Digital marketing is expected to become a 264.15 billion USD industry by 2030. Thus, businesses need to be familiar with the concept of marketing and the factors involved in creating a robust marketing strategy. However, if you’re just starting with your online marketing career, you may find it difficult to catch up with all the latest digital marketing terms. If that’s the case, this guide is for you!
This blog piece covers the 10 most important terms in digital marketing and shares a complete glossary to help you polish up your knowledge.
The Top 10 Digital Marketing Terms You Should Learn in 2023
We have created this ultimate digital marketing terms 101 guide to help you out! Instead of focusing on common and basic terms, it contains abbreviations with good substance.
1. Online Reputation Management (ORM)
Online reputation management or ORM, builds customers’ trust in a brand by eliminating negative remarks and promoting positive content. ORM strategies monitor search engine results and social media activity to address and mitigate negative promotions, which change people’s perceptions of a brand.
ORM strategies are implemented in three phases:
- The Reputation Management Phase: The reputation management team intervenes and tracks brand reputation across the entire internet
- The Recovery Phase: The team creates and implements brand authority redeeming strategies and aligns them with SEO optimization, social media content, and brand objectives
- The Monitoring and Controlling Phase: New threatening material can appear at any time. The ORM team constantly monitors the brand’s digital footprint to protect them from malicious actions and content
2. Call to Action (CTA)
A call to action or CTA is a statement (mostly but not necessarily at the end of a content piece) that compels the reader to perform a specific action. Effective CTAs are concise, to the point, and very clear in their purpose. Marketers create different types of CTAs, tailoring them to the user intent. Various types of calls to action are:
- Lead Generation to turn visitors into promising leads
- Form Submission to get newsletter or other subscriptions
- “Read More” CTA to entice readers to visit the brand’s website to finish a report or article
- Product or Service Discovery to promote newly launched products or services
- Social Sharing to allow people to share your posts or blogs on their social media accounts
- Lead Nurturing to promote a free offer or upcoming sale
- Close The Sale to turn leads into customers
- Event Promotion to create awareness of an upcoming business event
3. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-Through Rate or CTR measures how many people saw an ad and the number of clicks it received. This measuring unit is important in checking the effectiveness of PPC campaigns. If the number of clicks is lower than the number of views, the campaign is not engaging enough to create the expected outcomes. A low CTR also means the company resources are going to waste as it doesn’t receive a good return on investment. However, you should know the average click-through rate of every industry. This is because whether a CTR is good or bad depends on this factor.
CTR Calculation Formula:
CTR = (Number of Clicks/Number of Views) x 100
4. Customer Retention Rate (CRR)
Customer retention rate (CRR) or churn rate, is the number of customers that remain loyal to a brand after a specific period. CRR helps the brand understand what strategies are effective in gaining customer loyalty. A low CRR shows that the business is running successfully and it has a trusty customer base responsible for a set amount of sales.
CRR Calculation Formula:
CRR = [(E-N)/S] x 100
- E: Customers acquired during a specific period
- S: Number of customers at the beginning of the period
- N: Number of remaining customers at the end of the period
5. Cost Per Action (CPA)
Cost per action or CPA is a digital payment method for advertisement marketing. Based on CPA, you charge advertising platforms only if the customer converts after performing a specified action. All specified actions are related to conversions, such as sales, link clicks, and newsletter subscriptions. CPA allows you to control advertising costs, especially if you have a limited budget. In addition, you can easily track the return on investment or ROI across multiple advertising channels and check the marketing campaign’s effectiveness.
CPA Calculation Formula:
CPA = (Total Cost of Conversions/Total Number of Conversions)
6. Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost per click (CPC) is an online advertising model. According to this model, businesses have to pay fees every time a person clicks on their advertisement. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are one of the main examples of CPC. In CPC marketing campaigns, you already know how many ad clicks you will get on your marketing budget. CPC is divided into two types:
- The advertiser has to pay the same amount for every click.
- The advertiser pays different prices based on the keywords.
