At a leading digital marketing agency like Sage Island, we don’t just use buzzwords: we live them. Staying up to date on the latest search marketing trends and technologies is what we do, and its how we deliver dynamite results for our clients. The face of digital marketing is always changing, but our highly skilled team of internet marketing specialists, social media strategists, and web developer extraordinaires are always a step ahead. But to our clients, and to anyone not in the digital marketing industry, it can get confusing! That’s why we’ve outlined this helpful guide to digital marketing jargon below.
Conversion: The act of converting a user from a visitor into a customer. A conversion could be a sale, but it could also be a phone call, or even the act of filling out a form on your website. If your website doesn’t have a high rate of converting visitors into customers, it’s time to revisit your digital marketing strategy!
Organic traffic: Web traffic resulting from utilizing SEO best practices, rather than paid advertising
Impression: The number of times a particular page or post is seen by users. (Unique impressions refer to how many users see a particular page or post.) You can find out your impressions (and a whole lot of other nifty data) by using an analytics tracking tool such as Google Analytics. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter also have analytics components. As data goes, impressions are an important baseline to compare other metrics to (such as conversions and engagement).
SEM: Search engine marketing. This umbrella term is used to describe any and all marketing techniques that have the goal of website promotion. SEM includes the acquisition of both organic and paid traffic.
SEO: Search engine optimization. This means optimizing your site content, images, and link structure with the goal of making it more visible to search engines and increasing rank in search engine results. SEO is a broad term, and is made up of many small processes that together will increase your organic traffic.
PPC: Pay-Per-Click advertising. The most common of paid search techniques, this type of advertising charges by the click. Advertisers compile a list of keywords that will trigger their ads to show on search results pages, and they pay each time a user clicks on their ad. The amount they pay per click depends on the competition—other companies bidding on the same keywords.
Content: Content refers to a piece of information published on the internet (written content, images, videos, etc.). There are so many misconceptions about what content is supposed to do, but it should have the express goal of attracting and engaging a specific audience. Written content should also contain keywords used to search for that brand’s specific products/services. Content is a most crucial part of getting people to your website—publish something they want to view!
Brand authority: Brand authority is the reputation that top brands have with consumers. Beyond just brand recognition, brand authority happens when a brand has a reputation for excellence, is known as an industry expert, and is all but synonymous with the products/services they offer.
Brand trust: Brand trust occurs when customers believe in a brand, and believe that using a brand’s products or services will create a positive outcome.
User-generated content: Instead of using their own content to attract users, many brands also post user-generated content on their website or social media to humanize their brand and engage users. For instance, Starbucks recently ran their #WhiteCupContest, in which customers created artwork on Starbucks cups and they shared it on their social media pages. So awesome! A more common example of sharing user-generated content is when brands retweet their followers.
CMS: Content Management System. CMSs, such as WordPress, are easy-to-use applications designed to build, edit, and manage a website (as opposed to building it from scratch in code). The functionality of CMSs help make web design and development what it is today.
PageRank: Google’s algorithm used to rank websites on search engine results pages (or SERPs) from most important to least important. Trust us, you want a high PageRank.
Engagement: This is one of the most used buzzwords in social media marketing, and for good reason. Engagement occurs when users interact with a brand’s content. The term is most often used in reference to social media engagement. Did your Facebook post get a lot of Likes and comments? Did you just have a conversation with your brand’s followers on Twitter? That’s engagement! And it’s key to users not just buying your brand, but liking your brand enough to keep coming back. And for us social media junkies here at Sage Island, it’s just fun!
Landing page: There are many different definitions for landing pages out there, but generally speaking, a landing page is a page that is designed for a specific product/service and contains a call to action. They serve as points of entry into your website from search results, paid ads, social media or email marketing.
Buyer persona: A general profile of the type of person ideally interested in your brand is called a buyer persona. Most brands attract several major buyer personas. For instance, if you’re a local coffee shop, your buyer personas might include college students, 40-60 year old educated business people, and upwardly mobile Millennials. The more specific buyer personas get, the more targeted your marketing strategy is. It’s important to identify key buyer personas early in the strategizing process so you can tailor your marketing campaign to appeal to the right target audience(s).
ROI: Return on investment. As it relates to digital marketing, ROI is the profit turned after you’ve invested in a marketing campaign. Given that more and more consumers are buying products and researching brands online, your company’s website and online presence is one of the best things you can invest in to see a high ROI.
If digital marketing buzzwords are giving you a headache, or if you just need some help digesting the information provided here, feel free to reach out to our team at Sage Island. Our marketing specialists stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies, and can give your marketing strategy the competitive edge it needs to stay ahead of the curve. Contact us today to get started.