When learning about digital marketing, having a dialogue with your agency, or reading their reports, you may come across certain acronyms that can make it hard to comprehend what is being told to you if you aren’t in the loop on industry lingo.
To help combat this, we created this helpful cheat sheet that you can bookmark in case you ever forget what certain terms mean, or how they apply to the world of digital marketing.
27 Essential Digital Marketing Industry Terms to Know
B2B
What it stands for – Business to Business
Why you need to know it – B2B is used to describe companies that serve other businesses. Some industries that can be B2B include manufacturers, IT, SaaS, industrial, and more.
B2C
What it stands for – Business to Community
Why you need to know it – B2C, on the other hand, encompasses businesses that serve their customers directly. Some examples of this include dentists, healthcare, education, home services, and a wide variety of franchises.
BR
What it stands for – Bounce Rate
Why you need to know it – Bounce rate is the analytics metric that accounts for the number of individuals who visit a page on your website and then leave without visiting any of your other pages. The bounce rate of your site can identify both positive and negative aspects, such as a specific page either not catching the viewer’s eye enough to keep crawling the site, or the page being so informative that it answers all the questions the viewer may have before making a purchase.
CMS
What it stands for – Content Management System
Why you need to know it – Given that many digital marketing strategies involve updating your website, you should know what platform your site is built in when communicating with the agency you partner with. For example, some CMS platforms that we are experts in include WordPress, Shopify, and Drupal.
CMO
What it stands for – Content Marketing Officer
Why you need to know it – This is the job position in a company that is responsible for executing the organization’s overall marketing strategy. The goal of this job position is to increase leads and sales, as well as manage the overall brand of the company.
CPA
What it stands for – Cost Per Acquisition
Why you need to know it – When measuring the progress of your marketing, a metric to look at is how much it costs to obtain each of your leads. This will help you better assess the campaign’s success.
CPC
What it stands for – Cost Per Click
Why you need to know it – CPC is a metric involved with pay-per-click marketing, which is the practice of running online advertisements across the web.
CPM
What it stands for – Cost Per Thousand (or Mille) Impressions
Why you need to know it – CPM is known as the most common method of web pricing. You will be charged every thousandth time your ad loads to a specific web page. Keep in mind that this metric does not mean 1,000 individual impressions; it means the amount of time your advertisement has been loaded to a page, so keep that in mind when evaluating your budget!
CRM
What it stands for – Customer Relations Management
Why you need to know it – Although it often has more to do with sales to help organize leads, having a CRM can help with your marketing as well. Some popular CRM software options you may have heard of include HubSpot and PipeDrive.
CRO
What it stands for – Conversion Rate Optimization
Why you need to know it – CRO involves the steps you take to turn your website traffic into qualified leads. This means you could add CTAs, buttons, forms, and more to make your site as conversion-friendly as possible.
CTA
What it stands for – Call to Action
Why you need to know it – CTAs can be a vital support system to the work that is done on your website to better entice customers to contact your team, make purchases, and more. Oftentimes, CTAs are unique graphics made to reflect your company’s branding.
DNS
What it stands for – Domain Name System
Why you need to know it – If you invest in website redesign services, you will likely be asked by the developer for login credentials to your DNS in order for them to launch your new site.
FTP
What it stands for – File Transfer Protocol
Why you need to know it – When you sign on to work with an agency, you might be asked for your FTP information so their team can make adjustments to your website’s code to add tracking info, make design changes, incorporate redirects, and more.
HTTPS
What it stands for – Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
Why you need to know it – In our current day and age, website security is important not only for users but also for marketing. Having a non-secure site can be holding back your website from potential rankings.
PPC
What it stands for – Pay-Per-Click
Why you need to know it – PPC is a vital digital marketing service that involves running paid ads on platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and more. It involves measurement using some of the terms listed above, such as CPC, CPA, and more.
ROAS
What it stands for – Return on Advertising Spend
Why you need to know it – This is the metric used to track the amount of money your company is making in response to your advertisements. ROAS is also a basic principle we recommend all businesses should prioritize before spending any money on online advertising.
ROI
What it stands for – Return on Investment
Why you need to know it – Many digital marketing reports include metrics that help prove your business’s return on investment in marketing services.
SEM
What it stands for – Search Engine Marketing
Why you need to know it – SEM is often used as a synonym for PPC, as SEM also refers to the practice of utilizing paid online marketing through various channels.
SEO
What it stands for – Search Engine Optimization
Why you need to know it – As one of the most popular forms of digital marketing, SEO encompasses a variety of tactics and services in order to improve your website’s presence on the web.
SERPs
What it stands for – Search Engine Results Page
Why you need to know it – Often used when talking about SEO, SERPs is a term used to define the results you see on a search engine. It is also often used when referring to your keyword rankings.
SMM
What it stands for – Social Media Marketing
Why you need to know it – SMM is the use of a diverse array of social media platforms in order to build your company’s online presence. The goal of this form of digital marketing is to increase leads through sales and website traffic, along with making people more aware of your brand overall.
URL
What it stands for – Uniform Resource Locator
Why you need to know it – URL is a basic term for internet users, and it refers to the web address of specific website pages. For example, the URL for our website is sixthcitymarketing.com.
UX
What it stands for – User Experience
Why you need to know it – UX is a term used in website design and development and relates to the overall user experience the site offers, and whether the site is easy for the user to navigate. UX has also recently become a ranking factor for Google.
Google-Related Acronyms You Should Know
Known as the industry’s most valued search engine, Google has created a diverse array of digital marketing tools to help individuals succeed online. Some of those helpful and informational tools that we recommend using for your digital marketing efforts include the following:
GA
What it stands for – Google Analytics
Why you need to know it – Also referred to as simply “Analytics,” Google Analytics is a platform that allows you to track data on your website and its performance by placing a piece of code on your site. You can see metrics such as traffic, purchases, conversions, and more.
GBP
What it stands for – Google Business Profile
Why you need to know it – If you are a business that services a local area, a Google Business Profile will be an important part of your strategy for marketing growth. A GBP allows you to make and manage business listings that appear on Google Maps.
GSC
What it stands for – Google Search Console
Why you need to know it – Also referred to simply as “Search Console,” this is a free tool that Google provides to give website owners important metrics about the health of their sites. You can learn more about it in our GSC post.
GTM
What it stands for – Google Tag Manager
Why you need to know it – GTM is a great resource for those wanting to manage multiple website tags. Tags, also known as the snippet of code embedded on a webpage, can track metrics like remarketing, button clicks, conversions, and much more, making it possible to track the data without getting deep into the backend of the site’s overall code.
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