From SEM to GA, impressions to landing pages. Regardless of your background, qualifications or experience, you can be forgiven if you feel like you woke up one day and there were 50 new terms or "marketing jargon" that you had never heard of! 

As a business owner, knowing the extensive dictionary of marketing jargon is no easy task. Successful marketing of your business requires you to be able to talk the talk and walk the walk. 

This glossary of the most commonly used marketing jargon and acronyms will give you a better understanding of the industry and the confidence to speak your marketing mind.

Tip: Keep it as a bible for your reference; we almost guarantee you’ll need to refer back to some of these terms in future. 

We’re starting from the end of the alphabet. Here we go.

VR - Virtual Reality uses computer technology to create a simulated environment. Unlike traditional user interfaces, VR places the user inside an experience and 3D worlds. 

VMM - A Virtual Marketing Manager (VMM) provides senior marketing leadership for your business for a fraction of the cost of an in-house resource. VMMs are an extension of your business and the perfect fit for any businesses who already has, or has scope to add an in-house junior marketing resource. To find out more about how a VMM can help your business, read our recent blog, or get in touch with us today. 

Vlog - Stands for a video blog and refers to a type of blog where most or all of the content is in video form.

UI/UX - UI refers to user interface design, whilst UX refers to user experience design. These elements determine the functionality, usability and user adaptability of digital products and must work closely together. Optimising these elements are crucial to achieving a high conversion rate of your product/s.

UGC: User generated content is content which is created by users of an online system or service.

Tag - Tags allow social media users to engage with an individual or business by mentioning them in a post or comment. If the recipient's settings allow, a tag will also mean that the content will appear on their channels as well as your own.

Shares - When someone engages with your content by sharing it to their network. Sharing and re-sharing are done across digital and social channels.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page. 

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation is a way a company optimises its webpage allowing the website to rank higher on a search engine’s results page (SERP). The higher your ranking, typically more traffic is generated (if the keyword has traffic) and more targeted traffic.

PPC - Pay per click, a model of internet marketing in which advertiser pays each time one of their ads is clicked on, as opposed to “earning” the visits organically.

Organic Traffic - The term organic traffic refers to all visits to your website that are triggered by unpaid search results. In other words, a web user gets to your site by searching a query for example “best wine bar in Sydney”, your wine bar website in the search results and results in the visitor clicking on that link.

Metadata - A term that forms the backbone of any SEO strategy. Metadata for web pages include a description of the page’s contents, as well as keywords linked to that content. SEO is the process to build site rankings on the search engines. It is based on relevant keywords and phrases. By improving your metadata, you can work to expand your visibility on the search engines.

LTV - Lifetime value is the prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a particular customer.

Likes - A like is just that. An acknowledgement that you like what you see. Instagram is a social site built on likes (love hearts).

Keyword - Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is generally about. In the world of SEO, keywords are the words and phrases that searchers enter into google. Can also be known as "search queries”. 

Impressions - The number of times your content is displayed.

IM - Instant Messages are texts that are delivered in real-time. This can occur one-to-one or in group messages. Also known as DM and PM - Direct Messages or Private Messages.

Hashtags - A word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), used on social media websites to identify messages on a specific topic. This is most often used on Instagram and Twitter.

GTM - Google Tag Manager is a free user-friendly, web-based tool that manages and deploys marketing tags on your website (or mobile app). It allows you to add, edit and disable tags without modifying the code. 

GA - Google Analytics is a popular and free digital analytics software used to collect information from websites. It allows you to analyze in-depth detail about the visitors on your website, providing valuable insights that can help you to shape the success strategy of your business.

Engagement - Social media engagement measures the shares, likes and comments for an online business' social media efforts. In some cases, engagement can be the true measure of the success of a campaign.

CRO - Conversion rate optimisation. This is the process of improving your brands website to create the ultimate experience for visitors, resulting in optimal “conversion” points for the customer to connect with you. The conversion metric is determined by your goals. CRO could be driving submissions of your “contact us” form, completing a cost calculator, subscribing to a newsletter or purchasing a product.

CRM - Customer Relationship Management is a technology for managing all your company's relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. The goal is simple: Improve business relationships. CRM system examples include marketing, sales, customer service, and support. Some examples include HubSpot, Zoho and Agile. 

CPC - Cost per click. Also known as pay-per-click (PPC), cost per click (CPC) is a method used to bill based on the number of times a visitor clicks on an ad. For example, if a brand is running Facebook ads that have a CPC rate of 10 cents.  If the ad results in 1,000 click-throughs, it would cost the client $100 ($0.10 x 1000).

CTR - Click through rate. The simplest definition is that click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing your ad. CTR = Clicks/Impressions.

CPA- Cost per acquisition is an eCommerce marketing metric that measures the aggregate cost to acquire one paying customer on a campaign or channel level.

eDM - Electronic direct mail. An eDM campaign in its simplest form is focused on email send-outs, otherwise known as  ‘email blasts’. It involves the direct sending them email communications and promotional offers to a database you own.

DM - See IM above. 

Conversion - A conversion occurs when a visitor completes a desired goal, such as filling out a lead form or making a purchase. The percentage of total visitors that convert is called your conversion rate. Conversion rates can be used on channels such as social media, Google Pay-Per-Click, Display, Affiliate marketing and email.

Bitly - a free URL shortening app. They also link analytics if needed. Check it out here: https://bitly.com/. For example we can shorten this link: https://www.askmarketing.com.au/post/the-ask-social-tour-of-sydney to this https://bit.ly/2xA4CEA.

A/B Testing - Also known as split testing. A/B testing brings scientific methodology to marketing and removes any guesswork. It allows us as marketers, the ability to make a data-backed decision. A/B testing can be used across a range of channels and using many variables. For example. In email marketing, you can A/B (or split) test based on the time of day, or day of the week. You could also test based on the subject line.

AdWords - The technology behind Google’s Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It allows the targeting of advertising to specific search criteria. These ads appear above and to the right of the organic searches.

API - Stands for Application Programming Interface. An interface that allows software applications to interact with other applications.

AI Marketing - Artificial intelligence is an area of computer science which is based on machine learning. It can be used to boost the return on investment (ROI) of marketing campaigns by using big data analytics, machine learning, and other processes to gain insight into your target audience.

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