Terms to know before hiring a digital marketing agency.

A/B Test – A research tactic to test two versions of something (i.e. copy, design, asset, theory, or process) by examining the performance of each to optimize the asset moving forward. It’s ideal to test only one element at a time to effectively test a hypothesis.

Above-The-Fold – The section of a website that is visible on a desktop or mobile without having to scroll further. A term borrowed from the field of journalism where the copy on a newspaper “above the fold,” literally, was highly sought after because of its visibility to readers. This section of the site should have the most compelling copy that identifies the purpose of the page and convinces readers to continue.

Advertising – An industry and profession of bringing attention to a business, service, or product. This term is super expansive and can be broken into subcategories such as digital advertising and print advertising, among others.

Affiliate Marketing – An advertising method that involves a business paying a third party (an affiliate) to promote the business’s products or services. The affiliate will often earn a commission for every click or impression yielded from their efforts. The benefit includes reaching new prospective audiences and markets that would have been otherwise difficult or time-consuming to obtain on their own.

Alt Text – The description of an image or visual element on a website. This is important to have for visitors of your website who may be visually impaired or if an image is unable to load, but its alt text description is populated.

Analytics – The math behind the magic. This is the ongoing review and analysis of data accrued from digital marketing efforts. This could be analyzing performance data or inputting data to assess trends, potential future outcomes, or spending.

Audience Segment – Dividing your target audience into groups based on similar characteristics like geographic region, interests, customer lifecycle, buying cycle, or preferences.

Black Hat SEO – Bad business practices include keyword stuffing, hidden text, or buying backlinks.

Blog – An online publication of information, thoughts, opinions, or news in digitally written “posts.” The topics could range from personal to professional across any industry, field, or subject. Typically authored by the owner of the website, but could be authored by a guest.

Bottom-of-the-Funnel (BOFU) – The bottom-most stage of the marketing and sales funnel. These folks have already identified their problem or need, have found information about how to solve their problem or need, and are now looking at businesses that offer solutions. It’s important for businesses to successfully differentiate themselves from competitors at this stage.

Bounce Rate – The percentage of times someone visits your website, but then leaves immediately without taking any action. This term is also applied to email, called the email bounce rate, wherein an email is not successfully delivered to a recipient.

Business-to-Business (B2B) – Businesses that sell to other businesses.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C) – Businesses that sell directly to consumers.

Buyer Persona – A fictional representation of your client or customer segments. A persona includes habits, average demographics, age, lifestyle choices, preferred information, and other data gathered from researching your prospective or existing customers.

Buyer’s Journey – The process, steps, and actions a prospective client or customer takes before deciding to become an actual client or customer. This includes identifying a need, trying to find a solution for that need, and then deciding to pay for a solution. This includes the early stages of the customer lifecycle.

Call-to-Action (CTA) – A link, button, text, or copy that encourages someone to take a specific, desired action. Typically a CTA is used to convince and direct someone to fill out a form, go to another page, or submit information in exchange for something. Ultimately, the goal is to encourage people down the marketing and sales funnel, so the text should be convincing enough to give a business more information about the visitor or lead to help convert them.

CAN-SPAM – The CAN-SPAM Act is a United States law that specifies requirements for businesses that send commercial emails. The law outlines rules for consumer protection, including the requirement to give recipients the chance to opt out of receiving further email communications and penalties for businesses that do not abide by the law.

Churn – A metric that measures how many clients or customers your business retains through repeat business, versus how many clients or customers leave your business. The formula for churn rate is the number of customers you lost (for whatever reason) divided by the total number of customers you had at a specific timeframe.

Click-Through – The act of a visitor, lead, or customer clicking through a digital asset to land on a desired page. Click-through is measured and tracked across digital marketing channels including social media, online advertising (display and PPC ads), email, websites, blogs, and others.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) – The percentage of click-throughs divided by the number of impressions (multiplied by 100 to be expressed as a percentage). This is an important metric because it measures the effectiveness of a digital asset displayed online. The higher the click-through rate, the more people find the wording of your article, ad, press release, email, or landing page copy convincing enough to click to the desired page.

Closed-Loop Marketing – The ability to research, plan, execute, track performance, and analyze all marketing. The final evaluation should be how marketing efforts drive bottom-line growth.

Content Calendar – An editorial map of the content you will or have published over time. It’s helpful to assess recurring topics, gaps in your content, and best publishing cadence when combined with a healthy review of content performance.

Content Management System (CMS) – An online tool to build, update, and manage a website typically with an easy-to-navigate front-end user experience for nontechnical people or web developers. WordPress is an example of a CMS.

Content Marketing – The method by which small businesses deliver valuable information to their target audiences. Content can take the form of blog articles, web pages, email newsletters, social posts, or videos.

Conversion Rate – A percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on a page. Examples include completing a form, downloading a digital asset, clicking on a specific link within a blog, or signing up for a newsletter.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) – The process of improving your conversion on your website, social profiles, ads, or content you publish on partner sites through continuous testing, optimizing, and performance review.

