Essential Marketing Terms You Should Know

If you’re navigating the world of marketing, understanding key terminology is crucial. Here's a breakdown of some must-know marketing terms. Our Marketing Strategists are here to help you understand how each of these features can impact your business. Contact us today to learn more!
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Reporting Terminology

• Completion Rate — the percentage of people who heard an audio ad or viewed a video ad all the way through
• Conversions — specified actions someone takes after clicking on an ad (such as a phone call, submitting a web form, a purchase, etc.)
• CPM — Cost Per Mille (thousand). In other words, this is how much you are spending per one thousand impressions. So a CPM of $8 means that for every $8 you spend, you are getting 1,000 impressions.
• CTR — Click Through Rate. This is the percentage of people who clicked an ad when exposed to it.
• Frequency — the number of times people saw an ad (average).
• Impressions — the number of exposures to the ad (NOTE: This is not equivalent the number of people who saw it, just the number of times it was seen).
• Reach — the number of people who are exposed to the ad.

General Marketing Terminology

• Attribution — this refers to measuring which marketing channel(s) are credited with contributing to a conversion. There are different attribution models such as first touch attribution (the first material the user encountered gets credit even if they saw several ads after that) or last touch attribution (the most recent material the user encountered gets credit).
• Baseline — this term refers to a measurement of what happened before a campaign started or before a major change was made. This is used for comparison with the campaign or change to see what impact it had on the results.
• Bottom of funnel — this refers to advertising that is aimed at driving conversions and other goals that are more ROI focused.
• Buyer Persona — A buyer persona is a fictitious profile of your customers. This is based on common traits your customers share. The purpose of the persona is to provide a guide as you work on your messaging to give you a person to target your messaging to reach.
• CTA — call to action. Common CTAs include a webpage to visit, a form to submit, a product to buy, or a phone number to call. A single message should contain one CTA to provide a clear next step.
• Marketing channels — these refer to the platforms used to disperse marketing messages. For example, if a client is using search, display and DOOH to spread their messaging, they are using 3 channels.
• Maturity — this term is used to refer to a specific rating for a business. For example, a business might be rated at a level 3 out of 5 maturity for their sales process. This means that out of what they think is possible, they are a bit over halfway there.
• Organic — this refers to non paid marketing messages such as posting on social media channels or emails. Note: unpaid does not factor who is paid to create the content. It just refers to the distribution of the content.
• Top of funnel — this refers to advertising that is aimed at driving brand awareness and other goals that are focused on widely dispersing messaging with your audience.

Website Terminology

• Above the Fold — this term refers to content on a website that users can see without scrolling.
• Alt Text — descriptive text that provides context for images, graphs, charts, and other visual elements in digital content.
• Bounce Rate — this refers to the website traffic that came to the webpage but quickly left. This usually happens because the webpage provides an experience that is frustrating to the user.
• Heat Map — a heat map is a visual that tracks where people are interacting with an ad or website. The map uses colors to associate more or less interaction. By looking at the heatmap, you can determine which parts of the page or ad people are interacting with most.
• Landing Page — a landing page is a special webpage that is not found in the navigation menu of a website. Instead this page is used as the “landing” for users who click on specific advertisements.
• SEO — Search Engine Optimization. This refers to the practices of optimizing websites or webpages so that they are more likely to appear towards the top of relevant search results.
• Site Map — a site map is an outline of a website, like a blueprint. It indicates which pages will exist and generally what will live on those pages.