Knowing the key digital marketing terms is the first thing you need to do. Most of the time, you explain the concept in your own words.

But using jargon and terminologies during the conversation is important in today’s world. It makes you a professional when you use jargon. 

Like the saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, “Talk like Digital Marketer while being a Digital Marketer”. 

Let’s learn the common digital marketing terminologies with their definitions.

I tried my level best to explain in layman terms for beginners with examples. 

Digital Marketing

The first term is to understand the difference between Traditional and Digital Marketing. Marketing is a process of creating demand or promoting your product, service, or ideas. If all goes well, this demand will translate into sales. But, the main difference in digital marketing is only the medium used. In digital marketing, the internet (online) is used. 

The key advantages of digital marketing are

1) Audience can be segmented based on brand interactions since it is online. 

2) Marketing Personalisation based on segmentation. Send personalized messages based on the target audience and needs. 

You can refer to my post to knowing the fundamentals of marketing in the modern world.

Also, refer to the post on different types of Digital Marketing and How to use them.

Market Share

It is the percentage of the total available market that is being serviced by the company.

The company’s market share = its total sales is divided by the industry’s total sales over a fiscal period.

For example, if a company sold $500 million in Hyundai cars last year. The total amount of cars sold was $1000 million. Then the company’s market share for Hyundai would be 50%.

Branding

I’m sure, branding doesn’t need any explanation right.

We, people, are mostly obsessed with the most famous brands.

Right from the dress, furniture, utensils – we always look for branded products for our daily use. Why? It is the uniqueness that differentiates it from other business products and services. It is a way of identifying the business.

The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol, or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. 

Return on Investment

The important glossary one should know in digital marketing is ROI  The ratio of the cost to profit.  For every marketing campaign you run, the first metric that is being driven is the ROI.

ROI = (Return – Cost ) / Cost. Say, you get a profit of $500 for the amount spent is $1000. So it is an investment loss of $500. Then ROI is (500-1000)/1000 = -50% where the % denotes the loss here. 

Let’s take another example. If the cost of investment is $1000 and the return is $2000. Then ROI =(2000-1000)/1000 = 100%. You got all the money that you invested.

Market Research

The modern world can feel unpredictable. It is difficult to keep up with trends, customer needs, and competitors, right? That’s why Market research comes into place.

It involves gathering, recording, and analyzing data about customers, competitors. This data is then turned into insights that help in decision-making.

The first step in research online is usually a search engine. Commonly asked questions are

• What customers want and need from your brand
• What customers like and dislike about the brand
• Why do customers buy the brand’s products or services?
• Why potential customers might choose your brand over another
• Why not customers make repeat purchases.
• Understand the recent trends and changes in the industry.

Marketing Strategy

It is a series of steps or actions taken by you on how the brand, product, or service will be promoted. Always decide how the product will be positioned in front of customers and achieve its objectives. Always have a user-centric approach rather than a business-centric strategy. A user-centric approach means having the customers in mind. It is always said that the Customer is the King and the Product is like the Crown. 

Customer Journey Funnel

A visual representation of the customers’ end-to-end buying experience. It helps to identify the needs, wants, expectations, and in turn, analyze the overall buying experience.

The funnel journey begins with Awareness, Interest, Desire & finally Sales/Action.

Starting with being aware of your product to deciding to buy your product, you can track your customer’s data points. 

It helps to build powerful predictions about human and consumer behavior.

Segmentation

The process of breaking an overall audience or target market into smaller groups is called segmentation. It is based on specific demographics and interests for more accurate marketing.

This helps to send personalized mail to your audience. Say, the person’s interested in reducing weight. Then you can send mail on suggestions for suitable workouts.

Say the person is interested in building stamina. Then you can send mail related to food suggestions.

Customer Persona

A detailed description of a fictional person is a Customer Persona. It is also called Buyer Persona. Based on demographics like age, location, language, profession. Additionally, personality types, spending habits, interests, needs, wants, etc are used. It helps to visualize a segment of business customers. 

Definitely, It helps the brand to do analysis for marketing based on the segmentation. A sample persona details for the travel niche are as below: This helps in having the right marketing strategy and personalized marketing emails. 

Name: Santhosh

Age: 32

Gender: Male

Location: Bangalore

Marital status: Married

Job Title: Program Lead

Annual Income: 19 LPA

Education: B. Tech

Goals: Long term goal – Travel around the world; Short-term: Explore best of places within India

Pain Points: Deciding where to go & Trustworthy reviews/information

Fears: Family safety, cleanliness, and hygiene (wrong decision while booking hotels/resorts)

Where do they hang out: YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook (in the order of rank)

Tribe or community

A social group is formed based on a common interest or shared belief. Also known as community.

