In the ever-evolving digital landscape, exploring key marketing terms is crucial to ensure success. Whether you are an aspiring candidate to build a career or a professional working with a brand, knowing these 25 essential digital marketing terms gives you a competitive edge. Let’s dive in!
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Top 25 Digital Marketing Terms to Know to Drive Success
Listed below are the top 25 digital marketing terms that you must learn to make an informed approach towards driving success:
1. A/B Testing
It refers to a testing process of two variants of content with a target audience to know which performs better. It enables you to understand your target audience's likes and dislikes about your website, advertising platforms or social channels. This is mostly used to test email subject lines, e-newsletters, social ads, calls-to-action (CTAs), and landing pages to determine which variant has the greatest potential to boost conversions.
2. Brand Positioning
Establishing a brand and increasing its awareness through the right content, the visual design of ads, logos, promotion, social media marketing, etc. is called brand positioning. This marketing strategy helps build reputation and establish their brand identity while spreading their value proposition to the customers. It is used to create strong associations between the brand and its value proposition.
3. Conversion Rate
This is one of the most popular digital marketing terms that marketers use to measure the percentage of users who take a desired action. It can be making a purchase, filling out online forms, signing up, or clicking a link. Marketers calculate the rate by dividing the number of the audience by the total number of 'convert' users. It is considered one of the most common parameters to determine the performance of any digital campaign. Though a good conversion rate varies significantly by industry, the average range is typically between 2%-5%.
4. Cost Per Click or CPC
Cost per click or CPC is a popular advertising revenue model in the digital marketing world that marketers use to charge advertisers depending on the number of times visitors click on an ad that is displayed on their sites. It is also known as pay-per-click (PPC). Most marketers use a third party to collaborate with advertisers. The largest names here are Google Ads, which offers a platform called Google AdSense for this revenue-generating model.
5. Cost Per Thousand or CPM
Another well-known digital marketing term that determines the cost of an online advertisement per 1000 impressions on a web page. This pricing model is budget-friendly and is used to increase brand reach and recognition and boost lead generation. It is different from page views. Here, an impression means the advertisement on the webpage loaded and received a view. CPM is ideal for building brand recognition and spreading messages on high-traffic websites.
6. Customer Relationship Management or CRM
Customer Relationship Management is a tool or system of tools that help marketers and brands manage interactions with existing and potential customers using software or technology. It helps aggregate, organise, and analyse data to effectively handle relationships with consumers throughout the lifecycle. Using CRM software, brands can keep track of customer information across various touchpoints (marketing campaigns, forms, support interactions, buying patterns) and strengthen connections and marketing strategies.
7. Call-to-Action or CTA
It is one of the widespread digital marketing terms that directs the reader or visitor toward the next desired step or action designed by the marketer. Some calls to action buttons are "Buy Now," “Download,” “Get Started,” “Subscribe,” or "Read More." Through techniques such as A/B testing, businesses determine which CTAs are most effective in motivating the reader to take a specific action. The nature of the CTA varies significantly based on the web page's nature. For example, a charity's monthly e-newsletter may have a CTA "Donate Now" and an educational platform may have a CTA "Apply Now."
8. Conversion Rate Optimisation or CRO
CRO refers to the procedure of boosting the number of users who perform a desired action. These actions include clicking on a link, filling out a form, subscribing, or signing up for a service. Businesses use this marketing technique to increase the percentage of visitors transforming into paid customers. CRO can offer a better user experience, generate leads, and close deals within a short span.
9. Engagement Rate
As the term itself defines, it is a metric to measure the involvement of the target audience with the brand's content. Evaluating engagement rate is complicated as a user's engagement changes according to context and medium. For a website, the factors that matter are average page views, shares, and bounce rate. For Facebook, clicks, reactions, comments and shares are considered to determine the engagement rate. In the same way, Twitter measures engagement through retweets, likes, replies, and comments, while Pinterest tracks user engagement based on pins, clicks, and comments.
10. The Funnel
A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the customer journey. It displays how visitors move from exploring a brand's product or services to making purchases and becoming loyal consumers. Marketing funnels simplify customer journeys, helping businesses develop more effective strategies. These funnels help brands understand their audience, identify and address weaknesses, customise marketing approaches and contextualise results.
