Digital Marketing Acronyms You Should Know
There's nothing like a new acronym. And as marketers, we're always looking for creative ways to connect the dots. If you've ever felt like digital marketing is a maze of acronyms and abbreviations, you're not alone. It can be challenging to grasp as a whole, but add to the fact that there seem to be millions of digital advertising acronyms and marketing abbreviations for every situation at any given time; it can be downright confusing. That's why we assembled this great list of some of the most common digital marketing acronyms for your reference. So if you want to keep up with the acronyms in digital marketing, this list is for you!
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of digital marketing that involves promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results through organic and paid link results. SEM includes two significant areas: organic SEO, which uses natural search engine optimization techniques to improve a site's rankings on SERPs and paid advertising via pay-per-click campaigns, which are managed with optimization.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is an acronym you'll hear a lot in regards to SEO. It refers to the list of results that a search engine returns for a specific query. The SERP is primarily determined by Google's algorithm (a set of rules used to determine rankings) but can also be influenced by other things such as social media shares or links from other websites.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a procedure that will help you rank higher in search engines. With SEO, you can attract more visitors to your website, which means more business. SEO efforts can benefit the user search experience and the page's ranking by featuring content that fulfills a user's search needs. This includes using relevant keywords in titles, meta descriptions, and headings and featuring descriptive URLs with keywords, among other SEO best practices.
Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytics resource offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google Analytics allows you to measure your marketing performance, so you can make informed decisions about allocating resources and improving results. Using Google Analytics, you are able to track everything from how much traffic your website receives to where the website traffic is coming from and how your visitors behave. You can also monitor social media activities, track mobile app traffic, identify trends and integrate other data sources.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurements that track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. They are used to measure your marketing efforts' success and help you decide where to allocate resources moving forward. Let's say your goal is increasing sales for your company by 20%. You would create a KPI that tracks these goals so that you can see whether or not they're being met over time. If they are, then good job! But if they're not, then maybe it's time to re-evaluate what needs changing with your strategy!
The Return on Investment (ROI) is the ratio of your profit to the Investment required to generate that profit. It tells you whether a marketing campaign was successful in terms of its ability to create ROI for your business. If a campaign's ROI is negative, it costs more than it has earned and should be avoided in future. Return on Investment = Profit/Total Cost; to calculate this ratio, divide your total profit by all costs associated with running the campaign, including production fees if relevant and express this as a percentage.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) measures the amount of people who click on your ads. The CTR is the ratio of clicks on an ad to impressions. If a person sees your ad 100 times but only clicks once, the CTR would be 1%. This means that while this person saw your ad, they didn't click on it (or maybe they did and didn't notice). The higher your CTR is, the more relevant your ads are to what people want to see. The lower your CTR is, the less likely people will click on them—thus possibly buy from you or learn about who you are and what you do!
Pay Per Click (PPC) is a form of online advertising. With PPC, the advertiser pays a fee each time someone clicks on an ad. Many people are familiar with PPC because it's the most popular form of internet advertising and has been around since 2005. Unlike other forms of paid search marketing, such as contextual ads and email marketing that use keywords, PPC uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding models to determine how much you'll pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Unique Visitor (UV) is a metric that measures the number of unique visitors to your website. UV is calculated by counting all visits from users who are new and not returning within a designated timeframe.
The calculation works like this: You start with the total number of pageviews on your site. Then, you subtract any page views that were made by returning visitors. Finally, divide that number by two because there are two ways to track UVs—by day or month. This will give you an accurate calculation of the unique visitors to your website.
User Experience (UX) is a quality feature that measures how users interact with a web interface and digital marketing. Nowadays, an excellent user experience is the most critical thing. UX measures the user's first encounter with the brand or product to turning the user into a potential customer. UX can improve the recruitment of new users, guarantee repeat visits and increase your engagement.
Cost-per-click (CPC) is a method of online advertising where an advertiser pays a publisher when a visitor clicks on an ad. Advertisers pay each time someone clicks on its text links or displays on search engines. The publisher's revenue depends on the number of visitors visiting its site and clicking on the ads. CPC is a prevalent form of online advertising. It can be used for primary and supplemental products and services and lead generation purposes.
Content Management System (CMS) is a web application designed to make creating, editing and managing a website easy for non-technical users. CMS software applications allow users to collaborate in creating, editing and producing digital content. CMS is evolving from just helping you launch digital content to a more robust system that is core to managing an overall digital experience across many different channels, such as email, mobile apps, social media, websites, and more.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is software that helps you easily track all communications and nurture relationships with your leads and customers. A CRM can replace the multitude of spreadsheets, databases and apps that many businesses patch together to track client data. The results in more organization, efficiency, better time management, and impressed clients.
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the use of social media platforms to promote a product or service, not unlike traditional advertising and marketing but with a particular focus on building customer relationships. When using SMM, you generally want to reach as many people as possible to build awareness about your brand or company. SMM can be used internally (to connect with employees) and externally (to connect directly with customers).
As you can see, there are so many acronyms in the world of digital marketing, and this isn't even half of them! Acronyms can be a great way to save time when writing and make your content more engaging for your readers. Remember that not all acronyms can be used interchangeably with their complete form. So if you want to avoid confusion or misunderstandings, make sure you know which acronym stands for what before using it! Speaking of acronyms, at Encompass Online Marketing Ltd., we specialize in them! If you need SEO, SEM, PPC, SMM, or any kind of digital marketing services, we can help! Contact us today for all your digital marketing needs!
Written By: Trenton Ross