If you want to be part of my tribe, please do join my telegram group and Facebook group. 

Word of Mouth

It is also called peer suggestions. We, humans, are social animals.

People do extensive research online before important purchases.

Their minds are swayed by the reviews, experiences, and opinions of others who are often strangers.

We always need social proof for taking any decisions.

We always trust the opinions of friends, family, trusted experts right. 

That’s the reason many brands are using testimonials while promoting.

Influencers like celebrities are also called to promote their products.

Conversion

Completing an action or actions that the website wants the user to take.  Conversions include signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product.

Marketing Surveys

Surveys are questionnaires that contain a series of questions around a specific topic. The main aim is to gather large volumes of quantitative and qualitative data.

You can use online survey forms at a minimal cost. Simple polls in the forums/blogs help to generate data insights.

For example, How many times do you buy takeaway food? What are your thoughts on the new site?.

Surveys can be open-ended, closed, ranked, rating types. The below tools used for conducting surveys. 

• SurveyMonkey: www.surveymonkey.com
• Google Forms: accessed through Google Drive drive.google.com
• Typeforms: Typeform: People-Friendly Forms and Surveys

Focus Groups

Online focus groups include participants coming online and brainstorming about a particular topic. Participants can be anywhere in the world and views shared anonymously as well. 

The topics to discuss can be new products, campaigns, views on a brand’s journey, ideas on how the brand could improve its position.

Good options for conducting online focus groups include:

• Google Hangouts: www.google.com/hangouts
• Skype: www.skype.com/en
• GoToMeeting: www.gotomeeting.com/
• Zoom: https://zoom.us

SEO

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.”. These are important digital marketing terminologies one should be aware of.

Have you noticed the links displayed on the very first page when you search in Google Search Engine?

Those are organic search results. The term organically means you no longer have to spend a lot of time and money chasing the customers.

SEO efforts help you to feature your content that fulfilled based on user search needs. Google search engines are “crawlers,” to find, scan, and index your site. 

SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. You can find more information about SEO here. 

SERP or Search Engine Results Page

The very first page that you see on google search is SERP. The actual results returned to the user based on their search query is SERP.

Typically, only 10 organic results will appear on the first page of the SERPs.

In most cases, search engine users will look at only the first one to two pages of hits (results).

The main 5 factors for SEO are

1. Popularity – Quality & Valuable Content 
2. Authority – No plagiarism 
3. Relevance – Content optimized for keywords
4. Trust – Link popularity
5. Importance – User insights

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.

On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page optimized.

For example,

• Include Your Keyword In Your URL
• Use Short URLs
• Front-Load Your Keyword In Your Title Tag
• Update URLs, page titles, and meta descriptions
• Use Your Keyword Once In The First 150 Words
• Use Your Keyword in H1, H2, or H3 Tags
• Optimize Images
• Use Synonyms and LSI Keywords

Off-Page SEO

Unlike On-Page SEO, the elements and efforts are taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages.

Backlinks are the most popular type of Off-page SEO.

It tells Google that the site with the most valid backlinks shows credibility with the accurate content that the user is looking for and so will rank first.

There are many ways to check if the backlink obtained is tangible and valuable. 

The next important metric is the number of social shares that you have for your website. It can be your Facebook page, Twitter followers, as well. 

Marketing Search

There are 4 types of searches you can perform to track the relevant brand keywords. Each modifies the type of data collected for analysis.

1. Broad match – for example, Apple iPhone. This is when any of or all words are found in the mention.
2. Direct match – for example, “Apple iPhone”. Denoted by quotation marks. It dictates that the tool should find mentions only where the phrase appears complete. It should be in the order of the content.
3. Inclusive match – for example, Apple +computers. Denoted by a plus sign directly before a word or phrase. This will direct the tool to search for any mention that contains both Apple AND computers, although not necessarily in that order.
4. Exclusive match – for example, Apple –fruit. Denoted by a minus sign directly before a word or phrase. This will instruct the tool to include only mentions that contain both words or phrases.

Backlinks

It is also called inbound links. It is simply a link from another website to your website. Because they represent another website’s traffic coming to your own site.

There are tools like ahrefs backlink checker to know the domain rating & URL rating. 

