I’ve decided to write a blog with all the online marketing terms we use on a very frequent basis. Some tend to put a lot of fear into people’s minds, purely because they have no idea what we are talking about.
Hopefully, this will help…
Marketing Terms to Improve Your Marketing Vocab
1. Analytics
This is often referred to as the “eyes” of inbound marketing and is the communication and the discovery of patterns in data. It looks for the data of one’s initiatives (your website visitor reports, PPC, social…etc.), developing actionable insights and analyzing trends to make better marketing decisions.
2. B2B (Business-to-Business)
Companies that sell to other businesses. Oracle and Google are B2B companies.
3. B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
Companies that sell to consumers. Apple, Amazon and Nike are B2C companies.
4. Blogging
Blogging is the main component of inbound marketing, as this helps increase traffic, lead generation and thought leadership.
A blog is usually maintained on a regular basis to keep the website active and up to date.
It can include regular entries of descriptions of events, or any other material; like videos or pics.
5. Business Blogging
Business blogging is just the same as regular blogging, with an added layer of marketing strategy. Business blogging helps to push traffic towards the website, convert this traffic into leads, establish authority and then drive long-term results.
When creating blogs for a business, marketers need to take into account that posts need to be optimized with keywords aimed at their target market. Keywords that their audience is searching for and packed with helpful material to keep the readers interested.
Ideally, the blogs should have a downloadable offer or an opt-in button.
6. Bounce Rate
Email bounce rate: This is the rate at which an email is unable to be delivered to a recipient’s inbox. When you have a high bounce rate, it generally means your lists are out of date and include a lot of invalid email addresses.
Before taking an email off your list, it’s important to distinguish between soft and had bounces, as not all bounces are bad.
Website bounce rate: This is the percentage of people that will land on a page on your website, then leave without navigating to any other pages or clicking on anything else. If there’s a high bounce rate, no one is staying on your site long enough to read any of your content, therefore leading to poor conversion rates.
7. Call-to-Action (CTA)
A call-to-action is a button, a text link or an image that encourages a visitor on your website to visit a landing page and become a lead. Perfect examples are: “Download the Free eBook Today” or “Subscribe Now”.
8. Click through Rate (CTR)
Click through Rate is the total number of clicks your CTA or your page receives, divided by the number of opportunities people had to click, whether it be emails sent or page views etc...
9. Content
Content is information that is used to make a website. It’s the “glue” that holds the website together, keeping it “sticky” makes visitors keep wanting to return.
Content plays a huge role in a successful marketing strategy.
10. Content Management System (CMS)
CMS is a web application that has been designed to make it simple for non-technical users to create, edit, and manage their website.
11. Content Optimization System (COS)
COS is just the same as a CMS, the difference is that a COS is optimized to deliver the most personalized web experience possible.
12. Context
You’ll always hear the saying – Content is King!
Well, if that’s the case, then context is definitely Queen!
While delivering quality content is super important, ensuring that the content is customized for the right audience, could possibly be more important. Therefore, it is so important to deliver content that is contextually relevant.
13. Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate is the percentage of people who have completed the desired action on a web page. This would be by filling out a form or opting in. Web pages with a high conversion rate, mean they are performing quite well…and those with low conversion rates, are not performing that well.
14. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
CRO is to improve key optimization principles, design techniques and testing. This involves creating an experience for visitors that will convert them to customers.
CRO is used on a web page or landing page optimization, but it’s also used with social media, other parts of marketing, and CTAs.
15. Cost-per-Lead (CPL)
Cost-per-Lead is what it costs you to acquire a lead.
16. Crowdsourced Content
Creating your own content is extremely time consuming, and often we don’t have the time to sit and focus on creating our own content – this is where crowdsourcing comes in. Hiring a freelancer, like myself (STM Writing Solutions & Social Media Management) to create the content for you. This way you can published a lot quicker.
It’s really awesome if you also credit your contributors, that way it’s a win-win situation for all involved.
17. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM is a set of software programs that allow companies to keep track of what they do with their existing potential customers.
The basic level is allowing you to keep track of the contact information.
They also allow you to track phone calls, emails, send personalized emails, schedule appointments…and log every instance of customer service and support.
Some CRM software will also incorporate feeds from social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter…and a few others.
18. eBook
eBooks are often used by marketers to generate leads. They are a lot longer than blogs and will go into a lot more detail.
Here’s an awesome book on how to write an ebook.
19. Email
Email is the core component of marketing, due to its direct connection to a contact’s inbox. Do not abuse the email relationship between yourself and the contact. The contact can easily click that “unsubscribe” button!
20. Engagement Rate
This describes the amount of interaction content receives – i.e. Comments, shares and likes etc…
The more you have, the more this tells you that your messages are resonating with your fans.
