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Welcome to the dynamic world of digital marketing!

To navigate this realm, we have created a digital marketing dictionary that unravels the key terms and concepts that we use that are shaping the way businesses connect with their audiences online. Let’s explore the digital domain together…

 

A:

A/B Testing– 

A method of comparing two versions of a webpage or ad to determine which one performs better.

Algorithm

A set of rules followed by a computer program, often used by search engines and social media platforms to determine content rankings.

Ad Impressions– 

The total number of times that an ad is displayed 

Audience- 

In digital marketing terms, audience refers to a specific group of individuals or users who are the intended recipients of a marketing message, campaign or ad. 

They may have shared characteristics, behaviours, or demographics. You can also segment your audience into these different groups and target them with different messages suited to them. 

Audit- 

An examination, review, or inspection of a process, system, organisation, or set of financial records. For example, a Website Audit is an analysis of a website to determine what works and is successful and what does not work. This could be an examination of loading speeds, readability, design, etc. 

Article- 

A more formal and informative name for a blog. It is a piece of writing you can include on your website that provides your users with detailed analysis, research, or market-related news. They can be conversational and used to answer FAQs.

 

B:

B2B- 

‘Business-to-Business’. This refers to the transactions or relationships between businesses rather than between a business and individual consumers. An example of this is a marketing agency providing its services to help another business enhance its online presence or a wholesale distributor supplying goods to retailers. 

B2C- 

‘Business-to-consumer’. This refers to the interactions between a business and individual consumers. In a B2C context, businesses sell products or services directly to end-users or consumers. An example of this is online retail, where consumers purchase products from an e-commerce website.

Backlink- 

A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. In simpler terms, if a webpage on site A includes a hyperlink that leads to a webpage on site B, the link on site A is the backlink for site B. 

Blog- 

A blog can be a website containing lots of blog posts. A blog post is an individual web page on your website that dives into a particular sub-topic. 

Bots-  

A bot is a shortened term for ‘robot’. It refers to a computer program or script that automates tasks on the Internet. There are ‘good’ bots and ‘bad’ bots. The good ones deployed by engines such as Google (they utilise your robots.txt file) crawl your website and get it indexed into Search Engine Results Pages (see ‘SERPs’). The bad ones automate brute-force logins to your website…!

Bounce Rate- 

Bounce rate is a metric that is used in web analytics to measure the percentage of visitors to a website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate is usually associated with being bad; however, for some pages such as landing pages or blog posts that are meant to provide quick information, a higher bounce rate might be acceptable. For other pages like product pages or service offerings, a high bounce rate could be cause for concern. 

Budget- 

A budget is a financial plan that outlines expenses. A marketing budget is a sum of money that is assigned to different campaigns, and projects. 

Buyer Persona-

A buyer persona is a detailed and semi-fictional representation of a business’s ideal customer based on market research, real data about existing customers, and insights gained from understanding target audiences. Creating a buyer persona is a great way for businesses to create a clear picture of their audiences to enable them to enhance marketing and business strategies tailored to their target audiences’ needs and preferences. 

 

C:

CTR (Click-through rate)- 

The percentage of people who click on something after seeing it. For example a link. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online marketing campaign. 

Conversion Rate– 

The percentage of website visitors who take the desired action, such as purchasing or filling out a form.

CTA (Call to action)– 

A prompt that encourages the audience to take a specific action, such as clicking a button, filling out a form, or making a purchase. 

CPA (cost per acquisition)– 

The cost incurred for acquiring a new customer through a specific marketing channel. It is a metric that measures the cost of a customer completing a specific action. 

Campaign-  

A coordinated effort to promote a product, service, or brand to a specific audience through digital channels. Campaigns can be done through paid ads or organically. 

Channel-

In digital marketing terms, channels are the platforms that you use to reach your target audience online. These channels could include social media, search engines, or websites. 

Content-

In the context of digital marketing ‘content’ refers to information in different forms of online media that can be read, watched or that provides an interactive experience. This can be through written materials but also includes images and videos.

Cookie-  

A piece of data that is stored within a website browser that the website can retrieve at a later time. They often tell the server that users have returned to a particular website. 

CPL (cost per lead)-

This is the amount a business is paying per lead from an advertisement. You can measure it by taking your total marketing spend and dividing it by the total number of new leads.  For example, say you have spent £500 on a campaign and it brought you 25 leads. Your cost per lead is £20. This measures how cost-effective your marketing campaigns are.