Cookie – Information stored on a visitor’s computer so tracking preferences can be remembered for the future.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) – The amount a business pays each time someone clicks on a digital ad. This is calculated by the total cost of a digital advertising campaign divided by the number of clicks the ad received.

Customer Lifecycle – A breakdown of the different stages of a client or customer journey. The customer lifecycle typically includes an awareness, engagement or evaluation, and conversion or customer stage. Sometimes there is a fourth stage called retention. Each stage should be met with a different marketing and sales approach to adhere to the unique challenges and goals of each stage of the lifecycle.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – Software that allows businesses to track their conversations and progress with prospective clients or customers. These tools will also often help businesses see how prospects and customers engage with their website or digital assets.

Digital Marketing – A subcategory of the all-encompassing term “marketing” that focuses on the digital and online promotion of products and services through desktop, mobile, tablet, and other devices.

Domain Name – A string of characters that identify your website address on the internet.

Dynamic Content – Content on a page or email that updates automatically based on the user’s location, demographic info, preferences, subscription preferences, or customer lifecycle stage.

Ebook – A digital and typically longer form of content used by businesses as a lead magnet that provides an in-depth discussion, review, instruction, or analysis of a subject. Typically businesses will provide this digital asset in exchange for a visitor’s email address or contact information.

Email Bounce Rate – The percentage of the number of times an email was unsuccessfully delivered to recipients’ inboxes over the number of emails sent (multiplied by 100).

Email Marketing – The promotion of products or services via commercial email. Building an email list is a great way to identify people based on their interests, content downloaded, and based on their level of interest. Visitors who convert into leads by signing up for email have indicated they’re ready to move on to the next step.

Engagement Rate – The percentage of people who interact with digital content published on social media platforms. Examples of engagement interactions include likes, reposts, shares, and comments. This is calculated by the number of interactions over the number of impressions a post received (multiplied by 100).

Evergreen Content – Content that can be reused regardless of timeframe.

Feed – Typically mentioned in the context of social media platforms where preferred content, posts by followed accounts, and relevant suggested content appear on the “front page” of a user’s social login. Feeds are unique to the user’s interactions with content on a social platform.

Hashtag – A term or keyword preceded by a “#” that helps identify a certain topic within a digital platform that showcases content that leverages the term or keyword. The purpose of a hashtag is to optimize a user’s search and in-app user experience.

HTML – Short for hypertext markup language which is used for writing the basic structure of a website and email.

Impression – An online instance of digital content being displayed. Examples include the number of times someone sees a social post or the number of times a digital ad is displayed to a specific group or audience.

Inbound Link – A link to your website or page on your website that comes from an external source.

Infographic – A content asset primarily visual-driven that simplistically provides instruction, data, or information about a complex topic.

Interstitial – A full-page ad or pop-up that loads when a visitor switches between pages or takes action to leave a page.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) – A measurement metric that allows businesses to evaluate the performance of their efforts. Examples of KPIs for digital marketing include website traffic, social media engagements, click-through rates, landing page conversions, and email open rates, among others.

Keyword – A term, phrase, or question for which a website will rank on a search engine like Google or Bing. Keywords can also apply to social media platforms when users leverage a search functionality to find relevant profiles or content.

Keyword Research – Searching for keywords, terms, phrases, or questions commonly used by a target audience to improve the ranking of a website, webpage, or content piece (like a blog article or video).

Keyword Stuffing – The excessive use of keywords to try and manipulate search engines. This is a practice that falls under black-hat SEO and most search engines are smart enough to decipher when this practice is being utilized.

Landing Page – A web page to which a visitor lands from another site or source. The format of a landing page typically includes copy and a form for a visitor to complete and convert into a lead.

Lead – A person who has shown interest in a business’s services and a desire to learn more. Examples can include landing page form completions, subscriptions to blogs, or registrations for a webinar.

Lead Magnet – A deliverable offered to a website visitor in exchange for contact information. The form on a landing page that houses a lead magnet will convert that visitor into a lead by the process of gathering contact information about the visitor.

Lead Nurturing – The process of qualifying a lead through marketing efforts which can span across a variety of channels. Businesses help leads along their customer lifecycle by sending them relevant information, trying to answer questions pre-emptively, or keeping them top-of-mind. Businesses can use email, social media, direct mailing, and targeted ads to get in front of leads to nurture them.

Link-Building – An approach to building a website’s domain authority online and trustworthiness by increasing the number of links from external sites that drive to the business’s website. Link-building helps improve a website’s ranking on search engines.

Long-Tail Keyword – A targeted search phrase or series of terms put together that implies a very specific search with more intention than a general search of 1-2 words.

Marketing – The process of communicating, promoting, and convincing people of the value of a business’s goods or services for consumption.

Marketing Automation – The process of taking manual activities in marketing and automating them with an automation tool or by creating a uniform process that can be repurposed and scaled.

Marketing Channel – The method by which a business communicates its value to prospective clients or customers. This includes work done on social media, content creation, email, digital advertising, direct mail, print ads, organic search, and more.

Marketing Plan – The tactical approach to implementing a marketing strategy by business goals and objectives. How your business will achieve marketing success.

