We answer a lot of questions from our clients about industry jargon and acronyms, so in the spirit of learning, we’ve compiled our very own marketing encyclopedia. Feel free to skip around as needed and bookmark this blog so you can come back to it later.
A/B Testing:
A scientific approach to marketing that involves changing one component of your creative whether that is an email subject line, a call-to-action button, or a main header image, to see what works best.
Above the Fold:
Traditionally, this term was coined from newspapers describing the content that was literally above the fold. Now it is also used to describe what you see on a website before you scroll.
Ad Spend:
The budget you’re allocating towards your ad campaign whether that’s on Google or across social media platforms.
ADA Compliant Site:
It is now required for certain businesses to have an ADA-compliant website, which allows all users with disabilities to easily access information. You can use this online tool to see if your website passes the test.
Advertorial:
A paid opportunity in print that provides information on a product, person or business in an editorial style.
AIDA:
An acronym for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. This term represents a fundamental concept in marketing: the funnel. This funnel describes where your buyer might be on their journey, which is important to consider when ideating various campaigns.
Alt Text:
The text that lives “behind” your photos online that allows you to describe what is in the image. It’s important for all the photos on your website to have accurate alt text because it is used by search engines and is a major factor of SEO.
Attribution:
A way of assigning the origination of a lead. This term is frequently debated as a metric because it can be challenging to track due to privacy settings on devices and omni channel marketing tactics.
Audience Segmentation:
The practice of grouping your contacts into similar categories to market to them in a more targeted manner. Depending on your business and its goals you could choose to segment your audience into many different groups.
B2B & B2C:
B2B stands for business to business and B2C stands for business to consumer.
Backlinks:
Links that are of good quality that link back to your website. These are tremendously helpful when it comes to SEO because it shows search engines that your site is trusted and credible. An example of a backlink could be a blog that another website posted that has a direct link to your site.
Web Banner:
Clickable online ads, primarily used on social media and Google ad campaigns, that drive traffic to your website. You can also find them on other third-party sites, like YouTube.
Boosting Budget:
Nowadays it can be challenging to get eyes on what you post. That’s why we include a monthly boosting budget in our estimates for clients that hire us to run social media campaigns. Just $10 can take your post and push it to the next level.
Bounce Rate:
This is a KPI (key performance indicator) that indicates the percentage of users that left your website or eblast after taking no action. This is a good metric to look at because it indicates that you might need to revisit your copy, visuals or CTA.
Brand Standards Guide:
The brand bible, which should include primary and secondary brand colors, along with fonts and recommendations on how to use your logo. Other elements that can be included are buyer personas, and an outline of how to market to each one.
Brand Story Video:
A video that is 2-3 minutes long and captures your brand’s story. There typically isn’t a strong call to action, rather the goal of these videos is to provide your viewer with an introduction to your brand. These are great to use on the homepage or about page of your site.
Buyer Persona:
A fictional profile that would describe your target audience. Consider their age, location, ethnicity, relationship status and hobbies. Once you’ve created your personas, you’ll find marketing to each one of them to be much simpler.
Cache:
Pronounced “cash,” this is a small piece of software on your computer that will hold temporary data when you’re searching on the web. It’s important to regularly clear your cache to keep your computer running smoothly and to ensure you’re seeing the most recent version of a website.
Canva:
An online design platform that can be used to create anything from a logo to a brochure. They offer a free and pro plan depending on what you need. Our social media department uses this tool to create eye-catching graphics and videos. It’s a great tool if you’re not familiar with
Photoshop or Illustrator.
Clicks:
A KPI that measures the number of times a user clicked on your ad, post or website (depending on what campaign you’re looking at). This is a good metric to watch because it tracks action.
Content Management System (CMS):
The platform that you use to develop and edit online content, specifically a website. There are a lot of CMS options available today, but we prefer using WordPress.
Conversion Rate:
A key KPI that tracks your conversions by dividing conversions by interactions. This can be used to track any campaign that is focused on a conversion goal such as purchasing a product, filling out a form or downloading a resource.
Cookies:
A type of tracking software that stores information about a user’s preferences. Marketers use cookies to remarket and follow a user online.
CPC:
Cost per click is a metric that describes the cost for each click on a Google Pay Per Click campaign. CPC varies greatly depending on your industry.
CPM:
Cost per mile (or cost per thousand) can be used to show you the price of an ad campaign or traditional newspaper ad by showing you the cost per thousand impressions. This is one of the only metrics that can be used industry-wide and will help you determine which avenues are the best for your marketing dollars.
