The following terminology is frequently used within digital marketing. To create a successful digital marketing presence and ongoing strategy, knowledge of these common terms is imperative. Terms are listed within their marketing discipline and then alphabetically within those sections.

Digital Marketing Strategy

Brand Equity:

The importance of a brand in the customer's eyes.

Brand Value:

The financial significance the brand carries.

Business to Business (B2B):

Describes businesses working with other businesses for profit. A commercial transaction takes place between them.

Business to Consumer (B2C):

Describes businesses working with consumers for profit. A commercial transaction takes place between them.

Buyer, Customer, or User Personas:

Semi‐fictional representations of your different types of audiences. They are created based on data and research, which helps you to create content that is more meaningful to your target audience.

Buying Cycle and Journey:

An experience your target audience goes through to purchase a product or service. This is the point of view of your audience.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):

A computer programming language for adding style to web documents. CSS can include fonts, colors, structure, spacing, and page behavior.

Channel:

A marketing medium of distribution, such as pay‐per‐click and email marketing.

Customer Experience: 

The totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses during all stages of the consumption process, including the pre‐purchase, consumption, and post‐purchase stages.

Customer Insight:

An interpretation of trends in human behaviors that aims to increase the effectiveness of a product or service for the consumer as well as increase sales for the financial benefit of those provisioning the product or service.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM):

The ability to manage and analyze the interactions with past, current, and potential customers by using software or online platforms.

Data and Measurement:

Can show how people experience a brand across platforms and can help marketers gain a better understanding of the performance of each channel in their marketing mix.

Distribution:

The process of making a product or service available for the consumer or business user who needs it. This can be done directly by the producer or service provider or using indirect channels with distributors or intermediaries.

Friction:

Anything that impedes your target audience from moving throughout the sales funnel and ultimately keeping them from making a purchase.

Funnel:

Think of the funnel as an organizational process. It is based on the target audience's journey, illustrating the steps to take toward making a purchase. This is the point of view of the company and aligns to operations.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML):

A markup computer language and one of the most basic forms of languages. It is assisted by other computer languages, such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript (one type of scripting language).

Integrated Marketing Communications:

A planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.

JavaScript:

A computer programming language used to make web pages interactive. It gives web pages interactive elements that engage a user.

Landing Page:

A page used to capture leads or sales for specific promotional initiatives. The standalone web page is designed specifically for a campaign in mind.

Lead:

When a user shows interest by conducting a defined action, such as filling out a form to receive a content offer, that user then becomes a lead.

Lead Nurturing:

A way of developing a relationship with acquired leads through marketing initiatives. This can be done through a scoring system within a CRM.

Market or Customer Orientation:

A marketing approach that puts the needs of the market or customer over the needs of the business.

Marketing Strategy:

A plan of action designed to promote and sell a product or service.

Platform:

A tool used to engage with your target audience to achieve specific marketing goals.

Positioning:

The process of promoting a brand so that it occupies a unique place in the minds of customers. This also distinguishes the brand from the products of competitors. Positioning is different from the concept of brand awareness.

Segmentation:

The process of dividing your target audience into homogeneous subgroups based on certain criteria, such as purchase history and demographics.

Small to Medium Business (SMB):

A business with fewer than 100 employees is considered small, and a business with more than 100 but fewer than 1,000 is considered medium.

Targeting:

The process choosing the segments of customers to pursue with digital marketing and advertising campaigns.

Digital Analytics

A/B Testing:

Also known as split testing, this is a process of comparing two versions of either web pages, emails, ads, and so on. The testing measures the difference in performance between the two versions.

Behavioral:

Reveals the actions users take within a digital product by organizing events taken and analyzing the user's journey.

Bounce Rate:

The percentage of website users who leave rather than continuing to view other pages of the website.

Call to Action (CTA):

A term for any type of desired action on a marketing deliverable, such as “Learn More” or “Add to Cart.” It most often refers to words or phrases to get a target audience to act.

Click‐Through Rate:

Measured by the number of clicks received compared to the number of people who saw the content.

Conversion:

A sale or desired action you want a user to take.

Conversion Rate:

Calculated by totaling the number of conversions and dividing them by the number of visitors.

Cost per Conversion:

Also called cost per action, shows how much it costs to acquire a conversion.

Dashboard:

A reporting tool that displays different types of metrics and possibly key performance indicators, depending on the software used.

Data Collection:

The process of gathering and then measuring data about a specific variable in an established computer system. It enables you to answer questions and evaluate outcomes.

