Digital Marketing
Seasonality
a business cycle driven by calendar-based events during the year.
Brand
a business's brand is the sum total of all its users' and customers' opinion of that business; a business can choose to intentionally shape its brand or allow the market forces to shape its brand.
Google Keyword Planning Tool
a free tool provided by Google within the Google Adwords interface that helps users find and plan which keywords to target with their advertising campaigns
Customer segments
a group of customers based on their demographics, psychographics, lifestyle, geography, and behaviors
Sales qualified leads
leads who have filled out a form
Demographics
market segmentation according to age, race, religion, gender, family size, ethnicity, income, and education; companies use demographics to target its customers more accurately
Paid media
marketing channels controlled by external parties that your company pays. Two common types are Display Advertising and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Loyalty marketing
marketing focused on growing and retaining customers
Goal completion rate
measurement of how effective your campaigns are at prompting your users/visitors to complete a goal
End Action Rate
measures how effective your campaigns are at prompting your audience to complete a goal
Task Completion Rate
measures how effective your campaigns are at prompting your audience to complete a task
Lead to prospect ratio
measures how many prospects move down the sales funnel to become leads; calculated as # of leads/# of prospects
Lead quality score
measures the quality of marketing and sales leads based on predetermined criteria and targets which range from demographics to user activity as evaluated against the current customer base
Cost per mille (CPM)
mille stands for one thousand in Italian; CPM is calculated as (cost per 1,000 impressions) = (amt spent on ad)/(impressions served) x 1,000
Online lead generation
online marketing to drive traffic to a website where visitors are asked to indicate interest in a product service by filling out the form, subscribing to an email list, or another action that collects information about the visitor
Organic traffic
people who find their way to your website on their own; not through paid efforts and is usually related to your SEO strategy
Sales accepted leads
sales team has contacted or deems acceptable
SEM
search engine marketing
Page views
the number of times a web page or set of web pages are viewed during a given time period.
Insertion Order
the order form advertisers fill out to run an ad on a publisher's website
Click through rate (CTR)
the percentage of the targeted audience that is exposed to the marketer's message that click on the link provided in the message and land on the marketer's web property. Calculated as (# of clicks/# of times ad is shown) x 100
Conversion rate
the percentage of unique visitors to a website that are "converted" into customers, users, or leads; For example, on CR is expressed as the number of "conversions" divided by the total number of ad clicks that can be tracked to those conversions.
Facebook Ads
the program operated by Facebook that enables paying customers to use hyper-targeting via Facebook profile tags and traits to reach a certain specific audience via advertisements placed in the users' timeline.
Google Adwords
the program operated by Google that enables paying customers to use hyper-targeting via Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) to reach a certain specific audience via advertisements placed at the top and right sides of the search results.
Twitter Ads
the program operated by Twitter that enables paying customers to use hyper-targeting via Twitter users' profile data to reach a certain specific audience via advertisements placed in the users' timeline.
Net promoter score (NPS)
% Promoters minus % Detractors; a tool used to understand the loyalty or satisfaction of a customer; calculated based on responses to the question: How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague? The scoring for this answer is most often based on a 0 to 10 scale. Those who respond with a score of 9 -10 are called Promoters. Those who respond with a score of 0 to 6 are labeled Detractors. Responses of 7 and 8 are labeled Passives. Passives count towards the total number of respondents, but do not directly affect the overall net score.
