25 Marketing Buzzwords you Need to Know (to Grow your Business)
Marketing is a huge aspect of running a business. But there’s a lot to learn, and with the advent of the internet, even more terms have been invented.
So for today’s article, I’ve put together a list of some of the more common marketing buzzwords that you need to know.
Here we go!
A/B Testing
This is a method for determining which of two marketing options works best, by presenting each to a different group of potential customers. For example, if you want to decide which of two ads results in more sales, you show ad A to one group of people and ad B to another group. Then you compare the results to see which ad is more effective, and then use that one going forward. Sometime this is also called split testing.
Above the fold
This term refers to the top part of a website/page—the part you see before you do any scrolling down. This is one of the most important parts of your website because it helps convince the visitor to explore your site further.
Autoresponder
This is a type of software program that automates the sending out of a series of emails. You write a series of emails, set the dates each is to be sent, and the software sends them out on those dates.
Autoresponders are a key part of online marketing. They not only save you a great deal of time, they come with various features that allow you to analyze your email list’s behavior.
Examples
· How many recipients opened each email
· How many people clicked on a CTA button inside an email
B2B
This stands for business to business. It refers to a company that sells its products to other businesses, as opposed to directly to clients.
B2C
This stands for business to client (consumer). It refers to a company that sells its products directly to clients, rather than to other businesses.
Bounce Rate
This is a statistic that refers to the percentage of website visitors that leave without taking any action (e.g. without clicking a link or a button, or without making a purchase). You want to keep your bounce rate as low as possible.
CTA
This stands for call to action. A CTA is a phrase that invites a reader to take some action. These phrases are placed on a clickable button.
Examples
· “Buy now”
· “Read more”
· “Get your copy”
CTAs are a must for any website.
Click through/Click through rate
A click through is the act of clicking on a CTA button or a link. The number of visitors that click on the button or link on a certain webpage, compared to the number of people that visited the page, is referred to as the click through rate.
Example
· 100 people visit a web page
· 20 of them click on the CTA button on that page
· That page (or that CTA) has a 20% click-through rate (20/100)
Click through rates are used to measure the effectiveness of a page/button.
Content Marketing
This is a method of increasing brand awareness. Here’s how it works: a company creates content that is so interesting/helpful/cute that people will share it. That sharing puts the company name (often indirectly) in front of all the people that the content was shared with.
Conversion
This refers to how many people take a certain action after seeing an ad, webpage, etc. For example, let’s say you have a page on your website that invites people to sign up for your newsletter. If 10% of the people who visit that page actually sign up, the page has a 10% conversion rate (10% of the visitors took the action you wanted them to).
Double opt in
This is a two-step process that is used when getting people to sign up to an email list. First a person clicks a button on a website or in an email (e.g. “Sign up”). A follow-up email is then sent to their inbox, asking them to confirm that they do, in fact, want to sign up. This process is meant to protect people from spam and is the recommended way to add people to email lists.
Email Marketing
This refers to selling products or services by advertising them via email.
GDPR
This stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is a European law that states all companies, regardless of where they are located, have a legal obligation to protect the privacy of any of their customers who happen to live in Europe. Since any website is potentially global, and can have European visitors, you need to make sure your website follows GDPR rules.
Google Analytics
This is a software program made available by Google that provides website owners with statistics on the behavior of their website visitors. The software tracks visitor activity and provides information such as total number of website visitors, number of people who visited each of your pages, how long people spent on a particular page, bounce rate, etc.
Impressions
This refers to the number of times a page/ad etc. is shown to people. This information is used to calculate click-through rates.
Example
· An ad is shown to 1,000 people (1,000 impressions)
· 45 of those people click the CTA button
· 45/1000 = 4.5% click through rate
Inbound link
This is a link on someone else’s website that points to one of your web pages. Having reputable sites link back to your site can be good for your website’s SEO.
Keyword
This is a word or phrase that search engines such as Google use to determine if your site is worth including in their search results. For example, if someone searches for “homemade pet food”, Google will look for various words/phrases (keywords) on websites to decide if those sites are potentially what the searcher is looking for. Generally speaking, the higher the number of relevant keywords that the search engine finds on a site (e.g. “pet food”, “raw pet food”, “homemade dog food”), the greater the chance the site will be included in their list of search results.
Landing page
This is a web page that is created to get visitors to take one specific action.
Examples
· A page that invites people to sign up for a newsletter
· A page that offers a product for sale
· A page that invites people to sign up for a webinar
Lead Magnet
This is something that is given away for free in exchange for a website visitor’s email address.
Examples
· Free Newsletter
· Free report
· Free trial
This is the main way that companies build email lists.
Longtail keyword
Refers to keywords that are longer than one word . They are also called keyword phrases.
Examples
· “restaurants in Vancouver”
· “how to bake bread”
· “high-converting CTA buttons”
Meta data
This is basically information about information. For websites, it often means summary information about your site and its contents.
Examples
· Description of each page
· Page author
· Image file sizes
Metadata can be used by search engines to help them decide how relevant your website is to certain searches.
Organic search results
Results returned by search engines that are not as a result of ads or other paid marketing.
Outbound link
A link on your website that points to another website. Linking to appropriate web pages on reputable sites can be good for your website’s SEO.
ROI
ROI stands for return on investment. It refers to how much money you make compared to how much you spend, and is expressed as a percentage.
Example
· You spend $100 on an ad to sell a book
· That ad results in $600 worth of book sales
· Sales / cost x 100 = (600/100) x 100 = 600% ROI.
ROI is used to measure the effectiveness of an ad/expense.
SEO
Stands for search engine optimization. This is the process of creating content in a certain way, and adjusting settings on your website, in order to increase the chance that search engines will list your site in search results. The main ways this is done are:
· Using appropriate keywords in your website writing
· Including appropriate meta data on your website
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And there you have it. Now, this list is not exhaustive—there’s a ton to learn about online marketing. But it should give you a good starting point as you learn how to market your business.
Cheers,
Tim
Helping you engineer the business of you