Conversing with people from the digital marketing industry can sometimes leave you feeling lost, especially with all the marketing jargon being casually thrown in conversations.
Some words and acronyms, like SEO (search engine optimization) or ROI (return on investment), will sound like a foreign language. Catching up on these marketing terms can get a little intimidating or daunting. We want to make it as easy as possible for not only our clients, but also those looking to grow their business through digital marketing.
That’s why we’ve listed 40 of the basic digital marketing terms you should know.
1. KPI – Key Performance Indicator
Many businesses and companies use this to measure the success of their marketing campaigns, efforts, and goals, hence the “performance indicator” reference. This can be any type of analytic, for example, click through rate, engagement rate, or maybe even bounce rate.
2. CPA – Cost Per Acquisition
It’s a metric used to determine how much acquiring one customer costs. This can be calculated by dividing the total cost of your campaign by the number of conversions. Doing this will allow you to see how much you’re spending per conversion. If you’re paying too much, this is a sign that you will need to change something from your marketing campaign.
3. Lookalike Audiences
This technique is often used by businesses to target users that are similar to existing ones they already have. You can do this by uploading your email list to your Facebook ad campaign. They will use these emails to find and target other similar users. The options on Facebook are customizable, so you can choose to not include your current customers in your ad campaign. Lookalike audiences are a great way to reach more customers that are “alike” to your current ones. You’ll end up gaining brand recognition and more leads.
4. A/B Split Testing
This is an advertising strategy that requires you to run 2-3 similar ads at the same time to compare which one works best. You can apply subtle changes, like changing the photo or the copy. Applying this strategy will help you get buyer information, and at the same time learn how to better target your market.
5. CPI – Cost Per Impression
This is the rate that businesses agree to pay per 1,000 views on a particular ad. It doesn’t measure how many users click on the ad, instead it measures the amount of times the ad appears on a website. Each display of the ad in front of a user counts as one impression.
6. Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of how a business identifies, grabs the attention, and cultivates potential customers. Furthermore, it can also be referred to as how business’ create leads for their particular product or service.
7. Lead Magnet
Lead magnets are often used by businesses to help convert leads into actual buyers. Businesses usually do some sort of giveaway, for example: free ebooks, guides, or trial runs, in exchange for a customer’s contact information, like email. Look at the example below, notice how the business is offering a free toolkit to users who give their name and email address.
8. Lead Nurturing
“Lead nurturing is the act of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel throughout the buyer’s journey.” It’s all about making an effort to communicate and listen to the buyer’s needs and wants. This can be done by sending forms or emails, retargeting them and/or following up with them. Research shows that, “companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost” (Marketo).
9. CTR – Click Through Rate
The CTR measures how many times your ad was clicked on by users. You can calculate your CTR by taking the total number of clicks received by your ad, then dividing it by the number of impressions (times it was displayed on the website). You’ll have to convert the answer to get the percentage.
10. Engagement Rate
All of the content you post or share has its own engagement rate. This is how many users are engaging with your brand. The more shares, likes, comments, views you have on your posts, the higher your engagement rate will be. This will help you find out what kind of content works best for you. The more engagement you get, the better your chances are at getting a better rank on search engines. Use this information as your motivation to publish better content.
11. Remarketing/ Retargeting
This is a form of online marketing that helps you convert website visitors into customers after they leave your website. Users who visit your website but don’t take action, are left with a ‘pixel’ to track them. This ‘pixel’ then places a cookie in the user’s browser to start showing them your ads across the internet.
12. Relevancy Score & Quality Score
Google or Facebook will score how relevant and creative your ads are compared to other ads. The higher your score, the more it will be shown across Google or Facebook. You’ll end up saving money because a high score will lower your cost-per-click. Note: not all clicks are immediately going to be conversions, so it’s better to lower the cost of your clicks.
13. B2B and B2C
B2B or business to business are businesses that market to other businesses, while B2C or business to consumer are businesses that target a specific group of consumers.
14. CTA – Call To Action
Calls to action are messages that grab the viewer’s attention to persuade them into clicking a button. This acts as an instruction to get customers to click, purchase, give their email or any other action you want them to do. These are usually used on ads, websites, or email campaigns. CTAs have to be able to get the attention of your customers, so make sure yours is big and bold!
15. Buyer Persona
Use your buyer persona as a guide to give yourself an idea of what your potential customers look like. This is an extremely important step when it comes to marketing, so don’t ever skip it.
List down your target market’s demographics like age, gender, likes and dislikes, needs and wants.
Make sure you do your research by observing your buyer persona’s behavioral pattern, buying motivation, and goals.
Aside from the basics, dig a little deeper by finding out your buyers’ job titles, interests, backgrounds, and challenges they may face.
Knowing this will help you provide value to your customers because you’ll know ahead of time what you need to offer them to capture their attention. You’ll be able to solve their problems through your products or services.
16. Pixel
This is a piece of code embedded in websites to track a user’s movement across the internet. Pixels are mainly used for retargeting or remarketing users with your ads. They can also collect information about a viewer’s behavior while on your website.
17. Thank You Page
A thank you page is often used by ecommerce businesses to track their ROI. A thank you page shows up immediately after a customer makes a purchase on your site or provides information in an opt-in-form. Having a thank you page will show you where your customers are from, thus making tracking your conversions easier. If you’re not an ecommerce business, you can add this page to your contract form.
18. SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a marketing strategy that improves your search engine rankings organically. There are many factors to consider when creating an SEO strategy, such as selecting the target keywords you want to rank for, optimizing pages and any of your content with those keywords, publishing content and obtaining backlinks.