CSR:
Corporate social responsibility is a term used to describe what a company is doing outside of generating revenue to help the community responsibly. For example, many companies make charitable donations, or pick a cause to donate resources to.
CTA:
Call to action is your hook that tells your audience what to do next. Without it, they don’t know where to go. Some examples could be “Sign Me Up,” “Book Your consultation,” “Read More.”
CTR:
Click through rate is calculated by dividing your clicks by how many times your ad was shown. Click through rates also vary by industry so make sure you research what your industry averages are to determine if you’re above or below.
Dark Social:
A new marketing term that describes the interactions that are not trackable on social. For example, direct messages or shares through private messenger apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Lead Generation:
A specific type of digital campaign that is focused on capturing attention and leads.
Demographics:
Characteristics of your audience such as age, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, income, education, and employment.
Digital Marketing:
Non-traditional marketing that takes place online such as social media, email campaigns, Google advertising, and YouTube advertising.
Direct Mail:
A traditional form of marketing that typically includes a brochure or letter with a specific CTA. While it’s not the most popular form of marketing, it can be extremely rewarding in some industries.
Display Ads (Programmatic Display):
A form of digital advertising that involves using web banners. Marketers use display ads to remarket to potential customers. After a period if the user has not acted, the display ads will no longer be shown.
DNS:
The domain name system is the translator between the readable version of the URL and the IP address that machines read.
Email Marketing:
This is a marketing tactic that includes regularly emailing segments of your audience. There are many software solutions for emails nowadays, but we prefer Mailchimp or Constant Contact.
A tool that replaces the traditional editing interface in WordPress. We use this tool to design all our websites as it is more user-friendly and allows us to train our clients once we’ve launched their site so they can make their own edits as needed.
End User:
The customer that will be interacting with your brand online. The end user is who you want to consider when you’re building a website or creating a campaign.
Evergreen Content:
Content that has a long shelf life and is search engine optimized. For example, this encyclopedia is evergreen because it contains a glossary of terms that will be relevant for a long period of time.
Gated Content:
A type of marketing that involves a tradeoff between the user and the company. Typically, a potential customer will fill out a form with their contact information in exchange for a piece of content such as an e-book or guide. This type of marketing is becoming less popular as more users are growing tired of trading personal information for a downloadable resource.
Geofencing:
A tactic of search engine marketing that uses exact coordinates to target a specific area with digital ads. This can be especially helpful when you’re trying to an event or something location specific.
Geotargeting:
A tactic of search engine marketing that is used in every campaign. This tool involves setting a circle around the area you want to target, like Sarasota, Venice and Bradenton. It’s not as specific as geofencing.
Google Analytics:
A platform built within Google that provides insight into how your website is performing. You can also view page insights, load time, and other key metrics.
Google My Business Profile:
Your online business listing that includes services, pictures, hours, contact information and so much more. It’s very important that you keep this up to date. Check out this past blog to learn more.
Hashtag:
This # is used to categorize and organize information online. You can use them on social media posts to expand your reach and show your post to users that are not following you.
Heatmap:
Whether it be on a website or eblast, heatmaps show you where users hovered or clicked the most. These give you great insight into how your user is interacting with your content.
Hosting:
The server where your website “lives” online. If your website shares a server with any other nefarious websites, you open yourself up to security threats and damage your SEO. We recommend all our new clients get setup on SiteGround.
Impressions:
The number of times your ad or post was seen online.
Inbound Marketing:
Includes tactics such as eblasts, organic social media content and blogs. Inbound typically focuses on more passive strategies.
Infographic:
A visual piece of content that describes something complicated in a simple way using images and concise text.
IP Address:
A device’s unique ID used to identify it on a network.
Keyword:
A term that has been identified as an important word for your business. Keywords are used in your SEO and paid campaigns to target specifically. It’s important that your keywords match your key services or products.
KPI:
Key performance indicators are metrics that you’ve defined as important within your campaign goals. Some popular KPIs include engagement and ROI.
Landing Page:
A page on your website that was specifically designed for the traffic you’re generating through a paid campaign. It’s important that your landing page matches your web banners and that there is a clear call to action.
Lookalike Audience:
An audience that is created and targeted based on a built-out preexisting audience. This tactic allows us to reach a new group of users with shared similarities to past customers.
MAP (Marketing Action Plan):
This is a Grapevine term. Once we identify the needs of a potential customer, we put together a MAP which includes our tactics, recommendations, budget and expected deliverables.