Data Sampling:

A technique used to manipulate and analyze subsets of data points while identifying patterns in larger data sets.

Demographic:

A particular group within the population.

Dimensions:

Typically, an attribute of the user of your website or mobile app. In most modern practice, they appear in rows in your web analytics tools or spreadsheets. Commonly used dimensions are user attributes, like source (referring websites, campaigns, countries, and so on) and technical elements (browser, mobile phone, screen resolution, and so on). Dimensions also include attributes of a user's behavior, such as landing pages, internal site searches, and product purchases; they are key building blocks of digital analytics segments.

Engagement:

Refers to the way users interact with your content. This can look like shares and comments on social media posts.

Events:

User interactions within Google Analytics to measure data around your content, which can be independently measured.

Exit Page:

The last page the user is on before leaving the website, ending the sessions.

Frequency:

Part of a marketing analysis tool used to identify the best customers. It is based on how “frequent” a customer makes a purchase.

Goals:

In Google Analytics, you can measure specific actions by creating goals, such as clicks to call or email, order confirmations, and more.

Hit:

Common interactions within Google Analytics, such as page tracking, event tracking, and ecommerce tracking.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

A metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives. These indicators are directly aligned to business goals, telling you how successfully your tactics are performing based on what is ultimately necessary for the organization.

Metrics:

The numbers and cold, hard data that measure a marketing initiative. In most modern practice, it appears in columns in your web analytics tools or spreadsheets. A metric can be a Count (a total), or a Ratio (a division of one number by another). Examples of Count metrics include Visits, Time on Site, and Page views. Examples of Ratio metrics include Bounce Rate, Conversion Rate, and Task Completion Rate.

Monetary Value:

Part of a marketing analysis tool used to identify the best customers. It is based on how much “money” a customer spends.

Open Rate:

The percentage of subscribers who open a specific email out of your total number of subscribers.

Page View:

When a user visits a web page on your website.

Profit:

The amount of income that remains after expenses, debts, and operational costs have been accounted for within the organization.

Psychographic:

Tracks consumer shopping and online habits, showing advertisers where to allocate more resources.

Recency:

Part of a marketing analysis tool used to identify the best customers. It is based on how “recent” a customer made a purchase.

Relevance:

A score that serves as a barometer around your messaging, deciding if it appeals to your target audience. The measurement consists of a combination of variables, including the way a user moves from search to a website.

Return on Investment (ROI):

The ratio between net profit and cost of investment. It is often used to evaluate the performance of a marketing investment.

Revenue:

The amount of income generated by a business or activity.

Segments:

Subsets of your analytics data, such as users from a particular demographic. A segment contains a group of rows from one or more dimensions. Examples of segments include, but are not limited to, users from New York, users who visit more than three times, visits to the support content on the site, orders with more than five items, and so on.

Sessions:

The amount of interactions by one user on your website, which happens at a particular time.

Unique Visitors:

This metric generally refers to an approximation of the number of people visiting the website, measured using a persistent first‐party cookie. In some modern digital analytics tools, the term users is used to refer to unique visitors. Users are best reported as trends.

Digital Advertising

Ad Extensions:

To expand your ad, you can create extensions to provide more information about your business.

Ad Groups:

Several ads within a group that are triggered by keywords.

Bids:

The maximum amount of money you are willing to pay for a click on an ad.

Campaigns:

It is where you can organize categories of products or services within a campaign. This is also where you determine your budget and bidding strategy.

Click Fraud:

Fraud within pay‐per‐click in which owners of websites are paid money every time a visitor clicks on the ad.

Description:

Your text ad consists of description fields where you can enter a limited number of characters, each to highlight details about your product or service. The description lines allow for deeper explanations than headlines, so you can go into detail as to why someone should choose your website over your competitors.

Destination URL:

The final website address. This should be the landing page for your ads.

Display Network:

A way to reach users on websites or YouTube with advertisements.

Display URL:

The web page address that appears with your ad. Display URLs give people an idea of where they'll arrive after they click an ad. The landing page that you define with a final URL tends to be more specific.

Google Ads:

An online advertising platform developed by Google where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads in the results of search engines like Google Search as well as on non‐search websites, mobile apps, and videos.

Headline:

A group of words or sentences that promote a product or service, typically emphasizing a product's primary purpose or benefit to a consumer. An effective ad headline draws in attention, summarizes the most prominent benefit of your product or service, and uses engaging words that appeal to the intended reader. Most digital advertising platforms limit the characters used in an ad headline. For example, Google Ads limits headline text to three lines of 30 characters each, so advertisers must be concise, craft headlines carefully, and test for the most effective headlines. Generally accepted practices for digital advertising headlines include use of search keywords your prospects are likely to use, and/or the addition of a “call to action”—the action you want your prospects to take.