21. Facebook
By now you must be extremely familiar with Facebook. It’s a social network platform that has become a lot more than just a platform to view your friend’s pics etc…not only can you publish content and gain followers, you can use Facebook advertising, with its insane targeting options to attract new contacts, using your awesome content to draw them to your website to convert on your landing pages.
22. Google+
Otherwise known, as Google Plus is also a social network, allowing you to join and create circles, where you can mix and match friends, family members, colleagues and fellow industry members. While you can use it in just the same way as other platforms, it also provides tremendous SEO value, due to the importance of social sharing in search engine algorithms.
23. Hashtag
Hashtags are a way of interacting with each other on social media and to create conversations about a particular piece of content.
Hashtags tie public conversations together on various platforms, into a single stream that users can find by searching for a specific hashtag or clicking on one.
A hashtag is really just a keyword phrase that is spelled out with any spaces with # in front of it.
24. HTML
HTML is short for Hypertext Markup Language. It’s a language used to write webpages and provides the basic structure of the site. It is then modified and enhanced by other technologies like JavaScript and CSS.
25. Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing is the marketing activities that draw visitors in, rather than having marketers go out to find prospects. It’s about making a company easy to find online. This can be done by creating helpful and interesting content that will draw customers to your website.
You can find out more about inbound marketing here.
26. Inbound Link
This is a link that comes from another site to your own website.
Websites that receive a lot of inbound links can often rank higher in search engines.
You can find out more about inbound links here.
27. Infographic
An infographic is very popular amongst digital marketers. It’s a visual piece showing complex concepts in a simple way.
28. Instagram
I’m sure you are well aware of Instagram and how much it has grown into one of the top social network platforms. Many companies are taking full advantage of the platform by posting industry related images that their customers and followers will enjoy seeing.
29. JavaScript
This sounds like it should be some kind of espresso…lol
But no, JavaScript happens to be a programming language allowing web developers to design interactive sites.
JavaScript uses come in the form of pop-ups, security password creation, interactive games and more…
It’s also used to create server-based applications and build mobile apps.
30. Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
KPI is a type of performance measurement that marketers will look at to track any progress towards their marketing goals…i.e. Homepage views, and blog traffic sources.
Companies use it to evaluate the success of an employee or a specific activity.
31. Keyword
Keywords can be one keyword or a keyword phrase. A keyword plays a vital role within your blog or webpage and is the topic that webpages will get indexed for in search results by all the search engines.
Picking the right keywords comes in two parts:
You’ll want to make sure that the keyword you want to use has a high search volume.
Then you’ll want to make sure it’s right for your target audience.
32. Landing Page
A landing page is a page that you’ll land on that that is used for a marketing offer and contains a form used for lead generation. It’s used to capture the visitor’s information in exchange for an offer, which is often an ebook or a webinar.
33. Lead
A lead is someone that has shown interest in a service or product, by sharing their contact information, filling out a form or subscribing to a blog.
Generating leads is a critical part to becoming a customer.
34. Linkedin
I’m sure you’ve heard of Linkedin. It’s a business orientated social networking site. It was launched in 2003, and with more than 414 million members, it’s predominantly used for professional networking. It’s one platform that has helped many find work.
35. Long-Tail Keyword
This is a very target search phrase containing three or more words. A head term, which is more generic, then one or two additional words, refining the search term.
They are more specific, meaning that visitors landing on your page from a long-tail search are more qualified, therefore more likely to convert.
36. News Feed
This is an online feed that is full of news sources. For example: Facebook – the news feed is your homepage. Here you’ll find all the recent updates from all your friends and family.
37. No-Follow Link
A no-follow link is used when a website does not want to pass search engine authority to another webpage. It will tell the search engine crawlers to not pass credit or follow to linked websites, to avoid any association with spammy content, or anything that may violate a webmaster’s guidelines.
38. Pay-per-Click (PPC)
This is the amount of money spent to get an advertisement online clicked. Advertisers may pay a publisher like a search engine, a website or a social media site a certain amount of money every time their ad is clicked.
In a search engine, a PPC ad will show the advertisement when users search for keywords that match the advertiser’s keywords.
PPC is used so that the advertiser is able to push traffic to their website and to also measure the cost effectiveness and profitability of paid advertising campaigns.
PPC ads come in two forms those being Flat Rate and Bid-Based.
Flat Rate is where the advertiser and publisher will agree on a set amount of money that is to be paid for every click.
Bid-Based is where the advertiser will need to compete with other advertisers in a network.
Advertisers will set a maximum amount they are willing to spend for a certain ad spot. Once the budget has run out the ad will stop showing on a given website.