Crawl/crawling –

This is the process of scanning a website to discover new pages. This can be done by bots or ‘spiders’ either when a user uses a search engine or when an advertiser is indexing from the backend. 

 

D:

Dashboard-

A marketing dashboard is a visual display that shows the most relevant metrics. This allows the advertiser to track how users are interacting with their content.

Demographics- 

Statistics that describe groups of people and their characteristics. For example, factors such as age, race, and gender.

Display ads-

A method of online advertising where marketers use banner ads along with other visual formats to advertise their product or service. 

Domain- 

A domain is the address that people type into a browser when using the internet.

DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion)- 

One of Google’s advanced search ads features. DKI automatically updates your ad copy to include keywords that match a searcher’s query. 

 

E:

Engagement– 

The measurement of how much and how often users interact with a website or social media content.

E-commerce-  

E-commerce is short for electronic commerce and refers to the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet. 

Email list-

This is a list of your audience used specifically for email marketing. The list could contain users who are subscribed to content or when a user becomes a customer by completing a purchase or a form that includes their email address. 

Engagement rate-  

A metric that measures the level of interaction and involvement an audience has with a specific piece of content. The formula for calculating engagement rate is Total Engagement/Total Reach or Impressions X 100.

 

F:

Facebook advertising-

Facebook ads are paid messages on Facebook. They allow you to choose your audience and how much you want to spend. This allows you to tailor your messages to your target audience. 

Facebook business page-

A Facebook business page is a public webpage on Facebook that is created to represent a company. A Facebook business page allows companies to use Ads Manager and run paid campaigns from their account. This is to increase impressions. A Facebook page also allows companies to engage with its users and clients, through likes, comments, reshares, and message responses. 

Facebook ads manager- 

A tool provided by Facebook for creating, managing, and analysing ads on Facebook. It acts as a centralised hub where businesses and individuals can target specific audiences, set budgets and track the performance of their ads.

Freebie-  

A term used to describe something that is given away for FREE!

 

G:

Google AdWords-

An advertising platform run by Google. Adwords allows you to manage and optimise campaigns, ad groups, and keywords within a single account.

Google Analytics-

A service offered by Google, that provides statistics and analytical tools for search engine optimisation (SEO) collected from your website. 

Google Tag Manager-

A free Tag management system that allows you to quickly update management codes. These tags are snippets of code that are used to track user activity, collect data, and integrate third-party tools or services in a website.  

Google Search Console-

A free service provided by Google, that enables website owners, administrators, and webmasters to monitor and optimise the performance of their websites.

 

H:

H- tags-

Also referred to as Header Tags. H tags are the title of a page and therefore will stand out among the rest of the text on the page. They can be seen as <h1>tag in HTML. Google uses these tags when they crawl the backend of the site to see what the page is about and therefore H-tags are really helpful in terms of Search Engine Optimisation. 

Hashtag-

The symbol #. Hashtags are used in social media as a way of tagging content. Tagging content means that when people go to search for the topic they are more likely to see your post and visit your page for more information.

Header- 

A header can refer to different things depending on the context. In terms of a document or file, the header is a section at the beginning that generally contains metadata about the document. 

Header Code-

A header code is a certain code on a website that is placed in the header section. This means it can be accessible across all pages of the website. 

Heatmap- 

A visual tool for data analysis. Heatmaps show the areas of a web page where users interact the most. They use colour gradients to indicate the level of user engagement. Warmer colours represent areas of higher interaction. Different types of heatmaps demonstrate different behaviours. The main 3 heatmaps include click, scroll, and move.

HTML- 

(Hypertext Markup Language) HTML provides a set of elements or tags that structure content on web pages, defining various components such as text, images, links, forms, and more.

Hyperlink- 

A hyperlink is a reference or navigation element in a document that, when clicked, redirects the user to another location either within the same document or to a different document or resource. A hyperlink can be represented by text, an image or other elements on a webpage.

 

I:

Impressions– 

The number of times an ad or piece of content is displayed, regardless of whether it is clicked or not.

Insights– 

Another term for a blog. Insights focus on identifying and providing answers and information to real questions. They are used on websites to share your knowledge and help you to build strong brand credibility. 

Inbound Marketing-

A digital marketing method that helps you to attract customers through content and experiences that resonate with audiences. 

Index-

Indexing refers to a method of acquiring information, where documents are collected and sorted based on keywords. 