Landing Page:

The first page someone sees on your website after clicking on your ad. The landing page should contain information about your keywords and any specials or offers included in the ads.

Pay per Click (PPC):

An Internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

Programmatic:

The process of automating the buying and selling of ad inventory in real‐time through an automated bidding system.

Quality Score:

A variable used by PPC advertising platforms that influences the position and cost of PPC ads. Click‐through rate and keyword alignment are generally accepted to be most influential in the Quality Score calculation for major PPC platforms, such as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.

Search Network:

A group of search‐related websites and apps where your ads can appear. For example, when you advertise on the Google Search Network, your ad can show near search results on Google Play, the Shopping tab, Google Images, Google Maps, and the Maps app when someone searches with terms related to one of your keywords.

Search Engine Optimization

Algorithm:

A set of rules the search engine follows to understand the content. It then ranks the content according to value and relevance.

Anchor Text:

The visible words that links display on a web page.

Canonical URL:

The URL of the best representative page from a group of duplicate pages, according to Google. For example, if you have two URLs for the same page (such as example.com?dress=1234 and example.com/dresses/1234), Google chooses one as canonical. Similarly, if you have multiple pages that are nearly identical, Google can group them (for example, pages that differ only by the sorting or filtering of the contents, such as by price or item color) and choose one as canonical. Google can only index the canonical URL from a set of duplicate pages.

Crawl:

Search engines send automated programs called crawlers to determine what pages exist on the web.

Inbound Links:

Links from other websites that point to your website.

Index:

A large database where information is stored on a page after it is crawled and a search engine analyzes the text, images, and video files.

Keyword:

Ideas or topics that define your content in the search.

Link:

Referencing another web address on a web page.

Long‐Tail Keyword:

Keywords that are more specific and less common. They tend to focus more on a niche area.

Off‐Page Optimization:

The process of obtaining links. Refers to the activities done away from your website.

On‐Page Optimization:

The process of adding content, keywords, tags, and so on, to the individual pages of your website.

Outbound Links:

Links on your website that point to another website.

Penalty:

A deliberate action taken by a search engine to demote a previously higher ranking page or groups of pages on a website based on violating terms of service or published best practice. These deliberate actions can be algorithmic or manual in nature.

Permalink:

A permanent, static hyperlink to a particular web page or entry in a blog.

Ranking:

The position where your web page appears in the search engine's results.

Responsive Design:

When the content of your website fits into several screen sizes and is made for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Robots.txt:

A text file that tells search engine robots which pages on your website to crawl.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

The process of affecting the visibility of online content, a website, or web page in a search engine's natural or unpaid search results. It is essential to send optimized signals to search engines, enabling them to match relevant content with search queries, thus attracting qualified visitors to the best content. Practices include keyword research, web design and architecture, on‐page optimization, link building, local search strategies, tracking and analysis, planning and project management, and staying current with search engine updates.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP):

The pages that search engines show in response to a user's search query.

Short‐Tail Keyword:

Search phrases with only one or two words. They tend to be more general.

Sitemap:

A blueprint of your website. It helps search engines and users understand the available content.

Snippet:

A single search result in a set of search results consisting of a title, URL, description, and so on.

Structured Data:

It is also called schema markup. This is the code that makes it easier to explain what content to crawl, organize, and display.

XML Sitemap:

While acting as a blueprint for search engines, this is a list of your website's URLs, explaining what to crawl and index. These sitemaps are written specifically for search engines.

Content Marketing

Authority:

The establishment of thought leadership within a specific field or industry by using content.

Content:

More than just copy on a marketing deliverable, it is information provided to your target audience through a specific medium, such as images and video.

Content Curation:

The process of gathering information relevant to a specific area and then adding value or analyzing what has been collected.

Content Frequency:

How often new content is published on a blog or in social media. Understanding when and how often your audience will likely be active is key in determining the optimal frequency for posting content.

Content Management System (CMS):

A computer system used to manage the creation and modification of content. Basically, it is computer software that allows multiple contributors to create, edit, and publish.

Content Marketing:

This is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Content Relevancy:

This is all about your audience's perception of your content's pertinence to topics, issues, needs, or interests.

Content Usefulness:

This refers to your content's ability to help users make decisions or make progress toward goals.