If you are still not sure about PPC, click here to learn more.
39. Pinterest
This is a visual social media platform that is used mainly by e-commerce marketers. Pinterest is used by consumers and businesses to post images they like and other users are able to repin the content, which means they share it.
40. Qualified Lead
A qualified lead is a contact that has chosen to receive communication from a company and has thus become educated about the service and product and wish to learn more.
There are MQL leads for marketing and SQL leads for sales. Have a chat with your sales team so they know the types of leads you will handover.
41. QR Code
A Quick Response code or a QR code is a precise matrix barcode that is readable by camera phones and QR readers. The code is made up from black modules that are presented in a square pattern on a white background. The information that the QR code may hold can be a URL, text or other data.
42. Return to Investment (ROI)
This is a type of performance measure that is used to evaluate the efficiency and profitability of an investment or can be used to compare multiple investments.
The ROI formula is the Gain from Investment minus the Cost of Investment, divided by the Cost of Investment.
The result will be shown as a percentage or a ratio. If the result is negative then the company is losing money.
43. Responsive Design
This is where a website is developed to adapt to how it is being viewing. The site will recognize the device that is being used to view the site and will automatically create a page that is responsive to the device. Websites will then always be optimized for various screen sizes.
44. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the process of boosting where a webpage will appear in search results. A webpage can rank higher in a search engine by adjusting its on-page SEO elements and influencing the off-page SEO.
Search engines will look for tags, image tags, keywords, internal link structure and inbound links as well as the design and structure of the site, the behaviors of visitors and other external, off-site factors to know where the website should be ranked in a search engine’s results.
45. Sender Score
This is an email marketing term that refers to a reputation rating from 0-100 for every outgoing mail server IP address. Your sender score is checked by your mail server, which then decides what to do with your emails.
46. Small to Medium Business (SMB)
A company that has between 10 and 500 employees.
47. Snapchat
This is a social app, where users can send and receive time-sensitive photos and videos called snaps. Once the time expires, these are hidden from the recipients.
Snaps can include text and drawings and users control who to send them to. As a business, you might be wondering how to use Snapchat, so take a look here.
48. Social Media
Social media is media that is designed to spread through social interaction and is created through the use of highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media networks include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and many others. Social media can be used for personal use or for business use. It forms a core element of inbound as marketers have access to other channels so that they are able to spread reach, increase growth and achieve business goal.
If you need help getting your social media off the ground or need help to create engaging posts for your business, then take a look at STM Writing Solutions and Social Media Management.
49. Social Proof
This is a psychological occurrence where people look for direction from others in terms of how they are supposed to act or think to a certain situation.
Social proof in social media is identified by the number of interactions a piece of content receives or the number of followers the page has.
The idea here, is that if others are sharing a piece of content or are following someone then it must be good and others will do it to.
50. Top of the Funnel
This is the first stage of the buying process. At this stage leads are only identifying a problem they have and are looking for information about it.
An inbound marketer will then want to create content that is helpful and aids these leads in knowing the problem and providing the steps towards a solution.
51. Twitter
Twitter is a social media platform, where users can create tweets, which are posts of 140 characters or less. Tweets are made public and users can follow each other.
52. Unique Visitor
This is a person that visits a website more than once in a certain period of time. This is not the same as overall site visits and unique visitors is used to track traffic to the website.
53. URL
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is the address of a piece of information that can be found on the web like a page, a document or an image.
URL’s play a part in on-site SEO, as search engines will look for included text when looking for keywords.
54. User Experience
The overall experience of a customer has with a business. The experience will start from the discovery and awareness of the brand to their interaction, use, purchase and advocacy of the brand.
55. User Interface
An interface where users can control a software application or hardware device. A user interface should be user-friendly, easy to navigate and intuitive.
56. Viral Content
This is where a piece of content has become highly popular across the web through sharing.
57. Website
A website is a set of interconnected webpages located on the same server that are prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group or organization.
A website should be structured by an inbound marketer so that it can be used to attract relevant website visitors, that can be converted to leads, which can then be converted to customers.
58. Workflow
This is another way to describe a lead nurturing campaign. Workflow is a set of triggers and events that move a lead through the nurturing process. Workflow can also be used for other purposes like adjusting contact properties on a lead record based on certain conditions or adding a contact record to a certain list for instance.
59. XML Sitemap
This is a file of code that is on your web server, which lists all the relevant URLs that are present in the structure of your site. This map comes in handy whenever, you need to make changes to your site. It can also help search engine crawlers determine the structure of the site, so they are able to crawl smarter and more efficiently.
60. YouTube
This is a video sharing website, where users can upload, share and watch videos. Users can then interact by liking the video or commenting on it.