IP address- 

A numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the internet protocol for communication. 

 

J:

JavaScript- 

A programming language and a core technology of the World Wide Web. It allows you to implement complex features on web pages. These features could be interactivity features to improve user experience. An example of this is playing audio or a video. A code snippet is passed into an engine and read. In HTML, JavaScript code is inserted between <script> and </script> tags. 

 

K:

Keyword-

A word of significance. In digital marketing terms, a keyword is a word or phrase on your website that matches other words and phrases that people are searching in search engines. 

Keyword Research-

This is researching what keywords are hot. In other words, it is used for search engine optimisation to find and analyse search terms that users are putting into search engines when looking for services, products or queries. ‘Hot’ keywords are those that are searched a lot. 

KPI (Key Performance indicator)-

A performance indicator is a measurement that assesses the success of an organisation, campaign, or particular activity in which is engaged. 

 

L:

Landing page– 

A standalone web page created. It is often created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It can help collect analytical information such as click-through rates. It is beneficial for converting more traffic and increasing conversions.

Launch-

The word launch can be used in several different situations for example a product launch is a planned and coordinated effort to release a product to the market. A launch can also refer to a campaign. A campaign launch is how a marketing team achieves the goals of a broader marketing program. 

Lead-

Refers to when an individual or organisation within your marketing reach has interacted with your brand or business or has the potential to become a future client. 

Lead generation-

The action of identifying and generating potential customers with the goal of turning their interest into a sale.

Link-

A digital reference to data. A link is made up of a string of hypertext used to connect web pages on the internet.

 

M:

Marketing Automation-

A marketing automation platform allows marketers to scale lead management activities. This means marketers can manage campaigns, both online and offline, coordinate nurturing leads, and score leads appropriately.  

Metadata-

A set of data that describes and gives information about other data. Author, date created, date modified and file size are all examples of basic metadata.

Meta Description-

A short and relevant summary of what a particular page is about. It is below the Meta title and is displayed on search engine result pages and browser tabs.

Meta Title-

Refers to the text that is displayed on search engine result pages and browser tabs. The meta title indicates the topic of a webpage. 

 

N:

New Users-

These are the people who visit a website, page, or social media account for the first time. 

Newsletter-

A newsletter is a written report, usually issued periodically. It is typically released by an organisation, business, or institution. It presents information about their business within the time period, news from the market, or topics of specific interest to the subject or company. 

Niche-

A niche refers to a small/specialised segment of the market for a particular product or service. Niche marketing involves targeting and tailoring products and services to meet the unique requirements of their audience.

 

O:

Objective-

A specific, measurable, and achievable goal that an individual, team, or, organisation aims to accomplish within a defined timeframe. For example, in terms of a social media goal, an objective could be, gaining at least 20 new followers a month on one of your media platforms.

Organic traffic-

Organic traffic is the visitors that visit your website or Social Media pages on their own through search engines such as Google. Inorganic traffic on the other hand are users who visit your website or social media pages through paid advertisements or spondorships.

Outbound Link- 

Refers to a link that is meant to take you elsewhere. It allows your customer to leave your website and move to another domain. 

 

P:

Page speed-

This is the time it takes for a web page to load on your device. Page speed is highly important for user experience and SEO. If your page speed is slower your bounce rate will generally be higher. 

Page views-

The total number of times a particular page on a website has been loaded or visited by visitors during a time period. {age views are used to measure the popularity of a website. For a marketers page views give them an insight into what content performs well and what content doesn’t get as much engagement and therefore needs improving. 

Paid search traffic-

Refers to website visitors that come to a site through paid advertising efforts. The word ‘Search’ suggests that these visitors arrive at a website by clicking on an ad that appears in search engine results. 

PPC (pay-per-click)-

A term in online advertising in which an advertiser pays a publisher ever time an ad link is ‘clicked’ on. PPC is also known as CPC (cost per click)

Pixel-

Also known as marketing pixels, tracking pixels and web bugs. Pixels are snippets of code or tiny invisible images. The code is placed in a website to collect data which enables you to track conversions from ads, and future ads.

Programmatic advertising-

This is the use of automated technology for media buying and retargeting with automated ads. Programmatic advertising uses AI and machine learning to ensure that ads are targetted at the most suitable audiences. 

 

Q:

Query-

A request for data or information. This could be a request for keywords and phrases that users type into a search engine. 