Market Share Lost to Budget:
This percentage identifies the amount of the market that won’t see your ads because your budget isn’t large enough. This number indicates if you’re over or underspending on an ad campaign.
Meme:
A piece of content online (typically an image) that is humorous in nature that gets spread widely across the internet and is often used in parody.
Online Reputation Management:
A type of digital management that involves regularly checking reviews and creating responses. This tactic is all about managing your online reputation and making sure positive and negative reviews are responded to appropriately.
Organic Traffic:
Web traffic that was not paid for. In other words, a user did not come from an ad. Organic search is great to track because it gives you an idea of who found you on their own and how your SEO is performing.
OTT:
Over-the-top marketing involves advertising on streaming platforms that use Wi-Fi rather than traditional cable networks. These streaming platforms include: Hulu, HBO and Netflix.
Outbound Marketing:
A direct way to advertise your brand. Paid campaigns and email marketing are considered outbound. Think of this type of marketing as a megaphone.
Page Views:
This metric shows you the number of times a user clicks on a page on your website, and it loads.
Paid Search:
A type of digital marketing in which you bid on keywords for placement at the top of the search results. The first three or four listings you will see in the search results are ads. This type of paid advertising can be expensive, but it’s often very effective.
Press Kit:
Also known as a media kit, a press kit is the culmination of quotes, photos, fact sheets, videos and press releases. This kit is intended to provide media with everything they could possibly need. Bigger companies typically have a whole page dedicated to media relations with a press kit as the main feature.
Psychographics:
The characteristics of your buyer persona that can include values, lifestyles, opinions, favorite brands and opinions.
Public Relations:
PR in its simplest form is the management and maintenance of a company’s reputation. There are many facets of public relations which include media relations, writing and disseminating press releases, prepping CEOs and dignitaries for interviews and much more. Like advertising, PR is a subcategory of marketing.
QR Code:
A digital sticker that, once scanned, can take you to any URL assigned to it. They make it much faster to direct traffic to a site rather than having to type in a URL. You can make your own QR Code for free with QRcode Monkey.
Responsive Web Design:
This type of web design involves developing a website that will resize and fit the size of the device that it is being displayed on. This is becoming more important as most users search on their phones.
Retargeting:
A strategy of search engine marketing that involves “following” a visitor using cookies across the internet until they either act or are no longer shown ads because they didn’t act after a set period.
ROI:
Return on investment represents the amount your investment has given back to you in return. For example, Net Investment / Cost of Investment x 100 = ROI.
Search (PPC):
Text ads served in real-time on the Google search engine. These ads allow you to be there when a user searches for your product or service.
Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is also called pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. In the case of SEM, we focus solely on purchasing ad space on search engines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
The work we do that makes it easier for search engines to find and add content to their databases, a process also called indexing. The goal is to create and place content that fits a very specific mathematical model called a search algorithm.
SERPS:
Search Engine Page Results include the websites you see after entering a search query into a browser.
Sitemap:
The skeletal structure of a website. This is the foundation of how a site will be built and is one of the first things to consider when building a site.
Social Proof:
People will trust a brand when they see others that they respect or admire advocating for the brand.
Thank You Page:
The page that will appear after a form is submitted on a site. It’s important to have a thank you page so users know they successfully submitted a form and completed an action.
TOMA:
Top of mind awareness is a marketing concept that is measured by how high a brand would rank in the conscious mind of the consumer. Frequency and repetition will help to keep your brand top of mind.
Is the measure of a website’s content/information coverage regarding a specific topic as compared to competing websites.
Traditional Media:
This type of media can be described as print, TV and radio.
Unique Visitor:
A KPI that represents the number of times a user visited your site. If they visit again, it is not counted twice. This number gives you an accurate depiction of site traffic because it does not include duplicates.
USP:
A unique selling proposition represents a brand’s unique hook. This is what differentiates one brand from another. Brands with a clear view of their USP usually have stronger marketing strategies.
UX/UI:
User experience and user interface involve the form and function of a design (specifically online). User experience considers the wireframe of the site and how it will work, while the interface considers design elements and how a user might feel.
Video meets blogging. This is a growing form of content online that is highly engaging because viewers get to see behind the curtain.
About Grapevine Communications
Grapevine Communications is a full-service creative marketing agency celebrating 21 years of success on the Suncoast of Florida. To learn more about what we do, visit grapeinc.com or call us at 941-351-0024.
