find your BOFU? Keep reading to get a better proposal of inbound marketing buzzwords.
Automation
Marketing automation is software, such as Hubspot, used by marketing departments and businesses to automate repetitive tasks. Automation is used in conjunction with lead nurturing. Depending on user behavior they are automatically sent different information based on what they are interested in.
Backlink
This is a link that directs users from another website to your page. Collecting quality backlinks is one of the facets of search engine optimization (SEO), as they are one of the determining factors of a page’s relevancy, popularity, and/or importance.
Blogging
Blogging is writing or sharing content on a website on a regular basis. An individual or a business can own a blog. Blogging is comprised of words, videos, images, or a combination of any or all of these media forms. Business blogging is done with the intention of attracting leads and providing current clients or customers with valuable content to keep them as clients.
BOFU
BOFU stands for bottom of the funnel and is the last stage in the buyer’s journey (checkout), the decision stage. When a lead arrives at the decision stage, they are ready for your sales team (connection to conversion). A sales offer such as a demo or a strategy session is a great offer for a lead at this time.
Bounce Rate
A bounce rate is when a visitor lands on your website and instantly clicks the back button or leaves your website. They are “bouncing” off your website. (Lower the bounce rate is better for website)
Buyer’s Journey
The buyer’s journey is the process a lead goes through in order to go from responsiveness to decision. A new lead has to pass through three stages—Awareness, Consideration, and Decision—in order to be ready to be sold.
Call-to-Action (CTA)
A call-to-action is a coaching for website visitors to take action on a message. The action could be to click a link, fill out a form, subscribe to an e-newsletter, or make a phone call. Calls-to-action can be presented as just text or an eye-catching image.
Content
Content is any form of published material on the internet (website or blog or new site). Inbound marketers often counsel publishing quality content (engaging, informative, relevant) in order to help build brand awareness, establish expertise and authority, and drive natural traffic to your website.
Content Offer (or Lead Magnet)
A content offer is what you provide in exchange for information from your website visitors in order to turn them into a lead. A content offer can be an e-book, guide, white paper, or webinar that is given to a visitor after they provide you with some details, such as name, email, and business name.
Context
Not only do you have to provide brilliant content for your audience, you need that content to be contextually relevant, useful and interactive. By knowing your target audience, their behavior, preferences, and goals, you can provide content that meets their needs and taste.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attracts visitors, convert leads, and close customers. We use HubSpot not only for ourselves but also for our clients / customers and teammates.
Keyword
Keyword is one word or several words that people use when searching for a particular subject online on internet. Keywords are also the phrases / words targeted when writing online content for website or blog or article. Blog posts and pages on a website have a keyword focus so it’s SEO optimized.
Landing Page
A landing page is usually comprised of copy, images, and a form. A landing page is used to convince website visitors to sign up to receive a content offer or purchase a product. Landing pages can be long or short, and the content is reliant on the action you want your visitors to take.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process for acquiring new leads. Online lead generation is done by providing priceless content to website visitors in exchange for their contact information.
Lead Nurturing
When a visitor turns into a lead on your website, they are most likely not ready to buy. Lead nurturing is providing those primary leads with priceless information about your industry or product until they are ready to purchase. By caring for your leads, you develop the relationship and show that you care.
Link Building
Link building is the act of increasing the number outside sites linking back to yours (backlinks). This process naturally involves creating high-quality content (interesting, engaging, informative) that others want to share.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQLs)
Marketing qualified leads are usually prospects that have expressed some interest in your company by engaging with your content and then provided recognition details that allow you to convert them into a known lead.
MOFU
MOFU stands for middle of the funnel and is the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey. A middle-of-the-funnel lead has moved from consciousness to consideration and is ready to receive information about your product or service. A branded offer is given to supply the lead with more information and address any pushback.
Page Performance
Page recital takes into account on-page SEO, website traffic, CTA conversion rate, and contacts acquired.
Page Rank
Your page rank is how reliable your particular site is as determined by Google’s algorithm. Sites are ranked on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning you don’t rank in their search engine (not good) and 10 being given to fewer than 150 sites (most of them being Google-, Apple-, or Adobe-owned).
Persona (or Ideal Buyer)
In marketing, a persona is the great representation of whom you want to purchase your product or service. An ideal buyer or buyer persona is an entire breakdown of behaviors, pain points, goals, wishes, dreams, demographics, and professional careers.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQLs)
A sales qualified lead is a marketing qualified lead that is accepted by the sales team and warrants a sales team member reaching out. An SQL is standing by to be sold and is the most likely to purchase the company’s product or service.
SEO (or Search Engine Optimization)
Search engine optimizing a webpage or website means properly optimizing on-page and off-page SEO factors in order to improve the page’s ranking in search results.
