The 2022 Digital Marketing Glossary

A

Accelerated mobile pages

Accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) are web pages with minimal HTML intended to optimise search results on mobile devices. AMPs can offer faster load times and less data usage, improving visibility on mobile devices.

Ad fatigue

Ad fatigue is when your audience sees your ads so often that they become bored with them and stop paying attention. This, in turn, causes your campaigns to become less effective, prevents users from moving down the sales funnel, and ultimately hurts your company's bottom line.

Average order amount (AOV)

Average order value is a metric that tells you the average value of an eCommerce transaction in your online store. If your store has a total revenue of £25,000 from 550 orders, your average order value is £45.45.

B

Brand positioning

Brand positioning describes how a brand differs from its competitors and where or how it sits in customers' minds. It signifies how customers connect with your brand based on your values.

Behavioural targeting

Behavioural targeting is a marketing technique used in online advertising to tailor advertising to audiences by utilising their previous web browsing behaviour to drive more engagement.

Bots

Also referred to as a 'Googlebot' or 'Spider,' a bot is a web crawler that discovers new or updated web pages or websites. When a user enters a search query to a search engine, Google's bot will crawl the internet to find the most relevant results for the user's search.

Bottom of the funnel

The bottom of the funnel is the last stage of the buyer journey, where your prospects are close to becoming new customers. Marketing tactics like remarketing, abandoned carts, email, referrals, discount codes, upselling & cross-selling can increase bottom-funnel conversion in your eCommerce store.

Buyer journey

The buyer's journey is the lead's process from awareness to decision, from discovering your store to purchasing and becoming a loyal customer. This complete journey is also called a Marketing Funnel.

C

Channels

Channels in digital marketing are platforms you can use to reach your targeted audience to sell or promote your brand, services or products. Digital marketing channels have evolved; the most common avenues companies can take are Website Marketing, PPC advertising, SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, Video Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, SMS Messaging, etc.

Churn rate

The churn rate is the number of customers you have lost during a particular period, such as a month or a year. If your business had 500 customers at the beginning of the month and lost 50 by the end, your churn rate would be 10%.

Citation

A citation in digital marketing is an online reference or mention of your business's name, address, and phone number (NAP) on a website that isn't your own. Citation plays a crucial role in Local SEO. Search Engines like Google show results based on relevance and prominence, so consistency in your business NAP is the key.

Conversion path

A conversion path is a series of actions or steps by which an anonymous website visitor becomes a known lead. Typical steps in your conversion path may include a follow-up email with a lead form, a social media post or a landing page encouraging people to sign up, or it could be a thank you page with a blog subscription, etc.

Crawl or Crawling

Crawling is the process of scanning a website to discover new pages, updated pages, or removed or redirected pages to add to a search engine index.

Cascading style sheets (CSS)

CSS is a programming language that helps a designer create a specific look for their site. CSS help to determine the size, colour, and other visual aspects. Moreover, it works within HTML to facilitate creation.

Customer acquisition

Customer acquisition refers to the actions or activities a business takes to attract relevant new people and convert them to customers. It is a process of building a relationship with your prospective customer. A successful customer acquisition strategy helps you win new business and improve revenue and ROI.

Customer retention

Customer retention refers to the rate customers adhere to your brand over a certain period. The higher your customer retention rate is, the more existing customers you have coming back for more.

Customer segmentation

Customer segmentation filters customers into different groups based on common characteristics like demographic, geographic, behavioural, psychographic, etc.

CTA (Call to action)

A call to action is a button on your website to drive specific conversions or goals, like newsletter signup, a contact form or driving traffic on a dedicated landing page.

Copywriting

Copywriting is the craft of writing compelling messages that prompt readers to take action. Though copywriting and content writing has the same goal, content writing is a long game of building trust and demonstrating authority in the field.

D

Direct-to-consumer (DTC)

Direct-to-consumer or DTC means when a manufacturer, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand or any individual with a product on the market sells their product directly to their end customer (the consumer) while bypassing all middlemen, including retailers and wholesalers. Most of the time, DTC brands will facilitate these sales transactions through their website or app due to the low cost involved. Brands like Casper, Warby Parker, and Dollar Shave Club are DTC.

Domain authority

Domain authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that indicates how good your entire domain is on a scale of 0-100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. Domain authority is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and a total number of links, into a single DA score.

Dynamic search ads (DSA)

DSA are search ads that use Google's organic web crawling technology to automatically target relevant search queries based on a retailer's website content. Dynamic search ads are used when trying to expand campaigns outside of the keywords already in the account to drive incremental traffic and results.

