Digital Marketing Glossary | Marketing Terminology

GLOSSARY OF DIGITAL MARKETING TERMINOLOGY

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Sometimes marketing lingo can be confusing and hard to understand. Here is a glossary of marketing terms to help you navigate the marketing world.

A/B Testing - A/B testing, also known as split testing, compares page variants of two versions of a webpage or app against each other to determine which one performs better. A/B testing is essentially an experiment where two or more page variants are shown to users at random, and statistical analysis is used to determine which variation performs better for a given conversion goal.
Above the Fold – the term refers back to days of print newspapers where the primary or leading story was positioned above the horizontal fold across the newspaper – this was prime placement because of how newspapers were stacked and delivered and guaranteed it was the first item seen; in web terms, it means to copy or images that appear on a page before the user needs to scroll.
Ad Exchange - A digital marketplace where advertisers and publishers buy and sell ad space through real-time bidding (RTB) auctions.
Ad Retargeting - A digital marketing strategy that involves showing personalized ads to users who have previously interacted with a brand or visited its website, encouraging them to return and complete a desired action.
Affiliate - an organization or individual attached to another larger corporation.
Affiliate Marketing - A performance-based marketing strategy where a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) - A widely used acronym in marketing and advertising that describes a standard sequence of events leading to a purchase decision. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
Algorithm - An algorithm is a process or set of rules followed in calculations or problem-solving operations, typically by a computer.
Analytics - The systematic computational analysis of data or statistics to gather insights, identify trends, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Anchor Text - The visible text you see as a link you can click. Typically appears in various colors, different than that of the main text.
API (Application Programming Interference) - API stands for application programming interface, a set of definitions and protocols for building and integrating application software. APIs let your product or service communicate with other products and services without having to know how they’re implemented.
Attribution Modeling - A method used in marketing to determine the value of different marketing channels and touchpoints in driving conversions and sales.
Audit - an official inspection of an individual or organization's property, assets, and other records.
Audience Segmentation - The process of dividing a target audience into smaller, more manageable groups based on specific criteria such as demographics, behaviors, and interests.
Augmented Reality (AR) - A technology that overlays digital information or images onto the user's view of the real world, enhancing their experience and interaction with their environment.
Authority Site - A website trusted by its users, industry experts, and other websites and trusted by search engines.
Automation – tools, usually software that helps you streamline tactics, workflows, and marketing measurements to save time and money; automation tools are often behavior-based to trigger other actions instead of manually sending emails one by one after you learn of an action or intent. Many marketing automation systems deal heavily with email marketing, but others incorporate social media and website actions. Automation is also about the planning and strategy of designing marketing workflows so that they can be automated to degrees. Automation tools are often directed at large companies with larger budgets. For example - your system will automatically send emails based on specific activity on particular pages of your website, or the system will send one set of email messages to new list subscribers, another set to those who read a particular ebook, and another set to those who purchased a particular product.
Automation tools/software - Pardot, Silverpop, Marketo, Act-on, HubSpot
Autoresponder - is part of an email service that allows you to send pre-scheduled messages to your email list, often in emails. You decide the order and the frequency; they send automatically based on a trigger (for example - signing up for your email list triggers the first email on day 1, another a week later, a third a week after that – no matter when someone signs up). Autoresponders are usually a paid feature of an email marketing service.
Awareness – the degree to which a person can easily recognize and identify (unprompted) an organization or brand and link it to the products or services it offers, to its marketing campaigns, and/or to its tagline or slogan; sometimes referred to as ‘top of mind awareness,’ or ‘brand awareness.’

B2B (Business-to-Business) – used to describe marketing for products and services whose primary customers are other businesses. Example - Home Advisor and Angieslist sell their services directly to businesses, not individuals; Comcast and American Express have products they sell to consumers and ones they sell to businesses, each with different campaigns and messages. B2B marketing may use the same tools and tactics as those directly to individual consumers.