If you need help in starting your own SEO strategy, our marketing specialists are equipped with the skills and expertise in creating content and acquiring backlinks and on-page optimization. We can help you quickly optimize your site! The only downside to SEO is that it takes a bit of time before you see results, although there are faster ways to increase your rankings, it does come with a price.
19. Business Blogging
It’s basically blogging optimized for businesses. These blogs that are often posted by marketing professionals are keyword optimized. The articles provide useful marketing information and professional insights. Some of the marketing blogs offer collateral such as, downloadable ebooks, case studies, checklists and templates.
20. PPC – Pay-Per-Click
Pay-per-click are paid ads you often see on Google. It’s faster compared to SEO, but pairing a PPC strategy with SEO will improve your marketing efforts tenfold.
PPC allows you to immediately rank as soon as you set up your ad campaign. Try to allot a budget for your PPC and watch your ad climb the search results page. Don’t worry, you won’t have to spend that much because you’ll only pay when a user clicks on your ad.
PPC still involves keyword research for your ads, it must include two short headlines, a description and a link to your website or landing page. You can also add in your business’ contact information and website links.
21. DA – Domain Authority
Domain authority is a ranking between 1-100 given to websites by the marketing analytics company, Moz. This will help describe a website’s relevance for a specific subject or industry. Getting a higher number will be great for your SEO.
22. PA – Page Authority
Your website isn’t the only thing being graded, each page on your website also has a ranking. Make sure all of your web pages are given high scores for the Page Authority, don’t just focus on one. The more pages you have with a high PA, the bigger chance you have at ranking.
23. Bounce Rate
It’s a term used in web traffic and email marketing analysis. It’s the number of visitors who view your website and then leave without looking at any other page.
Google Analytics is a tool you can use to view your website’s bounce rate. It’s better to have a lower score when it comes to your bounce rate, the more pages a user views, the more time they spend on your website. The more time users spend on your site, the better your chances are at increasing your search rankings.
24. Above The Fold
This is the portion of your website visitors first see when the page loads. Look at the picture above, the one inside the blue box is our above the fold. It’s where you should place your most important content, as well as your H1 tag (for SEO purposes) and a call to action.
Give your website visitors the chance to view you as an expert. Make sure that visitors will immediately have an idea of what your business is about just by looking at your above the fold.
25. List Segmentation
This is an email marketing technique that segments (or splits) your business’ subscriber list, based on any number of conditions; for example, industry, age, location, and new or returning customers.
This technique is great for automations, you can use the list to create automations or to funnel into automations. You can either create a new customer automation, or a returning customer automation, or even one for customers who haven’t made any purchases yet. It’s best to be strategic when you’re creating your lists.
26. Hard Bounce
An example of a hard bounce in email marketing would be emails that were not delivered because your business was blocked or you sent it to the wrong email address. Always double check the emails listed in your subscriber list, in case any of the emails were wrong.
You can avoid hard bounces by building your email list organically, avoid buying email lists. It’s better to get email addresses with users’ permission to send them emails than getting blocked or reported as spam.
27. Soft Bounce
These are emails that were not delivered because the user’s inbox was full, their email server was down at the time of delivery, or the file was too large. If a soft bounce happens frequently to a user, an email API will remove the email add from your subscriber list.
28. Open Rate and Total Opens
These are metrics shown by some email platforms. Open rate is the number of users that opened your email, while Total Opens is the amount of times your email has been opened. It’s important you note the difference between the two.
29. CTR – Click Through Rate (Email)
Your click through rate is the most important metric when it comes to email marketing. It’s the percentage of a user’s engagement with your emails. The open rate and click through rate measures how often users go to your site, or how often they click through the links in your email that redirects them to your website. Your click through rate works in tandem with your open rate because people can only click through your site if they open your email.
30. Leads
These are people or businesses who may eventually become clients. They are typically defined as potential customers.
31. Conversions
These are leads that are now customers/clients. They did your desired action while visiting your site, this can be making a purchase, signing up for a membership, downloading ebooks or newsletters.
32. Impressions
It’s the total number of times a business’s ad will appear to its target audience. It can also be the number of times a web page appears in total. For example, 1 visitor could view 3 pages and create 3 impressions. 4 visitors could view 5 pages each, which would generate 20 impressions.
33. Keyword
These are words or phrases that users use to search for relevant topics on search engines. For example, if you are a dentist, a relevant keyword could be “Fixing Cavities.”
34. Organic Traffic
It’s the traffic generated to your website via Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Safari, etc. This kind of traffic is free because you only get traffic when someone “organically” finds your website.
35. Paid Traffic
It’s the traffic generated by paid ads or keywords. Businesses will bid on keywords and make ads using those keywords to be displayed on search engines. These can show up on either the top, bottom, or right side of a search results page.
36. SEM – Search Engine Marketing
A way for businesses to get higher ranks on search engines is by bidding on search terms. The higher your ranking, the more traffic is generated.
37. SERP – Search Engine Results Page
This is the list of results provided by a search engine after a search query is made. The picture below shows the rank of each website, depending on their position on the results page.
38. Meta Title Tags
It acts as a name tag for the web page that appears on the search engine results page. This shows up when a user types in keywords related to the webpage. Adding meta title tags, meta descriptions, and meta tags will optimize your web pages and help you in your SEO efforts.
39. Meta Description
This is the few lines of text below the Meta title that appear on the search engine results page.
40. Meta Tags
These are little content descriptors that show up below the meta description to help tell search engines what a web page is about.
NOW YOU KNOW!
Have you caught up on some digital marketing terms? Adding these words to your vocabulary will be of great help to better your marketing efforts and grow your business.
Do you have any questions? Or terms you’d like to know? Contact your friends at and we’ll help you reach all of your marketing and business goals.
Leave a Reply