Yet Another Digital Marketing Jargon List

CM-Digital_Jargon-900x450There are many new and exciting words that come about within the digital marketing space. Pogo sticking, the fly wheel and moving the needle all come to mind. Some come and go and some have lasting power. Let’s go over a few that I feel like any self-respecting digital marketer should be in the know about.

A/B testing – To test two pieces of content against one another by changing only one variable

Above the Fold – Any content that can be viewed on a web page that does not require any scrolling to view

AlphabetGoogle’s parent company founded in 2015

Ad Blocking – Using software to disable ads that show on webpages

Anchor Text – The text that is hyperlinked and leads to a different piece of content

B2B – Business to Business interactions

B2C – Business to consumer interactions

Banner ad – Website ad visual that is typically a rectangular image to get traffic to the advertiser’s site

Branding – Your voice, tone, content, image or message that purveys your business

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos

Brick and Mortar – A physical business location

Content – Any writing or image

CRO – (Conversion Rate Optimization) making changes to your website, advertisements or content to increase goal conversion

Device Targeting – Meaningfully creating content for and publishing for a specific device i.e. an iPhone, Android, iPad, desktop computer etc.

Drip Marketing – Providing content for your potential customers throughout the stages of your sales funnel

Earned Media – Any promotion of your brand or content that was freely given without payment or reciprocity

Freshness – How often you are adding new content to your site

Form Fill – A user’s information that is required to access gated content, a resource or contact information

Funnel – The sales or marketing journey set in place to take someone from first discovering your product/service/brand to becoming a return customer or advocate

Gated content – Any content that cannot be openly accessed and needs the user to enter information to access

Google URL BuilderGoogle’s tool for creating tagged URLs for easy tracking in Google analytics

Guest post (blog) – a post or blog written by an author from another blog, typically used for a promotion of a service or product

Hashtag – Never acceptable to use on Facebook (See – the rules of hash tagging)

Heat Mapping – Often used for CRO purposes, heat mapping uses software to track your mouse movement across a web page to see which parts of your page are being scrolled over and clicked

Inbound Marketing – A process of leading your customers through a marketing funnel with content and information to allow them to come to you for the answer to their needs (Download our guide)

Landing Page – A page on your website that is devoted to converting a goal (lead to a client, a sale notice, a resource download)

Lightbox – A pop up box that appears off a clickable piece of content in order for you to see a new piece of content and not leave the original page

Marketing Automation – Using a process or system that automatically feeds your perspective clients informational content to lead them through your funnel

Micro content – Easily digestible content, example would be an image with short copy

Native Advertisements – Ad placement on a website made to look like content with a similar tone and look of the website it resides upon (read more)

Outreach – Seeking out media in which to connect with or engage in a content idea, promotion or service

Owned Media – Any means controlled by the publisher to promote content or a service i.e. a blog, website or social media profile

Paid Promotion – A promotional effort used to increase your audience of a product or service, can be through promotional platforms (Outbrain, StumbleUpon, Taboola) or through social media

Penguin – A Google algorithm update initially launched in April, 2012. Known as the “Webspam update”, this algorithm change focused on unsavory SEO tactics including backlink and keyword tactics

Query – Words or phrases searched within a search engine

Robots.txt – A text file that you include on your website’s server that tells search engine whether to include that specific page or set of pages within the search results

ROI – Return on Investment – the payoff on any output used. Typically refers to funds used to create, manage or promote

Responsive (website) – A website that allow automatic reorientation of its content to fit on any size screen or device

Retargeting – Through the use of a cookie, the ability to serve ads based on a visitors activity

SERP – Search Engine Results Page

SlideShare – Previously purchased by LinkedIn, a presentation hosting platform that enables you to post and share slideshows and pdfs

Target Audience – A group of people that have been intentionally selected to market towards

UGC – User Generated Content – content created by a sites audience member or product users

Viral – Any content that spreads quickly and organically through sharing and unpaid media

Webinar – An online presentation available through a website or live presentation platform

Now that you have all the ammo needed to win that next game of dial in meeting bingo, make sure you are using all these words to say what you really mean and mean exactly what you are saying around the brainstorming round table. And if you have any questions about a funny buzzword or internet lingo that you want to ask us about, feel free to give us a shout.

Happy Marketing.