- B2C (Business to Consumer) - describes marketing campaigns that promote products or services to individual consumers. Your local plumber, Walmart, Adidas, and Burger King are all B2C marketers.
- Backlinks – Backlinks are links from outside domains that point to pages on your domain, essentially linking back from their domain to yours.
- Benchmarking – a point of reference comparison or measurement on some standards or metrics, often used versus similar organizations to yours.
- Blogging - Short for either web log or weblog. A blog for a business is typically helpful information about their industry or field, customer feedback, updates, and product or service information. They can include e-books, diagrams, charts, etc...Blogs are very useful in marketing because they help with material to post for ads, copy on the website rich with keywords, and can help increase your domain authority. It does not, however, do your taxes.
- Body copy – the main text in a piece of content, which provides details, benefits, features, or other necessary information; more detailed and more prolonged than headlines or subheads. Refer to the text in a blog post, a paid ad, a flyer, or any other text-based marketing piece.
- Bounce Rate – percent of visitors to your website who navigate away from that page after viewing only that page.
- Brand - A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s product or service as unique as opposed to other sellers.
- Buyer Persona - A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone representing your target audience. This persona is fictional but based on deep research of your existing or desired audience.
- B-Roll – film or video footage that is not part of the original or main script or shooting plan or doesn’t feature whoever is talking on-camera; often used to give context, sense of place or surroundings, actions, crowds, or visual information while a narrator or voice-over gives additional info; b-rolls ‘shows, not tells.’
- Byline – the ‘about the author’ information, often at the end of an article or blog post – especially on sites other than yours. Contains a link back to your website or a call-to-action link for readers.

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Call To Action (CTA) – each marketing piece should have some CTA – asking the reader to do something. You could invite them to sign up for your email newsletter, go to the page to donate to your nonprofit campaign, click a link for a product or service you use and recommend, use the button for your online appointment scheduler, or click a link to buy something. The point of marketing is to inspire action – so content should have directions on what action to take.
Case Study – for content marketing context, share the story of one of your clients, customers, patrons, or reader of your blog. Tell about their experience using your services, programs, or advice.
Channel – can refer to types of media, e.g., TV, print, radio, internet, social media, and even the specific platforms or sources themselves; or could mean the method or manner of distributing goods or products – linking a business to an end customer.
Click-through-Rate (CTR) – With online marketing, the click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of visitors viewing a web page who view and then click on a specific advertisement on that page. Click-through rates measure how successfully an ad has captured a reader's attention. The higher the click-through rate it has, the more prosperous the ad was in generating interest. A high click-through rate will help a website owner support the site through advertising dollars measured in cost-per-click. Commonly used as a metric for email marketing (Percent who clicked the link in email = signal of real engagement) or for an online ad (percentage who clicked on an ad vs. saw ad). Clicks ÷ Impressions = CTR [if 100 people see the link and 10 of those people click on it, your CTR = 10%]
Collateral – the printed (sometimes means electronic) information used to explain or give background on a company or organization and to help a person buy a product or service or make a donation, e.g., brochures, information sheets, rack cards, business cards, print (or email) newsletters, fact sheets, press kits, media kits, staff or team member biographies, websites, and annual reports.

Org Fact sheet – to help employees, key stakeholders, or media members to learn important facts about the organization at a glance, inc founding or history information, key dates, location(s), images of key buildings or facilities, names, and brief background of crucial staff, founders, historical figures in organizational history, essential photos, contact info; usually all on one attractively designed page, ready to send out or download as PDF.
Product/Service Fact sheet – keep one for each critical service or primary product; company function or value, key customer benefits, distinctive features that set it apart, comparison to similar products/services, a statement on quality or reliability, pricing, and/or availability.
Press/Media Kit – all the information a reporter or media member needs to know about your organization at a glance; they can be collected in one place or page on your website, available to download, or printed physically and sent on request or handed out at events; Business: logo and appropriate way to display it; company/org fact sheet, key product/service fact sheets, copy of recent articles or press mentions of your org; a current press release; card or contact information.

Color Codes – also known as ‘color models’; because we need more precise ways to consistently represent and display the same color in web and printed materials, each color has a set of codes (and because ‘blue’ could be anything between ‘sky’, ‘ocean’ or ‘denim’); if you are getting material printed, you may be asked for CMYK, if it’s purely on the web, use RGB or Hex. The nifty site to find hex codes for all variations of a color (0to255.com), find or translate codes across models (color-hex.com), and select color palettes (Colors).

