When it comes to launching a new business or promoting it, one of the most vital aspects is online presence. Hence, comes the umbrella term – Digital Marketing. However, not every organization has the set budget for digital marketing, especially small-medium businesses. Do you know that majority of small business owners handle their marketing? According to Statista, in 2020, more than 16% of the business owner managed their marketing while others hired one employee, third-party company, or freelancer for the tasks. In such a case, it is essential to be aware of the primary digital marketing terms that can help apply principles to business, grasp concepts, and decide the best methods. Along with this, it is essential to know about the basic terms to work on email marketing, search engine marketing, and social media marketing. We have summed up online marketing terms, words, and jargon widely used among entrepreneurs and marketers.
A/B Testing
A/B testing aims to discover or observe the results of two different variants of the products to understand what will bring better results. It can be conducted on other elements such as headlines, buttons, opt-in forms, etc. A/B testing enables experience optimizers and eliminates website optimization guesswork.
Analytics
Analytics is a process that studies or gathers relevant data regarding promotional initiatives or performance. It provides valuable insights into trends and data to make better decisions. If you manage marketing for your business, you might be aware of Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a tool that can help analyze the overall traffic on the website and help users understand the trends.
Backlink
Also known as one-way links, incoming links, and inbound links, backlinks are links some websites give to your website or blog. It can be considered equivalent to votes and help tend organic search rankings as it showcases the usefulness, credibility, and value of content.
Bounce Rate
Consider it a percentage of people who click on the site but exit it without visiting another page. Usually, a 30-40% bounce rate is ideal for any industry or website. Users can calculate this internet marketing term by dividing the number of a single visit by total visits.
Brand Awareness
Buyer Persona
If you want to understand the product, the user’s perspective is the best way to do it. Hence, comes buyer persona. It offers a semi-fictional representation of users, including behavioral information, psychographics, and demographics. In this, developers deep dive into the user’s influence and role, emphasizing motivations and goals.
Call to Action (CTA)
A CTA is a design or graphic that encourages immediate sales or prompt customer response. It consists of phrases, words, and designs incorporated into advertising messages, sales scripts, and web pages to compel the audience. CTA makes users perform the desired action or respond to try the product.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
If you run ads, then CTR will help you determine the total number of clicks you received on them in terms of the number of times the ads were visible (impressions) to the user. For instance, if your ad impression (visibility to the user) is 100 and clicks are 5, CTR will be 5%. It can be for the website link and emails and to measure the success and effectiveness of the campaign.
Content Marketing
Content marketing, often used on inbound marketing campaigns, helps share or create strategic content for the website to drive profitable buyer’s action or attract traffic to the site. It adds value to the website by producing value-packed and helpful content.
Conversion Rate
Understand it as the ratio between people taking the desired action to total visit on the site. The user’s action can include clicking a CTA and filling a form on the landing page.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The total amount spent on marketing or sales to total customers signed during that period is the customer acquisition cost. CAC is the cost associated with the lead conversion that one can easily estimate.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a way to sell products or grow a brand in the market using email as the mode of communication. Many campaigns, such as commercial emails, promotional emails, cold emails, etc., connect with the customers or prospects. It involves sending emails for soliciting sales, donations for charities, requesting business, or just a newsletter to keep a potential lead engaged.
Engagement Rate
As the name suggests, engagement rate measures or analyzes the interaction ratio on the post, such as shares, likes, comments, and others. It indicates the engagement marketing popularity among the different methods that marketers opt for. The aim is to gain the attention of the users using effective methods.
Impression
An impression is known when an advertisement is visible when a website or app is opened. It is famously known as a view-through.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
If you want to track your progress towards your goals, then KPI is the way to take it up. The users can set up the KPI for business, make adjustments accordingly, and evaluate performance according to the marketing strategies. Tactical Performance Indicators (TPIs) and Leading Performance Indicators (LPIs) can help understand specific strategies to analyze if one can reach the goals.
Keyword
Keywords are a query, group of words, or terms used to search products, definitions, or services on the internet. It helps search engines search for the best-suited results for the given query.
Landing Page
A Landing page is also known as a static page, destination page, or standalone web page designed to compel visitors to take a specific action. It includes white paper, newsletter, product launch, app download, webinars, etc., that can capture leads easily.
Lead
A company or individual showcases their interest in a specific service, solution, or product. These are the people who can be prospective customers if everything goes well.
Marketing Funnel
It includes several phases of the user journey cycle, from clicking it first to making the purchase. It comes in three major stages: awareness, consideration, and conversion. As per the marketing plan, the marketers or business owners can add more stages, including nurturing customer relationships and post-sales engagement tactics.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay per click is a popular internet marketing model that combines ads and payment. Whenever a user clicks on the ads, the advertisers have to make a small fee. Consider it as buying visits to the sites rather than obtaining organic traffic. The advertisers can place the sponsored link in the search engine that pops up with the searches.
Prospect
Usually known as potential customers, prospects are qualified customers that fit the criteria of a company or can make the purchase of the offerings. The customers should qualify the predefined characteristics to become prospects. For instance, they should be authorized to make a purchase or decide.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on Investment is the amount earned from marketing campaigns and other initiatives. It is a performance metric that can be calculated easily with the formula: (Gain from the Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment
Referral
When the users recommend a product or brand to another individual, inviting them to look, it is called a referral. It is considered the most responsible and highest quality lead as users recommend trusted parties. It is a direct response marketing used for quick conversions, sales, brand awareness, and gaining new customers.
Retargeting
It is a paid marketing strategy that is extremely popular and involves using ads on the website. It is the strategy of showing an advertisement for a product or service to a person who has already shown some interest – by visiting the product website or doing a web search for the product. Using the retargeting strategy ensures that you show ads to interested people, thereby increasing the chance of a conversion.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a popular way to achieve the goals of marketers. It helps obtain the top ranking on a search engine results page for a topic. When potential customers search for the products or services you sell on a search engine, the pages which appear on top get more CTR, which translates to more sales. SEO campaigns improve webpage ranks using different techniques such as targeting the right keywords, reducing website load speed, building backlinks, etc. Read more – Earn money with affiliate SEO programs
Conclusion
The bottom line is marketing is full of different terms and jargon that one should be aware of. However, it is best to start with the basics and take small steps to grow your business. This glossary can be the first step towards the goal. You may also look at some of the best Digital Marketing Tools.