Marketing is one of the most crucial business activities out there. From creating a target audience to designing your branding and logo, getting ahead means starting early. That’s why it’s important to have digital marketing terms on the brain from day one.
Here are 75 marketing terms to know before creating your own business strategy.
01.
Social Media + Content Terms
THE BASICS:
Call-to-action (CTA) – A call-to-action is a text link, button, image, or some type of web link. It encourages a website visitor to visit another page. CTAs act as a piece of “bait” that entices a website visitor to eventually become a lead.
Engagement Rate – A popular social media metric used to describe the amount of interaction—Likes, shares, comments—a piece of content receives. Interactions like these tell you that your messages are resonating with your fans and followers.
Editorial Calendar – It’s like a road map for content creation. It shows you what kind of content to create, what topics to cover, and which personas to target. It also tells you how often to publish to best support your strategy. Maintaining an editorial calendar will keep you more organized and show you any gaps you may have in your content library.
Hook – Hooks may be unusual facts, fun wordplay, or overwhelming benefits used to grab your customer’s attention. They create interest in your content and product.
Reach – Reach is a social media metric that tells you how many people have seen your post. It is an important metric for understanding how large your content’s audience is. It also helps you measure your progress toward spreading brand awareness.
THE NEXT LEVEL:
Clickthrough Rate – Clickthrough rate is a common social media metric that measures engagement. It’s calculated by dividing the number of clicks a piece of content receives by its total number of impressions.
Digital Marketing – Any form of communication aiming to persuade people to purchase a product or service. It occurs through some form of digital device.
Evergreen Content – Evergreen content is content that continues to provide value to readers no matter when they stumble upon it. In other words, it can be referenced long after it was originally published. Even then, it’s still valuable to the reader.
Internal Branding – Internal branding is usually a brand book or set of guidelines. It shares a brand’s projects, values, and culture with employees to maintain consistency.
Lead/Lede – Different from a sales lead, this journalism-based term refers to the intro paragraph of your content. Whether it’s a blog or an Instagram caption, your lead gives readers a taste of what’s coming. It needs to make them want to keep going.
Retargeting – In social media advertising, retargeting is a technique for targeting ads. It’s aimed at users who have interacted with your page or website before. For example, a social media marketer may retarget a user who clicked a Facebook ad for new boots. Maybe they went to the checkout page but didn’t complete the sale.
Scarcity – Scarcity is used to develop a sense of urgency in a customer to boost sales over a certain period. This can be a decreased price for a set first number of customers or a limited-time discount or sale.
Tracking –Tracking is the ability to measure the performance of a piece of content. You may include specific purchase codes or landing pages. That way, you’ll know how many people purchased from a particular promotion.
UGC (User-generated content) – Blogs, videos, photos, quotes, etc. that are created by your consumers. Tap into your audience to support a campaign or initiative. It shows prospective buyers that you have a loyal customer base.
02.
Marketing Strategy Terms
THE BASICS:
Content Marketing – Strategy that focuses on providing useful and interesting information to customers and potential customers, rather than purely promotional content.
KPI (Key Performance Indicator) – Helps measure the progress of a campaign, launch, post, etc, as it’s happening and allows for on-the-go modification. In digital marketing, KPIs could be visits, clicks, completed forms, sales, etc.
USP (Unique Selling Proposition) – What sets your product or brand apart? It’s what makes you different, and it’s the reason customers choose you over a competitor.
THE NEXT LEVEL:
Funnel + Conversion Terms
A/B Split Testing – Writing two versions of an advertisement, headline, web page, etc., to ascertain which is the most effective.
Benefits – The benefits are the reason your customers are interested in buying from you. They extend further than features. Benefits show how the customer’s life will improve by having the product or service in it. Broken down into Emotional, Functional, and sometimes Symbolic benefits.
Bottom of the funnel – The last part of the funnel process is first! So, “bottoms up,” I suppose. The bottom of the funnel refers to a stage of the buying process. It’s when leads are just about to close as new customers. They’ve identified a problem, have shopped around for possible solutions, and are very close to buying.
Buyer Persona – A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. While it helps marketers define a target audience, it can also help sales reps qualify leads.
Closed Loop Marketing – Closed-loop marketing is the practice of executing, tracking, and reporting on marketing efforts. It shows exactly how those efforts impact bottom-line business growth. An example would be tracking a website visitor as they become a lead. You’d follow them all the way to the last touchpoint when they close as a customer.
Conversion Path – A conversion path is a series of website-based events that facilitate lead capture. In its most basic form, a conversion path starts with a call-to-action, typically a button that describes an offer. That CTA leads to a landing page with a lead capture form. From there, visitors are redirected to a thank you page where the content offer resides.