Smarketing
Smarketing is aligning your sales and marketing teams to work toward a widespread goal of growing business revenue. Find out how to get your sales and marketing teams working together.
Thank-You Page
A thank-you page is how you broadcast / deliver the content offer after someone fills out a form on a landing page. You are thanking the visitor for filling out the form and providing them with the content you promised with thanking message.
TOFU
TOFU stands for top of the funnel and is the beginning of the buyer’s journey. The information your website provides to new leads are answers to services or product questions, brand positioning, and general sales questions.
Workflow (or Drip Campaign)
A workflow is a series of events that slowly or quickly move a lead through a company’s lead nurturing process. A workflow could be a set number of routine emails that are sent to prospects that take different actions, such as viewing a pricing page or scheduling a free consultation.
15 Super Important Social Media Marketing Terms
Social media is one of the best ways to market your business, but do you know what all of these abbreviations stand for: CPI, CPM, CPC, PCP? The acronyms can all get a bit confusing, but not to worry, I’ll break down these and other relevant social media marketing terms for you.
Affinities
Affinities are the measured interests of an audience. With the help of social media monitoring tools, they give marketers an insight into the thoughts, feelings, and preferences of their customers.
Clickbait
Clickbait is the type of content that hooks people with a greatly promising Headline that provides very little actual information, getting them to click through to their content or website. Clickbait is more and more frowned upon in the digital marketing world and sites like Facebook are changing to their algorithms in order to deter this type of posting.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of people who have completed the desired action (clicked through to a site, filled out a form, etc.) divided by the total number of people to whom the action was marketed.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC or Pay-Per-Click or PPC)
Cost-per-click is an amount an advertiser pays every time someone clicks on their Banner Ads, Social Ads / Adverting Ads. It doesn’t matter how many people see it, the advertiser will only be charged for actual click throughs in billing cycle.
Cost-Per-Impression (CPI or Cost-Per-Thousand or CPM)
Cost-per-impression is an amount an advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions on their Social Ads / Banner Ads.
Crowd-sourcing
Crowdsourcing is the process of getting work, funding, or ideas from a crowd of people online. A great example of crowd-sourcing is Wikipedia.
In digital media, Crowd-sourcing is a vast way to take the pulse of your followers. For example, you can poll them on Facebook and/or Twitter to learn what type of content they want, which provides ideas for your website.
Engagement Rate
This is one of the chief social media related digital marketing terms in this list. Engagement is the clearest sign of people’s interest in your content. Your engagement is likely more easily understood as the number of likes, comments, and shares (interactions) it receives versus the number of people who saw it (impressions).
Impressions
Impressions are the number / counts of times your content is displayed on certain platforms. For example: In Facebook, impressions are the number of times someone sees your social update in their newsfeed. Impressions are a key metric for measuring campaign success in digital marketing campaigns.
Influencer
The digital marketing term “influencer” is just what it sounds like, a person who has the power of influence over their social media audience. These are people who you want sharing your content and interacting with your brand.
Real-Time Digital Marketing
Social media allows brands to market in real time in response to breaking news or a world event. The aptitude to publish content as these events unfold (real time) gives marketers an occasion never before seen in the marketing world.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a marketing strategy that targets people who have visited your website (using third party tools or using google’s remarketing ads). You can reach out and re-connect to previous visitors through ads on Google, ads on Facebook, as they browse the web, or on mobile platforms.
Social Listening
Social listening is a brand monitoring digital marketing term that helps businesses understands what’s being said about its services / products in order to meet customers’ issues head on. Salespeople can also use social listening to catalog the needs of their prospects and deliver help in order to establish them as a trusted resource (see Social Selling).
Social Selling
Social selling refers to a brand’s ability to engage potential customers on social media by answering questions / query / claim / clarification etc , providing informative content, and resolving other issues, and in turn helping to move them along the sales funnel. Social selling is usually done on a one-on-one, salesperson-to-prospect basis over internet.
Targeting
Targeting is defining whom you’re marketing to, typically through social media platforms built-in targeting tools. Both Facebook and LinkedIn offer very detailed targeting tools that allow you to filter through their users to find the exact type of person you want for marketing purposes.
(You can choose to show your Facebook ADs to divorced women over 50 who like skydiving and action movies, if that is your ideal buyer!)
Viral
Going viral refers to a piece of content that is shared over and over again (huge appreciate over platforms) because of its perceived informational or entertainment value. If your content (picture, video, article, etc.) goes viral it will be seen by far more people and have a far superior impact on brand awareness, advertisement, conversions, etc.
19 Email Marketing Terms – Can’t-Live-Without
Email marketing is a tried-and-true digital marketing strategy that many brands utilize, so it’s momentous you understand the lingo. With all the diverse rates and the opting in and out, email marketing has its fair share of technical terms. Read on the break down terms.