CPC Calculation Formula:
CPC = (Total cost of clicks/total number of clicks)
7. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management or CRM works on creating an excellent and long-lasting relationship between customers and companies. CRM automation tools collect customer data and group them based on age, interest, and location. This helps you create personalized marketing campaigns for each group and receive a better return on investment (ROI).
CRM ROI Calculation Formula:
CRM ROI = (Net Profit Through CRM/Total Investment in CRM) x 100
8. Cost Per Mille (CPM)
Cost per mile, cost per thousand, or CPM measures how many people have been positively affected by a marketing campaign. However, the total number of impacted people is tracked through thousand. As a marketer, you use CPM to calculate the final cost of the ad per 1,000 impressions. Impressions are the total number of ads displayed across different websites. CPM ads do not have a set cost, as marketers bid on long-tail and short-tail keywords.
CPM Calculation Formula:
CPM = (Total Cost of Ad Campaign/Total Number of Impressions)
9. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization or CRO is a digital marketing technique to increase the number of website visitors that convert into customers by completing the desired action. The conversion goal varies depending on a company’s goals and objectives. Different conversion goals can be:
- Increased sales
- Received newsletter subscription sign-ups
- Retained customers on the website for a specific amount of time
- Downloaded content or multimedia files
CRO Calculation Formula:
CRO = (Number of Conversions/Total Number of Website Visitors) x 100
10. Google Tag Manager (GTM)
Google tag manager (GTM) is a cost-free tag management system that helps you (marketers) deploy, track, and collect data for marketing campaigns. GTM also allows you to add code snippets on your business websites and mobile application. With GTM, you can track conversion rates, website analytics, and retarget marketing campaigns without using external webmasters and intervention tools.
Google tag manager works alongside Google Analytics, where the first one deploys and tracks code while the other uses that code to track conversions. GTM also contains various code snippets that remove the need to manually edit, remove, and add new coding tags.
Other Common Digital Marketing Terms
While we just reviewed some high-value digital marketing key terms you needed to know in 2023, these terms are not the only ones you will encounter as a digital marketer. That is why you should check out the terms mentioned below to ensure you don’t feel left out when a senior tosses out other terms as well.
1. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer lifetime value, CLV or LTV, is the final estimate of how much revenue a customer’s buying behavior has generated. This revenue estimate is calculated from the time a customer makes their first purchase. LTV ratio focuses on the commercial side of the relationship between the customer and the brand. Through LTV, businesses can learn whether customers’ buying behavior is strengthening or not. It helps companies reflect, understand, and change things that can negatively influence a customer’s buying journey.
LTV Calculation Formula:
LTV = [average customer spending x numbers of purchases x average length of relationship (in months or years)]
2. Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
Return on ad spend or ROAS is a type of key performance indicator (KPI) of digital web and mobile marketing campaigns. It measures the final revenue amount that is earned from the campaign. Unlike other measuring systems, ROAS calculates the return on investment on each dollar spent on advertisement. This way, it is easier to understand whether a campaign was successful or not. The best thing about ROAS is that it is applicable on a higher and granular basis. You can measure the performance of an ad, marketing strategy, and ad campaign at different deployment levels.
ROAS Calculation Formula:
ROAS = (Net income or revenue generated from the ads/total cost of ads) x 100
3. Domain Authority/Page Authority (DA/PA)
Domain authority and page authority or DA and PA, are nearly identical metrics developed by MOZ. The primary function of these indicators is to predict how well a website or a web page ranks on search engines through a scoring system. Even though these terms are interlinked very closely, they do have a slight difference between them. DA score shows how a domain as a whole will rank on SERP. Meanwhile, the PA score is based on specific web pages and how they affect the final search engine ranking of the website.
A good DA score is around 50 to 60, and a good PA score should be near 100. However, it is very challenging to increase the PA score above 100. Another important thing to consider while measuring DA/PA scores is to check your competitor’s score to try and stay ahead or up your marketing strategies.