Content Value:

Content can add value to viewers, listeners, or readers by enabling them to do something (tactical value) or to think something (strategic value).

Editorial Calendar:

It can also be called an editorial calendar. It is a schedule for when you plan to publish upcoming content, such as promotional activity, existing content, and so on.

Evergreen Content:

Content that never goes out of date and will always be valuable to the user.

Inbound Marketing:

A technique that attracts current and potential customers through the use of content.

Multi‐Channel Attribution:

A set of rules that allow marketers to allocate appropriate values to each marketing channel based on its contribution to conversions or sales.

Whitepaper:

A report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.

Social Media Marketing

Affinity Segments:

An ad targeting method for reaching people who already have a strong interest in relevant topics (e.g., “sports fans” on YouTube).

Amplification Rate:

Indicates how many times on average each of your posts was shared/retweeted (Amplification rate = # of shares/ # of posts).

Applause Rate:

Indicates how many likes each of your posts has received on average (Applause rate = # of likes/ # of posts).

Blogging:

The process of creating and adding optimized and informative long‐form content to your website.

Brand Lift:

A measurement of the direct impact your social video ads are having on consumer perceptions and behaviors. A brand lift study can show marketers how their ads impact lifts in brand awareness, ad recall, consideration, favorability, and purchase intent.

Chatbot:

A software application used to conduct an online chat conversation via text or text‐to‐speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent.

Check‐In Services:

The process of checking into your physical location on social media.

Conversation Rate:

Indicates how many Comments/Replies on average each of your posts has received (Conversation rate = # of comments/ # of posts).

Custom Audiences:

An ad targeting option for finding your existing audiences among people across Meta's platforms.

Economic Value:

Shows how much economic value each visit from a social network brings to your site by completing your site's goals. (Economic value = Per session goal value, which is calculated by Google Analytics when you assign a monetary amount to each completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business.)

Hashtag:

A way of tagging in social media. Some users include hashtags for fun, and others include them as part of a campaign. It is a short, memorable way to get a message across.

Influencer:

A person who has the ability to influence the decisions of their followers in a distinct niche or on a specific topic because of their authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with their audience.

In‐Market Segments:

An ad targeting option for reaching customers who are researching products and actively considering buying a service or product like those you offer.

Macro‐Influencer:

A person who has 40,000 to 1 million followers on a social platform.

Mega‐Influencer:

A person with more than 1 million followers on at least one social platform.

Microblogging:

Typically short‐form content and can be done through posting.

Micro‐Influencer:

A person who has 1,000 to 40,000 followers on a single social platform.

Monitoring:

Involves tracking social media company mentions and responding to them.

Nano‐Influencer:

A person who has fewer than 1,000 followers.

Photo Sharing:

The process of adding a photo to a social media post.

Publishing:

Posting relevant and engaging content on social media.

Reach:

The total number of people who see your post content.

Reputation Management:

Influencing users to think a certain way or have a certain view on your company through the use of social media.

Reviews:

The process in which you obtain reviews on particular social media channels.

Sentiment:

The attitude and feelings users have about your company on social media.

Social Media:

These are interactive digital channels that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks.

Social Media Marketing:

This is the use of social media platforms to market a business's products or services, connect with existing customers, reach new audiences, and build their brand.

Social Networking:

Interacting with users through other websites or applications.

Video Sharing:

The process of adding a video to a social media post.

Conversion Optimization

A/B Testing:

Comparing two versions of the same web page to find which one performs better.

Multivariate Testing:

Test that measures the conversion performance of variations of multiple elements of web pages. Multivariate tests provide a greater number of variable combinations than A/B tests and can test the impact of different fonts, colors, content, calls to action, buttons, and so on. This type of test reveals which elements have an impact on user engagement and can help optimize individual elements of a web page.

Persuasion Principles:

Evolving from Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion, these heuristics enable marketers to harness the cognitive biases that shape consumer shopping behavior and influence why customers choose one product over another.

Usability Testing:

Determining if users can complete the tasks that your website is meant to accomplish.

Mobile Marketing

Android:

A mobile operating system based on open‐source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Apps for Android are promoted by Google and Microsoft to run on a wide range of devices and platforms.

App Store:

An online platform where users can purchase or download applications (apps). Examples include the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

Geofencing:

A way to engage consumers based on a well‐defined or “hyper‐local” location as detected by a global positioning system or radio frequency identification. For example, a business can text a coupon or discount offer when an opted‐in customer enters a defined geographical area.