RGB – a projected light color system; that represents colors with three separate numbers from 0 to 255, one number each to represent R(red), G(green), and B(blue) values that make up a color; most computer devices and screen use RGB colors.
Example - Black = (0, 0, 0) Red = (255, 0, 0) magenta (255, 0, 255)
CMYK – ‘process color’ – represents the four colors in the physical printing ink, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key Black for paint, pigment, and inks where you add various percentages of colors, and if you keep adding, you’d eventually get black (but in practice, it comes out muddy, hence the use of the fourth color, K (pure black).
e.g Black = 0.00, 0.00, 0.00, 1.00 Red = 0.00, 1.00, 1.00, 0.00 Magenta = 0.00, 1.00, 0.00, 0.00
Hex Codes (hexadecimal) – computer-friendly, six-character alpha-numeric combination beginning with # to also represent the spectrum of values of Red, Green, and Blue; hex codes are used in ‘legacy’ HTML and CSS; Example - Black = #000000 Red=#FF0000 Magenta = #ff00ff

Competitive Analysis - Competitive analysis identifies competitors and evaluates their strategies to determine their weaknesses and strengths to improve. your company. (Resource: Airfocus)
Content – any information you share with readers for instructional, educational, entertainment, or persuasive purposes. It can be long or short, text or visual, audio, video, etc. Blog posts, white papers, slide shows, videos, podcasts, short ebooks, social media posts, and infographics are all types or formats of content.
Content Management System – a web application or framework that allows users to quickly develop, add, edit, and manage website content via a familiar user interface and can support multiple users working in the same system, collaboratively as infor files, media, articles, and other digital content. Examples - Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Wikis, Moodle, Rainmaker, etc.
Conversion – someone taking a desired action; some actions include: subscribing to an email, downloading something, donating, signing up for the event, watching the video, sending the follow-up contact form, initiating a chat, sending an email, or making a purchase.
Conversion Rate – the number of visitors who ‘convert’ into or through a desired action out of the total number of visitors who visited a web page, saw an ad, visited a landing page, etc. Example – how many visitors filled out an opt-in email form vs. the number who visited the page or clicked the link to open the opt-in. (Conversion rates tend to be low (<10% is standard) but can vary and increase depending on factors like what’s being offered, good headlines, emotional appeals, clear benefits, social proof, or on-page graphics.)
Copywriting – writing to promote something and inspire action – for a business, organization, nonprofit, person, opinion, or idea. Copywriting’s goal is persuasion through compelling, engaging, targeted writing.
Copy – text or writing, usually for marketing purposes; can be headline copy, body copy, footer copy, disclaimer copy, policy copy, sales copy, etc.
Cost Per Action (CPA) – an online advertising model where the person/org buying pays only for the specified action (i.e. a click, an impression, a sale)
Cost Per Click (CPC) – an online ad model where the advertiser pays a pre-set amount whenever that ad is clicked.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – the cost to reach 1,000 people via a specific advertising channel or medium (1000 viewers on TV, 1000 page views, etc.); or cost per thousand impressions.
Crowd-sourced – usually referring to content; when you let your customers, users, or other 3rd party subject experts create quality content for you to share on your site or other social platforms under your brand or organizational name. Content may come from a contest, as part of testimonials, or guest posts. Always give credit fairly to all contributors, including social media handles.
Curation – collecting, organizing, and sharing already published content via a blog, social media, or email newsletters.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – often refers to software designed to help you keep track of contacts, leads, and customers at different phases of interaction with your organization; the system holds all contact information, details of meetings, personal info (birthdays, anniversaries, hobbies, interests – anything to help you personalize your contact or products with potential customers). Some systems include social networking information and profiles. Examples include Nimble, Insightly, Salesforce, Zoho, Infusionsoft, Act!, SugarCRM, Pipedrive, and HubSpot CRM.

Demand Generation - A marketing process that creates awareness and interest in a company's products or services, driving potential customers into the sales funnel.
Digital Marketing - Using digital channels like search engines, social media, email, and websites to promote a brand, product, or service.
Direct Mail - A form of marketing communication that sends promotional materials to potential customers via postal mail.
Display Advertising - A type of online advertising where visual ads, such as banners, are placed on websites and apps to promote a brand or product.
Drip Campaign - A series of pre-written, automated emails sent to subscribers or leads over time to nurture and engage them throughout the customer journey.
Dynamic Content - Personalized content that changes based on the user's preferences, behaviors, or demographics, providing a more relevant and engaging experience.
Data-driven Marketing - Using data and analytics to make informed decisions about marketing strategies, tactics, and messaging.
Demographics – personal info about users or customers (usually collected, studied, or used in marketing in the aggregate – i.e., not identifiable to a specific individual); Example, age, gender, occupation, education level, zip code, number of people in the household, marital status, group affiliations.
Distribution – how your products, goods, services, or cause are delivered to your users or customers; also method your products or services are marketed, promoted circulated into the hands of users; Channel of Distribution = network or system of resources, organizations that are connected to bring a good or service from beginning producer into hands of the end consumer, completing a marketing cycle.
DM (Direct Mail) – targeted advertising, fundraising, or news delivered to prospects, customers, users, or patrons via postal mail.

