digital marketing terminology tips guidesDigital marketing provides an affordable way to attract customers. Understanding the terminology makes it easier to connect with customers with the goal of getting their loyalty. Just like anything related to technology, this type of marketing changes regularly, so keeping up with the lingo can be a challenge.

Because of the quickly changing terminology, it can be difficult for novices as well as veterans to keep up with all of the words and acronyms. Instead of taking a lengthy and expensive course in marketing, we’ve compiled a collection of the 15 terms you should know.

1. Content Marketing

This is more than just putting words on a website and hoping that someone will stop to read it. Content marketing is the strategy that businesses use to attract customers through high quality, useful writing. Content is all of the words on a website, so it includes things like product descriptions, product reviews, blog posts, and more.

2. SEO

This acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of building a website’s visibility on a search engine like Google. It includes keywords, backlinks, and other page ranking factors used in a way to help a website rank highly on organic searches. SEO is only used with unpaid searches. Websites that pay to appear at the top of search engine results pages are not included in SEO searches.

3. B2B

This is a specialized business that conducts the majority of its business with other businesses, rather than with unique, individual customers. Common B2B businesses included those that sell office furniture, office supplies, and office technology like copy machines. Online, B2B businesses include apps like Slack or Asana as well as online financial organizations that only loan to businesses.

4. B2C

This is business-to-consumer marketing. This is an effective style of marketing that attracts customers who are looking for information about products and businesses – even local businesses. So, B2C marketing is the way that businesses use websites and content to teach potential customers about products, not just about brands. B2C marketing usually involves informative blogs that are based on customized personas that are developed by marketing experts.

5. Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is not the quickest route to the nearest strip mall. Instead, it is the framework that marketers use to attract customers to a business or product. This marketing journey includes four distinct stages. The first involves developing interest, so potential buyers learn that they have a need that a product will fulfill. So, they take the second step that includes learning about the problem and what will solve it. Then, they look for options, which is the third step. The final stage is where the buyer is ready to buy.

The marketer then has to create content that buyers take. They build personas to understand the different people who would be interested in their products. Then, they map out the journey so they can keep potential customers interested all of the stages.

6. CTR

This acronym stands for click-through rate. It involves SEO keywords and how well they draw people to your website. The easiest way to understand CTR is the percentage of people who click on an ad to get to your website. It only measures who gets to the website through an ad; it does not measure the people who arrive simply by being exposed to the ad and then find the website another way.

Most CTR numbers are connected to conversion rates, which is when the customer does what the business wants them to do. You might want customers to share their email address with you, or you might want them to buy something. If they click-through and your website are crafted properly, you should be able to get a conversion, as well as the clicks.

7. CRM

This stands for customer relationship management and it is a platform that lets a business manage the relationships with current and potential customers. This is meant to help businesses get a better hold on how they grow their relationships. They can see where they are overlapping and underperforming so they can streamline processes while growing the bottom line.

Most CRM platforms are called systems because they involve more than just customer relationships. They include apps that work with content and sales management as well as the lifecycle of the customer relationship. Data is used to make sense of customer relationships and how customers affect business growth.

8. KPI

A key performance indicator is a metric that businesses use to analyze a target. There is software that helps businesses do this. There are KPIs for nearly every aspect of the business, but many revolve around marketing – digital, email, and SEO, to name a few.

9. Call to Action

This is sometimes called the CTA and it is a marketing tool that entices customers to take an action. A typical call to action will ask a potential customer to sign up, enter an email address, or give a product a try. If you have ever claimed a free trial on a website, then you have connected to a call to action. These get customers to share information that the business can use for marketing. If a customer signs up and shares an email or a phone number, then the business can send email or text message marketing.

10. Domain Authority

Businesses should not choose keywords on a whim. There are tools that let them businesses see what websites are finding success. Much of that success has to do with the website’s authority – as in their control over a keyword or topic.

Websites are ranked by Moz who gives websites a number between one and 100. The websites with the most authority get the higher numbers. When a website has useful links, root domains, and other features, the domain authority number will higher. It is possible to see what websites have a high domain ranking, so when you are trying to market your website, you can connect to other successful websites.

Digital marketers should get to know Moz for more than domain authority. The site helps businesses grow their websites through keyword and backlink research.

11. Bounce Rate

Digital marketers use Google Analytics to get a good look at who is visiting their websites. One of the numbers that marketers value is bounce rate. When a visitor bounces, they look at one page and then leave your site. While it’s good that a user went to your site, only looking at one page is not good. You want a visitor to stay on your site for a while, not visit one page and leave.

A high bounce rate could mean that you are missing backlinks that encourage viewers to visit other pages on your site. It could also mean that customers are not interested in what you are sharing online.

12. A Hard or Soft Bounce

When a viewer bounces, it is not usually good. A hard bounce involves an email address that does not work. A soft bounce means that the email address might be full or there was a server error when the email was sent.

The hard bounce means that you cannot get a message to a potential or current customer. But a soft bounce means that you have another chance to get a message to the customer.

13. Hyperlocal

The beauty of digital marketing is that you have a wide range of customers to reach. But, you can also make your digital marketing campaign hyperlocal – you can customize your marketing campaign to a specific geographic area. It usually involves marketing to a small community over a large one like a county or state. This can be done with keywords or with using the “near me” button on a search engine.

14. Keyword Proximity

Proximity involves space, so keyword proximity is the space between keywords. For example, if you are looking for deep dish pizza Chicago, you will want to have a short distance between your keyword. You might have “deep dish pizza restaurant in Chicago” where you will have two words between your keywords. A search engine can use keyword proximity when it looks for websites that will help you find what you need.

15. Backlink

One of the most useful tools that drive marketing campaigns and increase domain authority is the backlink. This is a link that shows your website is valuable to other websites. Search engines use backlinks as a way to legitimize websites. Earning backlinks shows that your website has arrived and it proves that you have high-quality content that is worthy of views.

Backlinks are incredibly valuable, but Google makes it difficult to understand just how valuable they are. Page rankings and domain authority are determined by an algorithm that is not fully revealed to webmasters and marketers, so there is some guesswork involved in what backlinks to choose. And, there are times when backlinks stop being useful when websites close down. Some websites let people write for them as a way to share backlinks, but there are other ways to get them by sharing social media accounts with other webmasters and marketers.