It is one of the ranking signals for search engines like Google. So, why is it important in organic search?

• It is like a testimonial and adds authenticity to your blog. 
• It shows that your content adds value. 
• Anchor text plays an important role in the quality of the backlink. 
• Links from big brand websites have more domain authority than sites from small businesses.
• When it comes to backlinks, both quality and quantity matter. 

LSI Keywords

It stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. This is important jargon in Digital Marketing.

They are nothing but the keywords closely related to your content that search engines use to deeply understand the content on a webpage.

Earlier, google used to look for keyword stuffing to find the page’s overall topic.

Now Google uses tools to identify the LSI keywords like Title Tag, Image Alt Text, etc. You can Google the Keyword Planner tool for effective identification of the LSI.

For example, LSI keywords for “jogging” are things like: “shoes”, “cardio” and “5k”. Let’s see another example. The LSI keywords for “On-page SEO” can be

• On-page optimization
• On-page seo factors
• On-page seo techniques
• On-page seo techniques
• On-page seo checklist

Black Hat SEO

Weird term right. Yes, it is called black hat SEO practices that attempt to game to manipulate the search engines.

If a search engine uncovers a website using unethical practices to achieve search engine rankings, it is likely to remove that website from its index.

Google is also smart, right?

Google has supplied the following list of don’ts

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use sneaky redirects links.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicated content.
• Don’t create pages that include malicious behaviors such as phishing.

The bottom line: design websites for users first and foremost and don’t try to trick the search engines. It will only be a matter of time before they uncover the black hat techniques.

Paid Search Advertising

This is the direct opposite to the organized search results you get on Google search. Have you noticed the first three links in the google search? There will be a small text as “Ad”.

They are called Paid Search Ads. Usually refers to advertising on search engines, sometimes called pay-per-click or PPC advertising. The advertiser pays only for each click on the ad. 

There are three elements in the search ad:

1. Keyword optimized ad text
2. The link to your owned (website / social media platform/content)
3. Ad extensions ( Additional details like location, call, App, Reviews, Sitelink, Consumer/ Seller ratings, Previous visits etc). 

Content Strategy

It is a strategy that outlines what content is needed. Also how it will be created and implemented for driving key business objectives. A few of the key steps in the content strategy is 

• Establish your content goals – Why are you creating content?
• Define your audience segments and buyer personas – For whom are your creating content?
• What problem will you be solving with your content?
• What makes your content unique?
• How will you manage content creation and publication?
• What channels will you publish on?
• How will you manage content creation and publication?
• Conduct a content audit and gap analysis. How is the content performing?
• What KPIs defines the success of the content?

Content Management System

In short, it is called CMS. Right now I’m using WordPress to create, edit, review, publish, index, retrieve, revisions. I’m managing my entire content on this WordPress site which you are currently reading.

So in simple words, it is a software application that helps you to manage the digital content is called CMS.

There are three broad types of CMS software: open source, proprietary, and Cloud-based CMS.

The most popular are WordPress and followed by Shopify. Blogger.com was commonly used by bloggers.

A CMS provides a user interface to allow anyone with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages (HTML) to create and manage website content.

Prospects

The target audience is called Prospects. Say you are in a travel niche with having a suite for your honeymoon. Then your customer persona will be a person he/ she who is married between the ages 25 to 35 with a matching earning potential.

Prospects can also be called Cold Leads. 

Lead

A person who is interested in your product or service and wants to know more about the same. Once he fills in the contact details on the form/landing page, then he becomes your Lead. He has become a warm lead and you need to nurture him frequently.

• Contact details of random people are not leads.
• Social Media followers are not leads

It should be relevant to your business. It s usually Name, Email Id, and Mobile Number.  So, in simple words, the contact details of a potential customer who might become a paying customer of your business sooner or later are called Leads. In turn, create your own tribe.

Invest money in generating leads directly from social media platforms. 

Call to Action (CTA)

A phrase is written to motivate the reader to take action such as sign up for our newsletter or book car hire today.

Call to action are usually bold, colorful buttons format differently from other text on a page. They stand out and draw attention. Certainly, It helps to convert your audience to leads or customers.

Subscribe to my blog is CTA. 

Impressions

It is another important term you should be aware of in digital marketing. It means that each time an advert is shown is called an Impression. It is used to quantify the digital views for content. It is opposite to the term Click or Link Clicks  (Clickthrough) which means engagement.

