Digital Marketing Terms

Digital marketing is an industry that has grown exponentially in the last decade and shows no signs of slowing down. With so many different digital marketing terms, it can be hard to know what they all mean. Fortunately for you, we’ve compiled a glossary of some of the most common words or phrases used by digital marketers today. The majority of these words are used in online content or marketing, so if you want to understand this ever-changing industry better, it’s essential to know their definitions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and is one of the most talked-about digital marketing terms – SEO services. The term refers to the process of improving your website’s rank on search engines like Google through various tactics, including keyword research and uses in content marketing efforts.

This is the process of improving your website rank on search engines like Google through various tactics. SEO is also about understanding who your target audience is and what keywords they are using to find your site – this is called keyword research. The next step in SEO is the use of relevant keywords in content marketing efforts. Learn more on our blog Understanding the Dynamics of SEO.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Also one of the most mentioned digital marketing terms, PPC or pay-per-click, refers to digital advertising where you only pay when the viewer clicks on your advertisement. In digital marketing, PPC is one of the most popular digital marketing strategies because it is very campaign-oriented, and if well structured, can provide a steady flow of visitors from search engines.

Want to learn more about Pay Per Click marketing? Then check out our blog Should You Use Pay Per Click in Las Vegas?

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost per click or CPC in digital marketing is another form of PPC that refers to digital advertising in which a fee is charged each time that an ad is clicked. It’s used by businesses with lower budgets to establish brand awareness since they get charged only if someone actually clicks the ad. The downside though, is that they have no control over what will appear alongside their ads, so it may not always be about their brand.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a digital marketing tactic that involves creating and distributing valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. A content marketing strategy can encompass all digital channels, including paid, earned, shared, and owned media.

This strategy is used by digital marketers to reach their target audience through blog posts, videos, eBooks, webinars, and guides. Once published online, the goal is for these digital assets (content) to start attracting their target audience’s attention through organic traffic.

Return on Investment (ROI)

A lot of digital marketing terms ultimately reflect on ROI, which is short for Return on Investment. This is the amount of money earned or saved by investing in digital marketing.

It is the strategy that allows marketers to measure the efficiency of their investment. It is equivalent to revenue generated minus expenses needed to produce that revenue. Return on Investment is a good way to measure the success of an advertising campaign and see how much it has generated in profit compared to how much was spent on marketing efforts.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The digital marketing term Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a metric used to measure how often a person clicks an ad. CTR can be expressed for any given campaign or period of time, as well as in comparison to the activity by other advertisers, identified by market segmentation. The average CTR for banner ads on the web is .028%.

The CTR is the number of clicks that happen on a web page, divided by the total number of impressions served to that page. So if you have 100 impressions and 10 clicks, your CTR is 10%. The CTR (sometimes referred to as ‘click-through-rate or ‘CTR’) is an important digital marketing metric.

There are several reasons why CTR is so important:

1. 1. • You want people to click on your advertisement because it means they are interested in what you’re marketing. If they don’t click on it then probably either your ad wasn’t relevant enough to them or not interesting enough.
      • A higher CTR is a clear sign of better digital marketing because it means that more people are engaging with your digital ads.
      • You want to keep improving the CTR of each page of your digital marketing campaign so you can provide as much value and drive as many quality leads as possible to your business or website.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a digital marketing strategy, which involves a series of tests conducted on digital marketing elements to increase the conversion of visitors into customers.

Prominent CRO tools used include A/B testing, multivariate testing, funnel analysis, heat mapping, and user session recordings. It includes a wide array of strategies ranging from simplifying your site content to encouraging users to take specific actions or engaging with more digital content about your brand.

The objective behind CRO is to measure digital results and optimize process efficiency across the digital sales cycle. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) provides an opportunity for website owners to enhance their digital presence by delivering a meaningful user experience that increases customer loyalty while facilitating sales goals.

The main aim is to show digital content that resonates with their target audience and increases digital engagement rates. To ensure digital growth, CRO provides marketers an opportunity to increase the rate of digital sales or conversions in a short span of time.

Remarketing

Remarketing is the digital marketing practice of showing ads to people who have previously visited a website. It’s done with an aim to inspire them to come back, but it can be used for other reasons.

Remarketing is so effective because it gives digital marketers an amazing ability to customize online ads. A marketer can tell Google’s advertising network exactly the kinds of people who are most likely to be interested in their products or services, and only those people will see their digital marketing ads.

Contextual Targeting

When digital marketers use digital marketing terms such as contextual targeting, they are talking about the practice of taking into account words that appear on the web page you’re visiting, as well as information about your web habits before you arrived at that page. Yes, digital marketers can tell what websites you’ve visited before arriving on a certain website using this digital marketing technique, but they don’t know (or care) whether it’s your personal or work computer — they just want to show you ads for the digital products or services that are most likely to catch your interest.

