Understanding Marketing Jargon: 25 Marketing Terms You Should Know 

Does your marketing partner ever sound like they’re speaking another language?

Marketing jargon can be particularly cryptic, which is why we clarify some of the most important digital marketing terminology in this blog. That way, you’ll no longer be left scratching your head at your next marketing meeting.

A/B Testing:

A method of experimenting different elements of a design to see which performs best. Keeping all other variables controlled, two almost-identical versions (A & B) with a single differing element, such as the Call-To-Action or colour-scheme, are run to see which one drives more results.

Bounce Rate:

A bounce is when a user visits your website and promptly leaves without navigating to any of your other pages. This rate shows the portion of users who bounced out of your total website users. Since we want people to take a look around and learn about your business, the lower the bounce rate, the better.

Buyer Persona:

This is a detailed description of your product or service’s target market. Intrigue goes one step further — we create a model of your ideal client, your A-Client Profile. Our model touches on the client’s demographics, their psychographics, and a great deal of other qualities that factor into them being the best client for you to work with.

Buyer’s Journey:

The path that a customer takes from awareness of your product or service, to researching it, to considering purchasing it, and finally completing the sale. This is commonly displayed in a funnel visualization, where users start at the top of the funnel and a smaller portion exit the bottom of the funnel as customers.

Click:

A click is when someone clicks on your ad, sending them to your website. This can also be measured as a rate, defined below.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR):

An ad’s clicks as a percentage of its total impressions. A higher CTR typically equates with a more effective ad. The standard CTR for Google Search Ads is about 1.91%, meaning 1.91 people out of 100 who see your ad will click on it. CTR varies by industry, product, audience, and many other factors.

Cookies:

Byte-sized tags that websites use to identify information about their users. This could be their buying habits, log-in credentials, or other identifiers, like what led you to the website.

Conversions:

Any valued action that you want your users to complete on your website. A conversion could be something as simple as a page view, or something more ambitious like a contact form submission or a phone call.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO):

CRO covers all the different aspects of increasing the number of conversions that users complete on your website.

Cost-Per-Click:

Amount spent on an ad, or campaign, divided by the # of clicks generated. Lower CPC is better, since the ad generated more clicks, for equal (or less) spend.

Cost-Per-Lead:

Similar to CPC. Leads can be defined as any action that qualifies a user as a potential customer. To calculate CPL, simply divide the applicable ad spend by the number of leads it generated.

Customer Acquisition Cost:

The total cost of acquiring a customer. This takes into account all the spend along the way that the average customer may interact with. CAC will include both marketing and sales costs as they both contribute to finding, and converting, a user into a customer.

Impressions:

An impression is defined as any time your ad appears on a user’s screen. Total impressions even include the times when the same person saw it more than once. Brands usually look for high impressions when they want to drive awareness.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

A statistic used to describe the critical performance of a marketing activity. For example, an ad with the goal of getting as many clicks as possible would use CTR as a KPI.

Landing Page:

The page on your website that people are sent to when they click on your ad. An effective landing page should be relevant to what the user clicked on, provide value, and inspire a desired action.

PPC:

Pay Per Click. This is the standard way that advertisers are charged for ad space. Only when someone clicks on your ad do you pay.

Responsive Design:

Responsive design is a feature of websites and advertisements that allow them to resize to fit whichever device or screen size that a user is viewing them on. Whether they’re on their phone, their tablet, or a computer, the content automatically adjusts to provide the best user experience.

SEO:

Search Engine Optimization. This is the art (or science, really) of getting your website to live closer to the top of the search results page when someone is looking for products or services you offer.

Thank-you Page View:

A very common website conversion. This goal is completed when someone completes an on-site action that sends them to your thank-you page. This could be from buying a product, submitting a contact form, requesting a quote, or any other action that you thank them for.

User Experience (UX) /User Interface (UI):

Two major elements of website and app design. UI refers to the layout of a website or app, whereas UX is the general experience a user has when interacting with it.

Vanity Metrics:

Vanity Metrics may look and feel good, but they don’t actually lead to an increase in revenue-generating activity.

Wireframe:

An early blueprint of what a website or app will look like. The wireframe design outlines the main elements, what they will include, and how a user will interact with them.

 

There it is!

Now you’ve got a solid foundation of key marketing terms and how they impact your business. Feel free to impress your friends with your fancy new marketing speak… although we can’t guarantee it will score you many points!

Refer back to this blog if you ever feel lost in a campaign brief, and contact the team at Intrigue if you have any questions