Debugging

Debugging is detecting and removing existing and potential errors (also called 'bugs') in a software code that can cause it to behave unexpectedly or crash.

E

eCommerce web development

It is the process of creating a website to sell or buy products or services online to help you generate more revenue and conversions for your business.

Event tracking

It is a method for analytics and social (e.g. using Facebook's pixel) that helps you track your customers' journey by analysing their behaviours as form fills, cart additions, or newsletter signups.

Exit pages

Exit Pages are pages of the website from where a visitor leaves the site or are the last interaction page of a visitor on a website.

F

Frequency

In digital marketing, frequency refers to the number of times your ad is displayed to a unique user in a specific period.

G

Graphical user interface (GUI)

A graphical user interface (GUI) is a layer of technology with which a user engages that allows them to visually interact through things like icons, menus, and other graphics.

Growth marketing

Growth Marketing is a strategic process of constantly conducting experiments to optimise a business's growth. It's a long-term, holistic and data-driven approach to marketing.

H

HTTPS

HTTPS is an upgraded version of the network protocol standard HTTP. With HTTPS, websites create a secure online experience by encrypting data, like names, addresses, and credit card numbers, and ensuring its safe transfer to the site's server.

I

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a customer-centric approach that focuses on attracting high-fit customers instead of blasting your message to anyone and everyone. Inbound marketing tactics include SEO, social media, content marketing, and more — and refer to tactics that attract your target users rather than reaching out to them.

J

K

Keyword cannibalisation

Keyword cannibalisation is when two or more pages on your website have the same target keyword, appear for the exact search term, and as a result, have difficulty ranking.

Keyword rankings

Keyword rankings refer to your web page's organic ranking position within search results for a particular keyword or a search query.

Keyword stemming

Keyword stemming is a search engine's ability to recognise variations of the same word.

L

Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is a strategy businesses use to maintain and grow relationships with potential customers while encouraging them to make a purchase. It takes place in all stages of the marketing funnel.

Link bait

Link bait is an SEO practice geared to attract links. These links then help to improve the keyword rankings in search engines.

Local SEO

Local SEO is when you optimise your website to rank in local results. It includes strategies like claiming your Google My Business listing, writing pages based on local keywords, and more.

M

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

Marketing qualified leads are typically prospects that have expressed interest in your company by engaging with your content and then providing identification details that allow you to convert them into a known lead.

N

Non-branded keywords

Any keyword or phrase that doesn't include a specific brand name is a non-branded keyphrase. An effective SEO strategy is needed to optimise your website for non-branded keywords unrelated to your business name.

O

Open graph or OG tag

Open Graph meta tags are snippets of code that control how URLs are displayed when shared on social media. For example, a company can set the image, title, and description they want to show on Facebook whenever someone posts that website’s domain to Facebook.

P

Page speed optimisation

Page speed optimisation is improving your site's load time to satisfy users. Tactics include compressing photos and cleaning up your HTML code.

Page views

Page Views represent all the visitors of your website. Each reloads of the webpage by the same visitor counts as a new page view.

Q

Query

A query is another word for the search term or search query in SEO.

R

Referral marketing

Referral marketing is a strategy to promote products or services through current customer referrals to their friends and family. Although similar, it’s not the same as word-of-mouth marketing.

S

Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

A sales qualified lead is a marketing-qualified lead that is accepted by the sales team and warrants a sales team member reaching out. An SQL is ready to be sold and is the most likely to purchase the company's product or service.

Search impression share

The percentage of eligible impressions that your ads receive.

Search impression share lost due to budget

The estimation of how often your ad didn't show due to budget restraints.

Search impression share lost due to rank

The estimation of how often your ad didn't show due to poor ad rank.

Structured snippets

An extension allows your ads to highlight specific aspects of your products and services. These ad extensions provide context on the nature and variety of your products and services before visitors click through to your site. Each snippet contains a header and list of features you would like to highlight.

T

Transactional query

It is a query where someone is looking to purchase something but hasn't yet decided where to buy it from.

Top-of-the-funnel content (TOFU)

TOFU content caters to new users learning about a topic and are not ready to use your services or buy your products. This content is more informational and focused on creating a relationship with potential customers.

U

URL Slug

A URL Slug is the part of the URL that follows the slash ("/") after the domain name or subfolder.

V

Value proposition

A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered to the end customers. It is a part of a company's overall marketing strategy.

W

X

XML sitemap

An XML sitemap is an XML file that should detail the indexable pages on a website. Search engines use this information to understand which web pages are available to crawl to store in their index.

Y

Z