Read: 10 Marketing Analytics You Should Be Tracking
Conversion Rate – The percentage of people who completed a desired action on a single web page, such as filling out a form. Pages with high conversion rates are performing well, while pages with low conversion rates are performing poorly.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) – The process of improving your site conversion using design techniques, key optimization principles, and testing. It involves creating an experience for your website visitors that will convert them into customers. CRO is most often applied to web page or landing page optimization. But it can extend to social media, CTAs, and other parts of your marketing, too.
Cost + Tech Terms
Content Management System (CMS) – A web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to create, edit, and manage a website. It helps users with content editing and more “behind-the-scenes” work. This includes making content searchable and indexable, automatically generating navigation elements, and keeping track of users and permissions.
Content Optimization System (COS) – A COS is basically a CMS (Content Management System), but optimized to deliver customers the most personalized web experience possible.
Cost-per-Lead (CPL) – The amount it costs your marketing organization to acquire a lead. This factors heavily into CAC (customer acquisition cost), and is a metric to keep a keen eye on.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – Your total sales and marketing cost. To calculate CAC, add up the program or advertising spend + salaries + commissions + bonuses + overhead and divide by the number of new customers in that time period.
Demand Generation – The data-driven focus of marketing programs to produce awareness and interest in a company’s offerings through the use of technology.
Dynamic Content – A way to display different messaging on your website based on what you already know about the visitor. This can come from cookies, log-ins, and more. For example, you could use Smart CTAs so that first-time visitors see a personalized CTA, perhaps with a top-of-the-funnel offer. Visitors already in your database would see a different CTA, maybe one offering more information about your product or service.
Impressions – An impression is how marketers and advertisers keep track of ad performance. It counts every time an ad is “fetched.”
Marketing Approach Terms
Inbound Marketing – A marketing strategy focused on offering the best value to users interested in your brand, in a non-intrusive way. It uses SEO, social media, and content marketing to help customers find you.
Lead Nurturing – Sometimes referred to as “drip marketing,” lead nurturing means developing a series of communications, like emails or social media messages. These touchpoints qualify a customer, keep them engaged, and gradually move them down the sales funnel. Inbound marketing is all about delivering valuable content to the right audience. Lead nurturing supports this by providing relevant information to customers at each stage of the buying cycle.
Native Advertising – A type of online advertising in which the ad copy and format match a regular post on the network. This makes the ad blend into where it’s being published. The purpose is to make ads feel less like ads and more like a part of the conversation.
Outbound Marketing – Marketing strategy based on sending messages directly to the target audience, hoping to gain their attention. This is usually more direct than inbound marketing techniques. Examples include ads in newspapers, radio, or television, as well as advertising emails, banner ads, and telephone calls.
03.
Email Marketing Terms
Email Bounce Rate – The rate at which an email was unable to be delivered to a recipient’s inbox. (Not to be confused with website bounce rate, covered in the Strategic Marketing Terms section below.) A high bounce rate generally means your lists are out-of-date or purchased, or they include many invalid email addresses. Not all bounces are bad, though. It’s important to distinguish between hard and soft bounces before taking an email address off your list.
CAN-SPAM Act – U.S. law passed in 2003 that establishes the rules for commercial email and commercial messages. It includes the requirement to have an “unsubscribe” option at the bottom of every email. Learn more from the official compliance guide.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – The EU passed this anti-spam law in 2018. It requires additional regulations for marketing emails based on the receiver’s location, not the sender’s. Under these new rules, you cannot send an email without clear and informed consent from the customer. That means no more email lists bought from sketchy websites, which you shouldn’t be using anyway. See the European Commission’s data protection guidance.
Open Rate – Percentage of subscribers who have actually opened an email during an email marketing campaign.
Email Marketing Automation – A strategy that sees marketers send triggered or timed emails to mailing list subscribers based on specific conditions or timelines.
04.
Strategic Marketing Terms
THE BASICS:
Website Bounce Rate – Yes, you can measure the bounce rate on your website, too. This is the percentage of people who land on a page on your website and then leave. They don’t click on anything else or navigate to any other pages on your site.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Activities aimed at improving the positioning of a website’s search engine results ranking.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – Online marketing strategy to increase a website’s visibility on a search engine’s results page. Includes the purchase of contextual advertising (sponsored links and SEO).
Traffic – The number of users who visit a given website or page.
URL – The web address of a page on your site (example: www.blackdogllc.com/blog)
THE NEXT LEVEL:
On-Page Content + SEO Basics
Above the fold – Think about a newspaper. The most important stories sit at the top, above the fold, where you’ll see them as you walk past. That’s what makes you stop and pick it up. Same goes for websites. The “fold” is the point on your website where the page gets cut off. It’s determined by the bottom of a user’s monitor or browser window. Anything below the fold can be scrolled to, but isn’t seen right away.