Geotargeting:

Also called hyper‐local targeting on mobile devices, this is a type of targeting that uses a global positioning system, WiFi networks, and other location data to serve ads to prospective customers within a defined geolocation. Marketers can specifically target audiences who are in a certain city, district, postal code, or even a specific street.

In‐App Messaging:

A way to engage customers in the moment, while they are using your mobile application. For example, users can receive relevant offers, support messages, or invitations based on behavior in your application.

In‐App Purchasing:

The buying of goods and services from inside an application on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. Some application providers provide free applications in hopes to get paid afterward through in‐app purchases.

iOS:

A mobile operating system created and developed by Apple exclusively for its hardware, particularly iPhones and iPads.

Mobile App:

A type of application, software, or service designed to run on a mobile device, which can be a smartphone or tablet.

Mobile Marketing:

According to the MMA, mobile marketing is described as “a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.”

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs):

These appear to users as mobile apps, but are really enhanced websites that can do many things a native mobile app can do, such as operate offline, send push notifications, access a mobile device's microphone or camera, and use GPS location. Using a PWA can circumvent some of the expenses and time investment required to develop and register an app with an app store.

Software Development Kit (SDK):

A set of tools that can help build compliant, portable, and reliable mobile applications. For example, Apple offers an SDK for taking advantage of features built into iPhones.

Email Marketing

Auto‐Responder:

A program that sends emails based on a trigger or in response to a recipient's action. For example, an auto‐responder can be configured to send a welcome email when a recipient subscribes to a newsletter.

Bounced Emails:

An email message that gets rejected by a mail server and has not reached the intended recipient. Bounces can be either “hard” or “soft.” Hard bounces typically correlate with an invalid or unavailable address. Soft bounces can be related to temporary conditions such as full mailboxes or servers offline.

Call to Action (CTA):

A message or component in marketing that prompts the recipient to take an action. Examples include buttons and links (Click Here for a Free Package, Add to Cart, and Next Page, for example), audible instructions, or other visual prompts.

Double Opt‐In:

A second action on the part of the email recipient confirming the desire to continue receiving the emails that promote your products or services.

Drip Campaign:

A campaign that uses an established time or trigger‐based event to send emails as well as the rules that govern the sending of those messages. For example, a drip campaign might be configured to send three messages describing product benefits while the fourth message is a call to purchase.

Email Blacklist:

A list of IP addresses or domains that are suspected of sending spam or sending to harvested (or poisoned) lists. Some blacklists are publicly searchable and some are kept private by mail service providers.

Email Click Rate:

The ratio of sent emails that are reported to have received a “click” from the recipient, typically on a link, button, or a call to action.

Email Deliverability:

A measurement of how many sent messages are delivered into the recipient's inbox. Often, it is a ratio or percentage of emails delivered versus those that bounce or are labeled as spam for a particular campaign.

Email Footer:

A component at the lowest part of a message that typically contains the sender's identifying information, other options for contact or interaction (e.g., phone, address, and social links), and an unsubscribe option.

Email Harvesting:

A method of building email lists by deploying crawlers or bots that scan public or private content to extract email addresses.

Email Open Rate:

The percentage of sent emails that are reported to have been opened (and assumed read) by intended recipients.

Email Service Provider (ESP):

A company that provides bulk sending, email formatting, or list management. Examples include MailChimp and Constant Contact.

Email Throttling:

The process of limiting how many emails are sent in a given time frame.

Marketing Automation:

This includes tools and processes that help track, trigger, and coordinate messaging based on your recipient's actions, including website behavior, clicks in email, or updates in your sales team's CRM system. Examples include Hubspot, Salesforce Pardot, and Adobe Marketo.

Opt‐In:

A purposeful action on the part of the potential recipient that confirms the desire to receive emails that promote your products or services.

Opt‐Out (or Unsubscribe):

A request to remove an email address from a list or campaign. The term unsubscribe can also refer to the option or link in an email content that offers that option to the recipient.

Spam:

An unsolicited and unwanted email, usually sent out in bulk. Typically, spam is sent for commercial purposes. It can be sent by unscrupulous marketers, botnets, or by networks of infected computers.

U.S. CAN‐SPAM Act:

A law passed in 2003 in the United States that regulates certain practices in email marketing to control the levels of unwanted emails sent by marketers. The acronym stands for Controlling the Assault of Non‐Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act.

Whitelisting:

The process that a recipient (or their mailbox provider) takes to ensure that messages from a specific sender appear in the inbox (or as priority).