 

R:

Reach-

A measurement to determine the size of the audience that has seen your ads or campaigns. Marketing Reach measures the potential customers a campaign could reach. 

Remarketing-

A digital marketing strategy that is aimed at engaging audiences who have already interacted with your brand, to encourage them to take a desired action. This could lead to increased conversions. 

Retargeting-

Similar to remarketing, retargeting is a digital marketing strategy that involves targeting and advertising to users who have previously interacted with a website or online content. The goal of retargeting is to re-engage users who may be interested but didn’t take the desired action. 

ROI-

Stands for Return on Investment and is a financial metric that evaluates the profitability or efficiency of an investment relative to its cost. ROI is expressed as a percentage. The formula for calculating ROI is:

Net gain or loss/ cost of investment X100

 

S:

SEO (search engine optimisation)– 

The practice of optimising web content to improve by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages through paid advertising.

SEM (Search engine marketing)– 

A form of online marketing that promotes websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages through paid advertising.

SERP- 

(Search Engine Results Page) The page that a search engine returns after somebody submits a search query. 

Sessions-

This is the amount of time that a user spends on a web page. It can be found on Google analytics and is further used to determine which pages are generating the most engagement and which pages need to be improved to gain more engagement. 

Sitemap-

Refers to a file or page that provides a structured and organised list of URL’s for a website. Almost like a blueprint of a website that helps search engines to understand the structure of a website more efficiently. The 2 types of sitemaps include: XML sitemap and HTML sitemaps. 

 

T:

Tag-

A Tag is a piece of code or snippet of JavaScript that is embedded into a website to collect and receive data based on their user interactions with an web page. The information can be used to help marketers to understand user behaviour, measure campaign performance and make data-driven decisions. 

Trigger-

Refers to a specific event that initiates a predefined action or response in an automated marketing system. For example, chatbot interactions, viewed pages, or email opens are triggers for a software to automatically send another email or message to a prospect or customer. Triggers are used to increase conversions. 



U:

UGC (user-generated content)-

Generally any form of content (videos, images, text, audio) that has been posted by a user on the internet. Businesses often use content from their clients to create a strong connection with their users. It creates organic-looking content. 

Unique visitors-

This is a metric used in analytics to show how many different people view a website over a period of time. If the visitor visits the website more than once, they will only be counted once. 

URL-

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is known as the address of a web page. This is it’s location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. 

UI-

UI stands for user interface. This is the platform that users are going to to complete the actions. For example the code, the link, hte forms they fill out. It is anything interactive. A Good UI should be easy for most people to understand. 

UX-

UX stands for User Experience and refers to how a user interacts with your website. A positive user experience is crucial and one of the main objectives of web design. It not only needs to look good but the design needs to have purpose for example it needs to be easy to navigate. A good UX drives repeat customers and improves engagement. 

UTM Tracking-

A UTM code is a small addition of text that is placed at the end of a URL which allows businesses to track their web traffic.

 

V:

Valuable proposition- 

‘A statement that defines the unique benefit of a product, service,or brand’. It is a promise of what the customer can expect to receive from the offering. It is often used to present a needed solution to your audience and therefore help you to win sales or attract new business.

Variable-

This typically refers to the factor or element that can change or vary. Variables play a huge role in marketing analytics. In A/B testing, it is a metric that is being tested or changed to determine which option works best. This could include ad copy, layout, headline or CTA.

Visitors-

A metric used to quantify how many users visit a website over a particular period of time. Visitors is often broken down into ‘new visitors’ and ‘returning visitors’. 

 

W:

Web page-

An individual page on the internet. The web page is usually the first page that appears when you visit a website. (this is also called the homepage) 

Webinar-

An online seminar, or presentation. The main purpose of a webinar is to educate and engage an audience. The presenter can share documents, videos, and voice notes and answer audience questions. It is common for the viewers to sign up for the webinar in advance. 

 

X:

XML Sitemap-

A file that lists a website’s essential pages. This tool enables search engines like Google to crawl a website more effectively. An XML Sitemap is generally quite useful with large sites with lots of web pages as it can help to organise the data. 

 

Y:

Youtube

A video hosting online platform. It allows marketers to promote their business, brand, product, or services, by either posting content or investing in YouTube ads. 

 

Z:

Zoom

A communication channel that allows users to connect via video, audio, phone, and chat. It allows you to share your screen to present ideas and thoughts. Using Zoom requires an internet connection. 

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