Let’s take you are running a FB ad. Your ad is shown to users 10 times. But only 3 people clicked on the Ad. So here Impressions is 10 and whereas Link Click is 3. 

Clickthrough

Let’s understand this in a simple way. If you running an email campaign and you want to know the effectiveness like how many people opened the emails and clicked the link then you can measure the clickthrough rate.

A click on a text ad link that leads to the website is called Clickthrough.

Click-through rate calculated as below:

The ratio of users who click on a specific link (clickthrough) is divided by the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement is called the clickthrough rate. 

Conversion rate

This is the important KPI in Digital Marketing. As a content writer, you should know the metrics involved in Digital Marketing.

The number of conversions divided by the number of visitors is expressed as a percentage. Say, for example, you have 100 visitors to your landing page, and only 50 filled the lead form. Then the conversion rate is 50%. 

Inbound Marketing

Don’t get overwhelmed with this term. Just remember the word pull (magnetic).  Just like the iPhone / Ipad pulls you to buy. So, Inbound marketing is focused on attracting customers to your products and services.

Provide the value first and then convert customers later. They begin by searching for products, services, or content for a need or to solve a problem.

It pulls the prospects to your website rather than you pulling them towards your products.

It works like this. Strangers -> Visitors -> Leads -> Customers -> Promoters.

By having quality content on your website which is SEO compliant, you can drive the audience to your website by ranking high.

A few of the Inbound strategies are SEO, Social Media Sharing, Giveaways, Free Downloads, incentivized sign-up forms, newsletter pop-ups, etc.

It works on the CATT model. Content > Attention > Trust > Transaction. 

Outbound Marketing

If you understood pull strategy, then outbound is the Push strategy. Outbound marketing involves proactively reaching out to consumers to get them interested in a product whereas inbound, you created and distributed content that draws the people to your website/product. For example, Social media advertising like FB & Youtube ads, Pay-per-Click advertising, Cold Calling, Cold Mails, Print & Radio ads are all Outbound Marketing strategies. 

B2B – Business to Business

Business to business (B2B), describes online transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. For example, commercial computers, manufacturing equipment for a factory, IT services for a bank are B2B products/ services. If your product is B2B product, lead generation is an important, difficult, and more direct approach. 

B2C – Business to Consumer

Business to business (B2C), describes which a business sells products or services directly to consumers over the Internet. All retail sites are essentially B2C, with amazon.com as the prime example.

• Retailers can sell a wide variety of products available without needing the physical retail space to hold and display items.
• The procurement and distribution processes are also streamlined.
• The products are shipped directly to consumers and not via distributors or retail outlets.
• The process has fewer overheads and is more efficient in terms of time and money.
• Thus, reducing inventory management costs and delivering products to the customer at a lower cost than in-store retail outlets. 

Firstly, if your product is a high-end B2C product (Cars, House), then you need marketing to generate leads and sales to close the leads. 

Secondly, if your product is a low-end B2C product (household items), then you only marketing to generate leads and automation to nurture the leads and close the leads. You cannot afford a sales team to follow up with all the leads. 

Lastly, if your product is a very low-cost B2C product, then you might not need lead generation in the first place. 

Customer Intelligence

It is the process of gathering and analyzing information about customers. Used to improve customer relationships. It allows for more strategic business decisions.

Data Intelligence

It is the process of gathering and analyzing data from all available sources. It is used to improve customer relationships and make more strategic business decisions.

It is also called evidence-based decision-making. Google Analytics, Google Search console is digital marketing tools used for data gathering.

Leading Indicators

Information that can help a brand to make decisions about the future. For example, What words do they use in their searches? Which is the demand in the future? Comparison of shares, clicks, and on-site engagement from various social media platforms, etc.

Lagging Indicators

Information that can help a brand to make decisions based on the past. For example, ROI is the lag indicator that is a direct result of your business model.

Marketing Insights

This denotes the most used data sources in marketing. Used for data analysis for effective decision making. They are

• Online data
• Databases from landing pages/ forms
• App store data
• Offline data based on surveys/ in-store foot traffic, etc.

The most commonly used data visualization tools are Power BI, Excel, Tableau, etc.

Quantitative & Qualitative Data

The objective data (precise) collected like numbers, figures, statistics are quantitative data. The subjective data like personal opinions, feelings, motivations, etc. are qualitative data.

Above the fold

The content appears on a screen without a user having to scroll. The very first half of the page you see on a website. 

Breadcrumbs

Links, usually on the top of the page, indicate where a page is in the hierarchy of the website. Moreover, it is basically a secondary navigation system that shows a user’s location on a site or web app.

