Advertising Glossary: Advertising Words Made Simple

Digital marketing has an incredible return for those who have a clear understanding of the medium and implement best practices. Social media alone helps 78% of salespeople who use it to perform better than their peers. Digital marketing can have even higher success rates, especially when combined with your other channels. Let’s get familiar with these common digital marketing sales terms.

1. A/B Testing: The process of testing one ad against another. A/B testing can help you test all elements of your campaign, including colors, images, calls to action, and more to see which lands best with consumers.
2. Analytics: The process of collecting data and using it to influence your marketing efforts.
3. Automation: Using artificial intelligence and technology to automatically send out communications to your consumers. For example, you might choose to use a chatbot to communicate with customers on your website or use email automation to send out specific emails when customers take present actions or visit certain pages.
4. Attribution: The process of assigning which ads or elements contributed to a sale.
5. Backlinking: Placing links back to your site, which can help build your authority in your industry and raise your search engine ranking.
6. Bounce Rate: The number of people who leave your website after visiting a specific page for a specific amount of time.
7. Call-to-Action: The specific, action-oriented instruction you give customers, often at the end of an email or piece of content. The call-to-action lets customers know what steps you want them to take next, whether connecting with your business through email, asking a question, or making a purchase.
8. Click-Through Rate: The percentage of people who click through a specific ad.
9. Competitive Analysis: A competitive analysis considers the elements your competitors use in their campaigns against your strengths and weaknesses as a business. This information can help you determine your place in your industry as well as giving you a better idea of what you need to do in order to match your competitors' performance.
10. Content Marketing: The process of creating useful content that provides value to consumers. Content marketing can help build your reputation and authority as well as increasing brand awareness.
11. Conversion Rate: The percentage of customers who convert, usually either making a purchase or signing up for your email list, after interacting with a specific ad or piece of content.
12. Cost Per Click: The cost per click on an ad.
13. Cost Per Thousand: Also described as CPM, or cost per mille, the cost per thousand is your cost for a thousand clicks/view of your ad.
14. Customer Lifetime Value: The value a customer has to your business over the course of all of their interactions with you. Calculating customer lifetime value includes looking at the average value of a customer's purchases, how often that customer purchases, and how long that customer remains with your business.
15. Dashboards: A marketing dashboard that displays all the information related to your campaign in one location.
16. Email Marketing: The process of sending out emails to your customers in order to generate business.
17. Engagement Rate: The number of consumers who actively engage with specific ads. This could include clicks, likes, shares, or comments.
18. Impressions: The number of consumers who have viewed an ad. Impressions do not require users to take any action, and they do not necessarily indicate that a consumer interacted with the ad.
19. Key Performance Indicators: Key performance indicators (KPIs) track the specific attributes of a campaign that you consider important, allowing you to clearly establish your goals.
20. Keywords: The specific words and phrases used to search for information within your industry.
21. Landing Page: A page designed for a particular campaign, at which a consumer arrives when first visiting your website from your direction.
22. Meta Descriptions: Short descriptions that detail the content of an image, video, or webpage that gives a brief overview of what is included.
23. Organic Search Traffic: Search traffic that naturally arrives at your business's website through a web search.
24. OTT: Over-the-top television, or streaming services. This on-demand content shows users what they want to see, when they want to see it.
25. Paid Advertising: Ads you have to pay to run.
26. Pay Per Click: Ads you pay for according to how many people click on them.
27. Retargeting: Targeting ads to consumers who have interacted with your business in the past.
28. ROI: Return on investment, or the increased business you receive thanks to your marketing efforts.
29. Segmentation: Breaking up your target audience into specific parts, or segments, to target each one more effectively.
30. SEO: Search engine optimization, or the process of increasing your search ranking and making your page more highly visible.
31. SEM: Search engine marketing or the process of placing ads directly on search pages.

Digital marketing can be a complex process. When you understand these terms, however, you can use that information to help you create better, more effective campaigns that do a better job of meeting your overall marketing goals.