ALT Text/Tag or Attribute – A description of an image in your site’s HTML. Unlike humans, search engines read only the ALT text of images, not the images themselves. Add ALT text to images whenever possible.
Headings – Text on your website that is placed inside of a heading tag, such as an H1 or H2. This text is often presented in a larger and stronger font than other text on the page. Search engines look for keywords in these headings, so it’s best to use them to your advantage.
Hero Shot – A striking photo or image of either the product or the benefit of a service. It’s usually placed prominently on a website, landing page, direct-mail piece, etc., to show people what it is they’re buying.
Keyword – Sometimes referred to as “keyword phrases,” these are words that a user enters in search. Each of your web pages should be optimized with a goal in mind. You want to draw in visitors who have searched for those specific keywords.
Read: Choosing The Right Blog Keyword
Long-Tail Keyword – An uncommon or infrequently searched keyword, typically with two or more words in the phrase. Small businesses should consider targeting long-tail keywords, as they are lower difficulty and often have more qualified searchers. Common keywords such as ‘software’ are more competitive, and very hard to rank high for them in search.
Metadata – Data that tells search engines what your website is about.
Meta Description – A brief description, fewer than 160 characters, of a page’s contents. It explains why someone would want to visit. This is often displayed on search engine results pages below the page title as a sample of the content on the page.
Page Title – The name you give your web page, which is seen at the top of your browser window. Page titles should contain keywords related to your business. Words at the beginning of your page title are more highly weighted than words at the end.
Technical SEO
Canonical URL – The canonical URL is the best address on which a user can find a piece of information. Sometimes you might have a situation where the same page content can be accessed at more than one address. Specifying the canonical URL helps search engines understand which address for a piece of content is the best one.
Domain – The main web address of your site (example: www.yoursite.com). It’s good to renew ownership of your domain for several years. Search engine rankings favor websites with longer registrations because it shows commitment.
HTML – The code part of your website that search engines read. Keep your HTML as clean as possible so that search engines read your site easily and often. Put as much layout-related code as possible in your CSS instead of your HTML.
Indexed Pages – These are pages of your website stored by search engines.
Inbound Link – A link coming from another site to your own website. Websites that receive many inbound links are more likely to rank higher in search engines. This is especially true if that site has strong Domain Authority.
Internal Link – A link from one page to another on the same website, such as from your homepage to your products page.
Javascript – A scripting language that allows website administrators to apply various effects or changes to their website’s content. These changes happen as users browse it. Search engines often have difficulty reading content inside of Javascript. That said, they are getting better at it over time.
Link Building – The activity and process of getting more inbound links to your website for improved search engine rankings.
Nofollow – When a link from one site does not pass SEO credit to another. Do not use nofollow when linking to internal pages on your website. Use it when linking to external pages that you don’t want to endorse.
Sitemap – A special document created by a webmaster or a piece of software. It maps all the pages on a website, making it easier for a search engine to index that site.
Conversion + Tracking Tools
Clickmap – A graphic representation of where users click on a web page to help improve page design and user retention.
Conversion Form – A form through which you collect information about your site visitor. Conversion forms convert traffic into leads. Collecting contact information helps you follow up with these leads.
Directory – Just like directories for people and phone numbers, there are directories for websites. Submitting your site to a directory gives you more than just an inbound link; it helps people find you. The most popular directories today include Google Business Profile, Yelp, and industry-specific listing sites.
Landing Page – This is where you’ll put those conversion forms we talked about. These pages revolve around a marketing offer, such as an ebook or a webinar. They capture visitor information in exchange for that offer. Landing pages are the gatekeepers of the conversion path and are what separates a website visitor from becoming a lead.
Referrer String – A piece of information sent by a user’s browser when they navigate from page to page on the web. It includes information on where they came from previously, which helps webmasters understand how users are finding their website.
RSS Feed – RSS stands for ‘really simple syndication.’ It is a subscription-based way to get updates on new content from a web source. Set up an RSS feed for your website or blog. It helps your followers stay updated when you release new content.
Search Rankings + Advertising
AI Overview (AIO) – Google’s AI-generated summary that appears at the top of search results, synthesizing information from multiple sources to answer a query directly, with linked citations back to the original pages. Landing a citation in an AI Overview is quickly becoming as valuable as a top organic ranking.
Domain Authority (DA) – A search engine ranking score developed by Moz, scored from 1–100, that predicts how well a website is likely to rank in search results. Sites with stronger backlink profiles and overall site authority tend to score higher.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) – Advertising method in which an advertiser places an ad in an online advertising venue. The advertiser pays that venue each time a visitor clicks on the ad. Google Ads is a classic example of this.
SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page) – The “results” page that you are sent to after you run a query in a search engine. Your website content, SEO practices, and popularity with users can all affect where your page sits on a given SERP.
Traffic Rank – The ranking of how much traffic your site gets compared to all other sites on the internet.