For example, now you are on the Digital Marketing Terms page listed under my blog home page. Besides, My blog homepage is in turn connected to the Site home page. 

Sitemap

A sitemap is the visualized structural plan for how the website’s pages will be laid out and organized. On a website, it is the page that links to every other page in the website. It displays these links organized according to the information hierarchy. The sitemap should be available on every page. You can use 

 

User Experience (UX)

It is the interface between the customer and brand/product. It defines the touchpoints of a user on the website to create a good user experience with the product or brand.

For example, when you landed on my site, you saw the homepage with menus, sidebars, footers & blogs posts. Clear navigation on how to contact me.

So, it is the process of applying the principles, techniques, and features to create and optimize how a website behaves. For example, usability, accessibility, findability, simplicity, credibility (testimonials) are all part of UX.

Advantages of User Experience in Digital Marketing:

So, good UX is an excellent way to differentiate your brand in the market. It gives you a competitive advantage. When designing for the user, you need to ask the following questions:

• Who is the user?
• What are the user’s wants and needs from your platform?
• Why is the user coming to your website?
• Where is the user most likely to be in their customer journey when they visit your site?
• What are the user’s capabilities, web skills, and available technology?
• How can the site facilitate the customer journey to conversion and purchase?
• What features would make the user’s experience easier and better?

However, One of the most important aspects of usability is sticking to conventions.

Popular conventions include:

• Links that are blue and underlined
• Navigation menus at the top or left of the web page
• The logo in the top left-hand corner which is linked to take the user back to the home page
• Search boxes are placed at the top of the page, using standard wording, such as ‘search’, or a magnifying glass icon.

User Interface (UI)

It is the interface between the customer and the website. The actual website, application, or tool with which the user interacts is called the User interface. Comparatively, UI & UX is both important for a website. 

For example, the colors, animations, layout, size are all part of UI. Basically the look and feel of the website.

Do comment if you like the look and feel of my website. 

Responsive Design

Do you know the user experience can make or break a website? Just like content, your website should be responsive to all devices used by the customers.

Hence, it is important to test your website for its look and feel on various devices like Desktop, Laptop, Mobile, Tablets, and so on.

Few sites like Website Planet help you to quickly preview the design of your website at the dimensions they will be seen on popular devices. 

 

Alt-Text

Alt text means alternative text. The ‘alt’ attribute is used in HTML. It has a descriptive function, telling a search engine what an image is about. It is displaying the text in instances where the image is unable to load. Additionally, it is also called the Alt tag.

Anchor Text

It is also called a Backlink text. It refers to visitors to your site from another site. Moreover, this has huge SEO benefits showing that your site has relevance and authority from the referring site. If you tag my website as ” Top 10 Content Writing Blogs“, then these words are called Anchor Text / Link Text. Also, Anchor Text is the visible text that forms the link. This is the text that should contain the keyword you are targeting. 

Landing Page

It is a standalone page that a user is sent to after clicking on any link or CTA, in an email or affiliated site. It can be in a display ad, or a paid or organic search engine listing.

It is created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign with a single goal to create leads or make sales. The landing pages that have the most success are those that are able to tell why the offer is valuable in clear and concise terms. Check out my sample landing page. 

Meta-tags

Meta tags are pieces of information you use to tell the search engines and those viewing your site more about your page and the information it contains. Some of the key Meta tags are listed below:

• Title Tags 
• Meta Description Tags 
• Heading Tags (H1-H6)
• Image Alt Attributes
• Nofollow Attributes

Keywords Type

There are 5 types of keywords and it is important to know them while using Paid Search advertising (ads). Search ads are targeted based on a variety of ways how you want to reach the intended audience. 

1. Broad Match – This means that your ad will appear for the keywords you have entered, as well as search terms that contain your keywords. Also, any other words in any order, as well as some variations of your keywords include misspellings and synonyms. For example, restaurants in Bangalore can include a wide variety of searches like best restaurants. 
2. Broad Match Modifier – This is an addition to the Broad match by excluding the synonyms but including plurals. 
3. Phrase Match – Keywords denoted within the quotation marks. For example, “Nike shoes”.
4. An exact match – denoted by square brackets [exact match] means that the advert will appear for search terms only exactly the same as the keywords selected. 
5. Negative match – denoted by using a dash in front of the keywords; –negative means that your advert will not appear in searches using that word, no matter what other words are used.

 

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