11. Affiliate Marketing
It is a popular revenue-sharing marketing method, one of the well-known digital marketing terms that helps affiliates earn a considerable amount of money. Affiliates, such as bloggers or YouTubers, promote a brand's products or services to help it meet its sales targets. As a result, affiliates earn a percentage of that particular sale. As per the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the model will continue to grow in the coming years. Some popular affiliate networks and programs are Amazon Associates, Flipkart Affiliate, etc.
12. Content Strategy
As the name suggests, it is a comprehensive plan for creating, uploading, and managing your content for digital marketing campaigns. Here, the content can be in various forms, such as articles, videos, podcasts, blog posts, e-books, guides, social media posts, etc. According to experts, content strategy is a crucial part of digital marketing. They also recommend updating the strategy when launching new products or services and identifying customer segments.
13. Cost per Acquisition or CPA
Another pricing model that bills only when sales, leads or conversions are generated. It is a marketing metric that assesses the aggregate costs to acquire one paying customer. Cost Per Acquisition helps businesses know how much they can afford to pay to generate leads and drive new customers. It is a vital measurement to ensure online success, far different from CAC or Cost of Acquiring Customer technique by its granular application.
14. Click Through Rate or CTR
It is a percentage indicating how often visitors who notice your ad of free product listing in emails, ads, websites, etc. end up clicking it. CTR is useful when marketers need to gauge how well your keywords, free listings, and ads are performing. Digital marketing executives calculate the percentage using the formula: (Number of people who clicked on the ad / Number of people who saw the ad) × 100. For instance, if you had 7 clicks and 100 impressions, your CTR would be 7%.
15. Email Filtering
It is a filtering technique that organises and categorises emails depending on a particular word or phrase. It helps automatically block unwanted spam and make inbox clutter-free. Marketers use this technique to offer an additional layer of security by detecting spam and blocking malware and other threats. Professionals use effective filters to customise rules and settings to meet your specific needs.
16. Go-to-Market Strategy or GTM
It is a thorough blueprint brands use to launch a new service or product to market. Developed to eliminate the risk associated with a new product, a general GTM strategy includes a marketing plan, target market profiles, concrete sales and distribution strategy.
17. Keyword Stuffing
It is one of the widely-used digital marketing terms that refers to the practice of placing too many keywords in one content. Some markets do so to improve visibility on SERPs. However, as per Google, it is a harmful tactic for attracting viewers.
18. Key Performance Indicators or KPI
Key performance indicators are helpful to measure progress towards pre-defined marketing goals. These indicators are unique website visitors, form conversion rate, cost per lead, closing rate, marketing qualified leads generated, cost per sales qualified lead, customer retention, marketing ROI, etc.
19. Lead Generation
It is a process of identifying and attracting potential customers for products or services. Marketers generate leads to nurture visitor’s interest in the products and services that their brand is offering and convert them into paying consumers.
20. Paid Ads
Businesses leverage the power of this strategy to generate website traffic that ensures the content will be displayed on the top of the SERP. Paid ads include two main categories: social media ads and display ads.
21. Lifetime Value or LTV
It is also known as Customer Lifetime Value or CLV. Marketers use it to determine the impact of one sale across the customer lifecycle.
22. Search Engine Marketing or SEM
It is a digital marketing tactic designed to improve a website's visibility in SERPS through paid ads and unpaid results. SEM depends on keywords and focuses on generating leads, increasing revenue and growing your business.
23. Target Audience
Target audience refers to the consumers who most likely buy your product or hire services. And so, these people should see your ad campaigns. Target audiences are determined by considering factors like gender, age, income, interests, location, etc.
24. Return on Ad Spend or ROAS
Another performance indicator that helps to track the success of ad campaigns and determine the ROI for paid marketing. ROAS helps to determine which practices are working and how to improve them to reach the desired goal.
25. Relevancy and Quality Score
It is a parameter showcased on a scale from 1 to 10. Quality score enables digital marketers to measure the quality and relevance of landing pages and Google ads. A higher score means ads and landing pages are more relevant to viewers than competing ads.
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Conclusion
Mastering these 25 core digital marketing terms helps you build the strong foundation needed to excel in this competitive sector. To deepen your expertise more, consider enrolling in an online digital marketing course. Enroll in Amity Online’s MBA course with digital marketing specialization and drive real results in your marketing career.