Unique Visitors

Unique visitors are digital marketers’ best friends. A digital marketer can quickly and easily measure how many people visit her site by counting unique visitors, which makes it easy for them to track web traffic growth over time.

Not only is this digital marketing statistic very straightforward to measure and understand, but it also has a huge impact on digital marketers who want their sites or blogs to become as popular as possible so they can attract more potential customers.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is digital marketing using search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo! SEM includes both paid search results (such as advertisements) shown in response to specific search queries and organic search results (such as unpaid listings from natural or unoptimized websites).

This kind of marketing is usually designed for search engines. SEM generally aims to bring the top, high-quality digital content to the top of a search engine’s results pages in order to maximize click-through and conversions.

Communities of digital marketers, such as affiliates or digital agencies, are especially likely to use SEM.

Call to Action (CTA)

The acronym CTA is one digital marketer should be very familiar with because it’s the term digital marketers use to describe a call to action. A call-to-action can simply be described as a message that encourages someone to do something, whether it’s making a purchase or filling out your contact form. It’s important digital marketers create CTAs that not only stand out but are also effective enough in convincing people to take action.

Pixel

Pixels are small, digital codes that can be used to track visitors on websites and social media platforms. They help marketers create tailored advertisements for their customers by understanding what content they have been viewing or interacting with. Pixels also allow advertisers to measure the success of their ads based on how many clicks they generate or which channels people view them in (such as Facebook).

There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to pixels; each pixel requires a certain amount of time and money invested before you see any results from your campaign so make sure you’re clear about how much traffic you need before investing in these strategies.

Keep in mind there are some privacy concerns surrounding using pixels because this technology enables companies to collect data using digital tags on digital platforms. While the use of digital marketing pixels is legal, digital marketers are required to follow federal and state laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) when collecting data from minors (anyone under the age of 13).

Digital marketers can track visitors without their knowledge through digital pixel tracking technologies. The most common uses for these digital ad markers are audience segmentation, retargeting campaigns, and email list management. Whenever you see a banner advertisement or pop-up ad in your browser, chances are it was placed there by a digital marketer using pixel technology to track your web behavior so they can serve you more personalized ads in the future — even if you don’t click these ads!

Here are some common pixels:

1. 1. • Google Analytics Pixel: Places digital code from Google onto web pages that track visitors for marketing purposes.
      • Facebook Pixel:  A digital code that allows Facebook to track digital marketing campaigns on its platform.
      • Instant Pixel: A digital code that results in the display of a pop-up advertisement when someone visits a specific website.
      • Paid Search Pixel: A digital code used for pay-per-click advertising campaigns to track visitors that click on sponsored websites.
      • Snapchat Pixel: A digital code that places digital markers into Snapchat web content, such as stories or ads, so digital marketers can measure how and where their content is displayed on this platform.
      • Twitter Tracking Pixel: A pixel that tracks Twitter users who visit your website after clicking your brand’s content shared within Twitter environments (stories, live video, etc.) in order to serve tailored advertisements to them.

Visit Duration

Visit duration refers to how long users spend on your website after visiting from an external site, such as Facebook or Google. It’s the digital marketing term for time spent on-page and is measured by dividing visits by time on page (in seconds).

For example, if you have 1,000 visits, but only 25 visitors stayed on your site longer than 5 minutes, then your visit duration is 50% at 5 minutes. Your digital marketing strategy should involve changing whatever content drives users away from staying on your site because this number has a major impact on other digital marketing measurements. For example, engagement time and bounce rate are both affected by visit duration.

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who leave your site from the entry page. This is calculated by determining how many people arrive via a search engine and then leave from the home page without accessing any other pages.

For instance, if 100 people visit a business’s website after clicking on a digital ad, but only 80 of those viewers leave the entry page (the homepage), then we calculate their bounce rate as 20%. That means 80% of digital marketers are leaving as soon as they reach your home page.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is a marketing technique that allows you to test different versions of a digital asset such, as an ad or an email, and see which one performs better.

For example, if you have a digital advertising campaign running on Facebook, you might change the wording in the ads – this would be an A/B test. You then measure the number of clicks, conversions, or other digital actions that these ads generate and compare them to see which ad performs better.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

KPIs are metrics that monitor and measure digital marketing results. A key performance indicator is a metric that indicates how well one thing has performed compared to another.

Examples of KPIs include leads, conversion rates, the share of voice/mind, search rankings, and more. The best KPIs are those you can track with digital analytics software. Make sure to use analytics software to track KPI metrics in order to understand how your marketing activity is performing over time.

Need more help?

Digital marketing terms are ever-changing in this industry, which can be difficult to understand for some. The digital marketing terms listed here are all key players in how marketers drive traffic and convert leads into sales.

Still, lost in the sauce? Let K2 Analytics Digital Marketing Agency help you! We know digital marketing inside and out, and we can provide digital marketing services, digital marketing strategies, and more. Whether it’s creating a digital presence for your business or understanding the key metrics in digital analytics – we’ve got your back with our expertise!