Marketing Strategy – A marketing strategy is your overall approach to promoting and growing your business in the long term. Learn what’s involved in a digital marketing strategy.

Media Kit – A collection of promotional material a business can share with partners, agencies, and other external organizations. It will usually include a press release draft, boilerplate, description of the business, service information, social media handles, and logos that can be used.

Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU) – The middle of the funnel is the stage where prospective clients or customers have identified a need or problem they need to solve and are actively seeking information that guides them to a solution. These people are not ready to make a purchase, but they are open to hearing what businesses have to say in the form of educating them on a solution in a non-sales context. This is where blog articles, ebooks, and instructional videos that show viewers how to analyze the problem become very valuable.

Moderator – The person or persons who oversee an online forum or community to ensure active participants adhere to the forum community rules. These people often can shut down conversations, remove posts, or remove people from the forum.

Navigation Bar – The top section of a website that provides a guide for how to navigate the website including links to other pages or information about the business.

No-Follow – A way to ensure a webpage is not crawled by a search engine for ranking purposes. This is usually enabled in a content management system (CMS) like WordPress.

Off-Page SEO – The process of enhancing a website’s visibility and ranking using tools and channels outside the website. An example of this is driving traffic from social media platforms back to a business’s website to drive domain authority through backlinks.

On-Page SEO – The process of enhancing a website’s visibility by optimizing the copy on the website’s pages, navigation bar, external links, and other aspects of a website that will be crawled by a search engine and visible to a website visitor.

Opt-In – The act of providing consent to a business to receive marketing or promotional materials. This usually takes the form of an opt-in form where a prospective client or customer is aware that upon completion of the form, they agree to receive marketing materials from the business in the future.

Opt-Out – To remove oneself from the opt-in status of marketing or promotion materials. This could be letting the business know one no longer wishes to receive marketing materials or in the case of email, one can click on an “unsubscribe” text in the footer.

Organic – These are the unpaid digital marketing channels and result from generating interest, awareness, and demand based on how relevant a business’s marketing is to prospective audiences. These methods are considered organic because prospective clients or customers find a business on their own, without paying for advertising that pushes a business in front of people.

Outbound Link – A link to a website or webpage that is external to a business’s website.

Page View – When a visitor loads a page of your website.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – An online advertising cost method when a business pays a digital advertiser for each click of a digital ad.

Podcast – A digital audio medium where a host discusses a topic or subject and is distributed via a business’s website or through an audio streaming service (like Spotify or Apple Podcasts).

Qualified Lead – A lead that has been properly vetted before engaging with them in the next step of the marketing or sales cycle. The qualification process helps to avoid wasting a business’s time ensuring they get on the phone with the right people.

Return on Investment (ROI) – A performance metric that evaluates the efficiency and effectiveness of a business’s marketing and advertising efforts. This is calculated by subtracting the cost of a marketing campaign from the profit gained divided by the cost of the marketing campaign, multiplied by 100. 

Search Engine – An online tool that indexes websites and ranks them based on relevancy, authority, trustworthiness, and other criteria to deliver the best user search experience. 

Search Engine Marketing – An advertising approach that boosts a business’s website, page title, and meta description to the top of the sponsored section of a search engine results page. Businesses do this by bidding for keywords and paying using the pay-per-click model. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The method of enhancing a website to appear in the top results on a search results page from a search engine. SEO will incorporate elements of technical, on-page, and off-page SEO to boost relevancy and authority. 

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – The page that showcases the results on a search engine. The results will populate based on the ranked page’s relevancy to a keyword, query, or search terms. 

Site Traffic – The amount of visitors a website receives.  

Small and Medium-Sized Business (SMB) – Defined by the Small Business Administration as fewer than 500 employees.

Social Media – Online platforms where users congregate to share, post, and engage with content based on their interests and goals. 

Social Media Marketing – The approach of leveraging social media as a way to communicate a business’s value, products, and services that engage and build followership. Activities include positing, monitoring, researching, engaging, and optimizing the content a business publishes. 

Social Media Strategy – The long-term vision a business has of promoting itself through social media. A social media strategy should include social media goals, how those goals bubble up to broader business goals, the platforms to use, and how a business will track conversions. 

Spam – Unsolicited and unwanted bulk commercial emails. Don’t do this.

Technical SEO – A subcategory of SEO that optimizes a website from the backend elements to ensure it ranks well on a search engine. Aspects of technical SEO include site speed, image and video compression, site architecture, site navigation, indexability, and crawlability. 

Title Tag – An HTML tag used to define the text at the top of the web browser tab. This is used by search engines as the title that populates a search listing on a search engine results page. 

Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) – The very top of the marketing funnel where prospective clients and customers become aware of a problem or need for which they require a solution. At this stage, good marketing will be informational and jargon or sales-heavy. 

Web Browser – An application for accessing websites from servers. Examples include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge. 

Web Host – An online service provider that provides digital space for a business’s website to store and populate content. 

Word-of-Mouth Marketing – A marketing tactic where people freely share information about a business unprompted, often as a recommendation from personal experience. This is an excellent way for a business to be marketed, but it requires becoming a well-known brand and reliable provider of services or products.

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