Digital Marketing Demystified: 7 Key Terms to Know

Demystifying Popular Marketing Jargon

Looking to enlist the services of a digital marketing pro to boost your brand’s fortunes? You probably have a basic sense of the principles in play – the need to understand your audience, set clear goals, and choose methods best suited to accomplish the task at hand.

But, as in every industry, digital marketing does have its share of insider jargon – especially when it comes to the terminology used to evaluate the performance of your brand’s marketing strategy. And while these specialized terms are certainly useful to professionals, they can often be confusing to clients who simply want a better idea of whether their brand’s marketing is on target.

So, let’s take a moment to go over a few of the more common terms you might encounter when working with a marketing pro…

Conversion
A generic term describing any specific, measurable, and positive action taken by a potential customer in response to your marketing efforts. Opening an email, viewing a promotional video, and registering for a user account are just a few examples of actions that could be considered conversions depending on your business goals.

Impression
A key metric in social media marketing and pay-per-click advertising, measuring any time a user sees a particular piece of digital content. Impressions are not linked to user action – simply by your content loading on a user’s screen.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of impressions that resulted in a user clicking on a specific link. Clickthrough rate is useful in determining the effectiveness of web, email, or social media content, and is especially relevant when evaluating pay-per-click ad campaigns.

Engagement Rate
A vital metric used in social media marketing, measuring the number of comments, shares, and reactions a specific piece of content receives, out of the total number of impressions.

Call to Action (CTA)
A targeted directive urging your audience to take a desired action. CTAs use specific language to achieve their goals, and in digital media they can take many forms – whether an image, button, banner, or even just plain text.

Bounce Rate
The percentage of visits to your website that result in the user leaving right away, without clicking on any links or interacting with the site in any way.

A/B Testing
Also called split testing or bucket testing, this is the practice of showing two different versions of something to audiences to see which performs better in relation to a specific conversion goal. Marketers use A/B testing to fine-tune email content, pay-per-click ads, webpages, and much more.

We know industry lingo (and this is far from a comprehensive list) can be baffling, even overwhelming, at times. Working with a marketing agency doesn’t have to be! At Rosie’s Creative, straight talk and clear communication are at the heart of our client-focused approach to digital marketing – always have been, always will be. Want to learn more about how our approach can boost your business or nonprofit? Contact Rosie’s Creative today – your first consultation is always free!