Blacklist
A blacklist is as scary as it sounds. If a company sends a lot of unsolicited emails (SPAM), the IP that the company is sending from will be blacklisted over internet (block by region or entire website). Being blacklisted – means that you can no longer send out blanket emails to unknown persons. Consider as sin and you must avoid in digital marketing.
Clicks Per Delivered (CPD)
When reporting on your email success, this digital marketing term is chief to understand. It’s merely the number of clicks (on your link) divided by the number of emails effectively delivered to their intended destination (inbox). The result is your CPD or clicks-per-delivered rate.
Clicks Per Open (CPO)
The number of clicks (on your email’s link) divided by the number of opened emails will give you your CPO or clicks-per-open rate.
Double Opt-in
A double opt-in is when a subscriber has to substantiate their email address after entering their information to subscribe to an email list. Typically, once website visitors fill outs a form to subscribe to an email list they instantly receive an email to confirm their information.
Email Filters
Email filtering is a procedure that organizes emails based on a word or phrase in the “from,” “subject,” and body copy sections of an email. Most email programs occupy filters in an effort to keep the user’s inbox free of spam.
Email Whitelist
Just as an IP/email address that has been blacklisted won’t be allowed through most spam filters, a whitelisted address has been given the golden ticket. Whitelisted email/IP addresses are typically accepted and allowed into most inboxes.
Hard Bounce
Email marketers will previously be well aware of this marketing term. A hard bounce is when an email straight away “bounces” back because the email doesn’t exist, is misspelled, or is blocked. Hard bounces are permanent and they will never be delivered.
House List (Retention List)
An opt-in list that is self-constructed over time. You naturally provide a piece of costly content for a person’s email address (and more). You can then market to, cross sell, upsell, and build a relationship with customers over time. Your list is a very precious asset!
HTML Email
Sometimes digital marketing terms help us appreciate what they mean, sometimes they don’t. If you know what HTML means, this is helpful, but let’s takes a deeper look.
An HTML email contains custom fonts, graphics, images, links, background colors and, at times, can look like a page on a website. They are fully designed emails with their own code and styling.
List Segmenting
If you had diverse types of clients and customers in different phases of their buying cycle would you send them the same email? The answer is No. With list segmentation companies segment their leads and current clients into lists that match their current buying cycle or what type of client they are. These different lists receive unlike information/content that they care about the most.
Open Rate
Open rate is the percentage of emails Opened from the total that were sent. Similar to CTR, open rate takes into account all emails that were sent and divides that total by the number of Emails that were opened. For example: If we sent an email to 1,000 email subscribers but only 250 people opened that email, the open rate would be 25%.
Opt-in (or Subscribe)
An opt-in is when a person provides their Email Address to a company or individual because they are choosing to receive emails from that company or individual.
Opt-out (or Unsubscribe)
One of the digital marketing terms that email marketers need to pay attention to, an opt-out is when a person subscribed to an email list no longer wants to receive email communication from a specific company or individual, so they remove their email address from the list.
Personalization
When you receive an email from a company that says, “Hi Harry,” that’s personalization. Personalization means adding some in sequence to your email that is specific to the person you are sending it to.
This personal touch can be added in the subject line or in the body of the email. Personalization is used to get subscribers to perceive a company’s email in the hopes that they are more probable to open it and act on it.
Plain-Text Email
Some digital marketing terms need modest explanation. A plain-text email is just what it sounds like, an email that doesn’t contain any images, rich formatting, or links. Individuals or companies can use plain text emails when they want to send an email that only focuses on the copy of the email.
In most email software, plain-text emails are robotically generated whenever an HTML email campaign is created. This is for the subscribers who have noted that they only crave to receive plain-text emails.
Single Opt-In
A single opt-in is when a subscriber doesn’t have to substantiate their email address or information twice. Once they enter they enter their contact information on a form they are instantly signed up to the email list as a subscriber.
Soft Bounce
A soft bounce is when an email “bounces” back because of a problem with the server or other momentary issue. A soft bounce has the occasion to reach its intended recipient if tried again and is not a permanent issue.
Spam E-Mail
One of the better known digital marketing terms. Nobody likes receiving Spam. Spam is email we didn’t sign up to get. It’s unsolicited email that a company sends you because, most likely, they purchased an email list and you happen to be on that list.
Subject Line
An email subject line is the line of text that is shown in a subscriber’s email inbox before they even open the email. Subject lines are used to furnish the subscriber a reason to open your email. They are habitually short, descriptive, and can contain personalization tokens such as the subscriber’s name or something specific to them.
Digital Marketing Terms & Definitions Done!
Congratulations, you made it through this very wide-ranging list of the most precious marketing terms and their definitions. You’ve reinforced your marketing vocabulary and given yourself the knowledge to better understand the digital marketing landscape.