View through rate (VTR)
(# of view throughs/# of times ad is shown) x 100
Cost per click (CPC)
(amt spent on ad/# of clicks)
Cost per lead (CPL)
(amt spent on ad/# of new leads)
Lifetime value (LTV)
(avg sales rev per cust) x (avg # of times cust buys per yr) x (avg retention time in mos or yrs for avg cust)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Also known as CPA (cost per acquisition). Calculated as (amount spent on ad)/(#of times ad shown x CTR x CR)
KPIs
Key Performance Indicators; metric uses to understand if your marketing effort is helping you reach your marketing objective
OODA loop
Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. A teaching tool originating from military training that promotes the use of a constant cycle of learning; in digital marketing, used to instill the use of hypothesizing, experimentation, data capture and measurement, and then re-stating a new revised hypothesis based on information gathered in previous experiments.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization - the practice of preparing a web property to be quickly, easily, and properly indexed by a search engine, usually Google.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page
Segments
a group of people, their sources, onsite behavior, and outcomes
Inbound links
a hyperlink back to your site from another website; used in SEO marketing - sites with a variety of high quality inbound links rank higher on search engine results pages
Key performance indicator (KPI)
a metric a company uses to determine how well it meets set operational and strategic goals
Retargeting
a targeted form of display advertising, driven by web browser cookies, that enables you to continually put a digital message (an ad) in front of a user who has previously visited your website
Ad Exchange
a technology platform that facilitates the buying and selling of media advertising inventory from multiple ad networks. Prices for the inventory are determined through bidding. The approach is technology-driven as opposed to the historical approach of negotiating price on media inventory.
Bounce rate
a term used in Google Analytics that shows the percentage of users with only one interaction on your website; an interaction is defined as either a "page view" or an "event". Bounce rate has nothing to do with how long a visitor spends on your site.
A/B Testing
a testing method used to compare two versions of a website page or advertisement. Typically an A/B test of a webpage tests the original page (A) against the same page with one change (B).
Digital marketing calendar
a tool that provides for time-based structure and discipline for the digital marketer in planning, assigning, creating, and delivering content to the marketer's target audience.
Returning visitors
a visitor with existing Google Analytics cookies from a previous visit
Digital marketing funnel
a visualization of the calculations that starts with the total universe of targeted audiences, then measures those who click on a link from marketing content, the click through rate (CTR), the conversion rate, total conversions, order amount, and revenue.
Attribution
a way of assigning an outcome to a marketing effort
Custom Audiences
a way to target in Facebook, Twitter, or Google AdWords based on previous visits to your site, email addresses, or similarity to an audience you've already reached
Banner ads
also known as "display ads", these advertising units are images that advertisers place on known publishers' websites in order to attract or re-attract their target audience.
Economic Value to Customer (EVC)
also known as True Economic Value (TEV); how much your product or service is worth to a customer
Social sentiment analysis
also known as opinion mining; analysis of the feelings behind words used on social media about your brand
Keyword performance
an analysis of keywords used in SEO or SEM campaigns as measured against goal completions, click through rate, and other metrics
Behavioral email
an email generated when a known user performs a certain action - such as completing a video - on a website, and the owner of the website then contacts the known user regarding that video as a follow up to the user's behavior.
Business model
an entity's business model defines how the business creates its product or service, delivers the product or service to the intended audience, and then collects payment for the service or product from the intended audience.
Baseline
an established level of normalcy; in digital marketing, for example, the normal or regular number of unique visitors per day to a website.
Call to action (CTA)
an instruction to a page visitor meant to promote that visitor to take an action, usually a click. For example, a button that says "learn more" or "get started" would be considered a call to action.
API
application programming interface; a set of functions an outside party can run in order to build its own third-party services on top of a company's service; a way computers talk to each other when they are owned by different companies; developers build these to talk with ad systems to create and manage ads
Transactional email
automated email driven by a certain type of transaction on a web property; for example, an order or email subscription.
Owned media
channels that are controlled by your company; examples include SEO, content marketing, email marketing, social media
Psychographics
classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria
Earned media
content about your brand that is created by customers. Examples include word of mouth, industry buzz, viral content, reviews.
Social media marketing
content and communication via social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
Owned content
content created or curated by the marketer in order to promote the marketer's message to the target audience; owned content typically consists of blog posts and social media posts and images, but should also be applied to any message that proceeds out of the marketer's company and into the target audience, such as email signatures.
Earned content
content not created by the marketer, but rather created and shared by fans of the marketer's message to the fan's social and other digital connections.
Paid content
content pushed out by the marketer via any paid means such as Facebook ads, Google Adwords, Twitter Ads, or banner (display) ads.
