Glossary of Digital Marketing Terms

Search Marketing

• BR (Bounce rate): This is a metric based on the percentage of users who leave your website or landing page straight away after visiting it. A number of factors can affect bounce rate, but irrelevant or poor content, in addition to an inadequate level of user experience, are among the most common.

• CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): This metric represents the cost of acquiring a new customer through marketing efforts.

• CLV or CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value): The overall value of a customer for the duration of their relationship with a company. This metric is usually higher in companies which have high numbers of repeat customers.

• GA (Google Analytics): Google’s popular web analytics platform which measures website, app, digital and offline data usage.

• PPC (Pay-Per-Click): A form of paid media in which search marketers can bid on ads that appear above the organic results on search engines, by bidding on particular keywords and terms. Google AdWords is Google’s PPC advertising platform.

• PVs (Page Views): The number of times a particular webpage is visited in a particular time frame.

• SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Using search engines to market to your target audience, either through SEO (see definition below) or paid methods such as PPC. This is geared towards increasing the volume of quality traffic to your website.

• SEO (Search engine optimization): Optimizing your website to gain high rankings in organic search engine results, i.e. to rank highly on SERPs (see definition below), thereby increasing the volume of traffic to the site.

• SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages): The pages of results that appear when you search for a keyword or key phrase on Google, Bing and other search engines.

• UV (Unique Visitor): A person who visits a website at least once within a defined time frame.

Content Marketing, Social Media and User Experience

• A/B testing: Also referred to as split testing, this is the process in which email and content marketers compare two versions of a single variable to determine which one performs better. This process is undertaken in order to optimize content and marketing efforts.

• B2B (Business-To-Business): Used to describe a business that normally provides products/services to other companies/organizations. The term is also sometimes used to describe the business’s marketing content.

• B2C (Business-To-Consumer): Used to describe a company that normally provides products/services directly to consumers, as opposed to other companies. The term is also sometimes used to describe the business’s marketing content.

• COS (Content Optimization System): A software platform which focuses on optimizing content to deliver a fully personalized web experience to customers.

• CRO (Conversion rate optimization): Optimizing your marketing efforts and digital content to gain more conversions.

• CTA (Call-To-Action): A prompt on a webpage which tells the user to perform some specific action, such as clicking a button or a link. These are usually written as a command, such as ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Buy Now’.

• CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of people who click on your ad, social media post or search engine listing etc.

• DM (Direct mail/Direct message): This is a marketing communication that is delivered by personal message directly to a consumer, either via email or social media ‘inbox’ such as Facebook Messenger or a Direct Message on Twitter.

• KPI (Key Performance Indicator): A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business or marketing objectives. KPIs are integral to digital marketing as they provide metrics, data and benchmarks from which to improve processes, campaigns and content. For instance, in social media a KPI could be the number of likes a post generates. In SEO, a KPI could be the CTR or BR for a particular webpage.

• ROI (Return On Investment): The profit or financial growth generated from a particular investment.

• ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment): This is similar to ROI (above), but refers specifically to all marketing investments and activities.

• RSS (Rich Site Summary/Really Simple Syndication): A standardized system for the distribution of content from an online publisher to web users.

• SMM (Social Media Marketing): Describes all activities performed via social media that are used to market and promote a business and its products/services.

• SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats): A SWOT analysis refers to a business carrying out a study to understand these factors – its internal strengths and weaknesses, in addition to any external opportunities and threats.

• UX (User Experience): The overall experience of a person using a website or digital app, rather than just the visual appearance of the site.

• WOM (Word-Of-Mouth): Any information or recommendations that pass from one person to another. Traditionally, WOM was solely verbal; however, in the digital age this can also refer to online peer-to-peer or B2B communications.

Technical Terms

• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): These describe how HTML elements such as color and font should appear on webpages and adapt when viewed through different devices or platforms.

• DNS (Domain Name System): This is a system which notifies the rest of the web where to go when a domain is visited.

• ESP (Email Service Provider): A commercial-level email host with integrated features for digital marketing.

• FTP (File Transfer Protocol): This is the process in which a pre-built website is uploaded to a web server. An FTP client is used to perform this action.

• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): This is the most fundamental code for developing websites. While a website may be written in HTML, it takes a browser to interpret the language and deliver it to the user in a digestible, visual format.

• HTML5 (Hyper-Text Markup Language 5): This is a more comprehensive, more recent version of HTML, which includes sophisticated coding for features such as animation and video.

• IP Address (Internet Protocol Address): The IP address is a numerical label or tag assigned to every device or entity participating in a computer network that uses the Internet protocol as a basis of communication.

• SaaS (Software As A Service): A web application that charges a one-time or periodic subscription fee for an automated system or application that performs a specific task or set of tasks.

• UI (User Interface): This is a type of interface that allows a user to control or navigate a platform, application or piece of software and is enhanced by elements such as menu bars, toolbars, windows and CTA buttons.

• URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The URL is a particular character string that refers to a resource and is displayed on the top of a web browser inside the web address bar. Essentially, it’s the address for a webpage.

• VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure): This is a development that hosts a desktop operating system on a centralized server within a data center.