DA/PA Score Calculation:
DA/PA calculation includes multiple factors, such as linking the root domain and the total number of links. The exact DA/PA score is only measurable through the MOZ machine learning algorithm.
4. Bounce Rate (BR)
Bounce rate or BR is used to create web traffic analysis. It shows the ratio of people visiting a website and leaving without opening other web pages from the same site. For example, if a user visits your website and closes the tab instantly, your bounce rate will increase. A high bounce rate shows the search engine that a user had an unpleasant or bad experience that cut short their online visit. Some factors that increase bounce rate are:
- Poor website design
- Slow site architecture
- Cluttered website content
- Bad web performance
- Page loading issues
- Poor core web vital scores
- Mobile irresponsive website design
Bounce Rate (BR) Calculation Formula:
BR = Number of Single-Page Sessions/Total Number of Session On the Website
5. Business to Business (B2B)
Business to business or B2B is a form of business that occurs between a wholesaler and a retailer or a manufacturer and a wholesaler. In B2B, companies supply services or products to other companies instead of offering them to an individual buyer. B2B marketing is only subjected to industry experts. Therefore, it is straightforward and informational instead of focusing on creating a bottom-line revenue impact. B2B marketing strategies also require thoughtful planning, execution, and management to stand out from the competitors.
6. Business to Consumer (B2C)
Business to consumer or B2C is a form of business in which companies directly sell their products or services to individual consumers that are the end-users. Before the rise of the internet, the B2C term was solely reserved for mall shopping, eating at restaurants, infomercials, and pay-per-view movies. However, the internet has changed the dynamic of B2C and e-commerce marketing.
B2C marketing tools are different from B2B marketing techniques. B2C marketing is more fast-paced as the consumer market can change overnight. As a B2C marketer, you must stay ahead and create effective customer buying behavior predictions to ensure an operational marketing strategy. You also have to focus on current buying trends, using them to your advantage.
7. Direct to Consumer (D2C)
Direct to a consumer or D2C means that orders are fulfilled and shipped directly to the end customer. It may seem similar to B2C, but this business model has its differences. In the B2C model, the manufacturer supplies products to a wholesaler. Then the product is sold to a distributor or a retailer. In the final stage, it reaches the end customer. However, the D2C model eliminates all the middle parties, and the manufacturer directly sells products to the final consumer.
As manufacturing companies are in direct contact with customers, they must create a less disrupted and more personalized marketing strategy. D2C marketing is based on promoting brand transparency, identifying and addressing customer needs, and tailoring the product according to customers’ wishes.
8. HTTP 301 Moved Permanently (HTTP 301)
HTTP 301 moved permanently is an HTTP response status code for permanent redirecting. A link that shows HTTP 301 command needs to be updated and get a new URL from the Location response header. However, this response code does not require complex user intervention because most browsers understand this code and process the redirection automatically. Web developers can diagnose this response code if the request source shows an “invalid” response or if the browser redirects the page to a “proper” URL.
9. User Interface (UI)
User interface or UI is any website’s visual features (buttons and icons) that allow people to interact with a product or service. To improve a business’s digital marketing, UI designers build functional and visually attractive layouts for websites, mobile apps, landing pages, and blog pages. UI designing is very important in giving an insight into a brand’s values and identity through visual signs only. A good UI design consists of:
- Input Controls: Buttons, text fields, checkboxes, toggles, lists, etc.
- Navigational Components: Tags, breadcrumbs, search fields, etc.
- Informational Components: Progress bar, notifications, modal windows, etc.
Significance of Understanding Digital Marketing Terms
A good grasp of digital marketing terminologies can be your ticket for growth in the digital marketer community. Knowing the industry lingo will not make you feel lost and alone in a new work environment. Moreover, using abbreviations is easier than saying long names of digital marketing terms.
Wrapping Up
Keeping track of new digital marketing key terms can be difficult. Therefore, you need to have this guide always present to ensure all new and old marketing lingo is at your fingertips. If you require more assistance in your digital marketing career journey, check out our other blogs or review our digital marketing services.