Email marketing
content sent directly to users via email
DSP
demand side platform; ad buying technology that interfaces with exchanges for ad buyers
Incremental sales
demonstrate how your marketing campaigns are resulting in increased sales revenue
Blogging
from the term "web log", in which a user actively updates a visible section of a website in order to inform or attract users and customer on a regular basis.
Referrals
getting customers or prospects to share your company message with someone else, with the expectation that those people will engage with you
Real-time bidding (RTB) exchanges
how advertisers or their partners bid on ad placement
Media mentions
how many times your brand or company is mentioned in media; used to track effectiveness of social media and public relations (PR) activities
Recency
how recently a potential customer touched your ad or purchased
External website links
hyperlinks that point to any domain other than the domain the link exists on; said another way - if another website links to your website this is considered an external link to your site and also applies if you link out to another website
Frequency
in digital marketing, how often a task is performed; for example, the frequency of a blog post or twitter update or how often a purchase is made
Engagement
in digital marketing, the term for user interaction with a particular piece of shared content: likes, shares, comments on Facebook; RTs, replies, favorites on Twitter, and link clicks on all social media.
Analytics
information resulting from the systematic analysis of data or statistics. In digital marketing, analytics is the information resulting from systematic analysis of data gathered from marketing activity such as email marketing, landing page A/B testing, or Google Adwords purchases.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
practices and technologies companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving additional sales
Lead source
specific methods or sources you use to attract qualified leads to your business
Amplification
term used in social media; means to take a positive action - a purchase, an interaction or review, for example - saving it and then sharing it far and wide - basically extending the lifetime of the positive action
Open rate
the % of list subscribers that open an email message you sent. It measures how well a specific email captures interest. It is calculated as # Opens/# DELIVERED
Average Order Amount or Average Order Value (AOV)
the amount of all orders divided by the total number of orders; used in digital marketing to help calculate the necessary reach, along with CTR and conversion rate.
Pages per visit
the average number of pages viewed by a single visitor during a given time period.
Average lead score
the average quality score for leads; see lead quality score below
Time on site
the average time that a website visitor remains active on a particular website.
Purchase funnel
the customer acquisition process from awareness to purchase; 5 stages include awareness, interest, consideration, preference, purchase.
Channels
the digital areas where marketing gets in front of audiences. For example, email, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter), blogging, advertisements (AdWords), etc. are considered channels.
Persona
the ideal compilation of all the traits of the "perfect" user or customer for a marketer's product or service.
Consistency
the importance of continuing with a course of action, such as blogging, in a regular frequency in order to repeatedly expose the intended audience to the marketer's message.
Distribution
the means by which a product or service is delivered to its end user or customer
List subscribers
the number of people who subscribed to an email list you created
Sales cycle
the time required for a sales conversion to be completed after the prospect initially becomes aware of the marketer's brand or product.
Total reach
the total exposure (measured in web users or "eyeballs") of an advertisement or piece of content.
Lifetime customer value
the total sum of all revenue estimated over the lifetime of a repeat customer; often used as a metric in evaluating the pricing and value of a SaaS business.
Return on investment (ROI)
typically calculated as (sales growth minus marketing investment)/(marketing investment)
Traffic
usually refers to number of visitors to a landing page or website
Unique visitors
visitor to your website within a certain timeframe. For example, if the same 3 people visit your website several times in a month, you would still only have 3 unique visitors; referred to as "users" in Google Analyticss
Rate card
what publishers (websites) charge advertisers to advertise on their site
Content marketing
when brands create and distribute content to achieve business goals; examples include blogs, case studies, videos, industry reports, and webinars
Delivery
when the good or service provided by a business is provided to and accepted by the user or customer; in digital marketing, also the receipt of a message from the marketer to a group or individual in the target audience.
Display advertising
where a marketer pays to display their message in a dedicated space - usually above, below or next to the content on a publisher's page. One of the most common types of display ads are banner ads.