Editorial Calendar – a publishing schedule for your content that helps you organize, plan and coordinate what you are creating, publishing, and sharing, when and where. A calendar might include: timed themes for your content (April is Library Appreciation month; February will feature ‘best huddle with blanket and fireplace reads’; Wednesdays will be website tips; share archives or local history on#TBT, #Caturday, etc.); topics for blog posts; days you send emails, plans for each social media platform including links and promotions; what events you will promote on which channels, etc. You can keep it as simple as a Word doc or Excel chart, a team Google calendar, or use free and paid tools online. There are online sample calendars and tools to help plan and execute.
Email Marketing – targeted communication to users or customers for promotion or sharing of news about products, services, or causes via email; email marketing is a more technologically savvy, cost-effective, and trackable form of direct mail marketing; proper email marketing always involves wanted communications, not spam – users or customers have opted-in to receive the message(s) [in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act]
Engagement – or Engagement Rate – a popular social media metric to describe or measure the amount of interaction between accounts. Shares, RTs, likes, or comments can indicate an interaction, a level beyond just reading your posts, Tweets, or pictures.
Event Marketing – promotional strategy linking an org or company to a specific event (festival, fair, sports event, competition, music event, trade show, conference); often includes sponsorship of some aspect of the event, but not always – having a booth or physical presence at an event is ‘event marketing.' This does not mean ‘how to market an event’ – that would be part of your overall plan or promotion.
Evergreen Content – a gardening analogy to describe types of content – ‘Annuals’ are posts or content that is time-restricted or time-based, meant to bloom and last a short time; ‘Evergreen’ content gives good info and values no matter when a reader finds or sees that content, it is timeless and lasts and doesn’t have a season. Evergreen content tends to get higher search engine rankings for your site and higher traffic and can be a page you refer to internally for some time. This content will help you for a long time after you publish it.

Focus Groups – a way to gather qualitative research about users or customers by gathering them in a group, physically or virtually, and asking guided questions or exercises; learn more about behaviors, values, beliefs, desires, or reactions to concepts; in recruiting, often preferable to have multiple, varied, homogeneous groups to encourage free discussion and then compare results across groups; focus groups are small by nature and can gather more in-depth information than a questionnaire or other methods; data is not always representative across all users or customers unless well-designed with variety of users or customers, or desired users/customers.
Funnel – the process or ‘journey’ of a prospective user/customer/donor through phases or levels of commitment, from a lack of awareness to greater awareness and trust, towards a purchase, donation, or otherwise becoming a customer or user. The wide top of the funnel is where someone has the slightest awareness of your organization or its services and the lowest level of commitment; the narrow bottom of the funnel represents the smaller number of people who are aware of the org and become its fans and have made a more significant commitment. Marketing actions are taken to bring people through the funnel, with the understanding that not everyone filters down to the bottom or tip. Different marketing strategies and tactics may be used at different funnel stages.
Monetary donations.
Frequency – the number of times a person, household, or another member of a target audience is exposed to media or paid ads over a specific period; in paid advertising, it’s considered necessary for a customer to be exposed to an ad multiple times in a campaign for it to be considered adequate. Still, there are also caps because too high a frequency is unhelpful.

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Geotargeting – a way of detecting a website visitor’s location and using that info to serve targeted, location-specific messages, ads, coupons, or content.
Goal – short-term measurement of the desired achievement; what you pursue to meet an objective.
Guerilla Marketing – a marketing tactic or technique considered ‘unconventional,’ usually a low-cost initiative designed for maximum impact/results for minimum effort/resources.
Guest Post - Guest blogging, or “guest posting,” is writing content for another company’s website.

Headline – the attention-getting sentence at the top of a page to attract readers and entice them to read further. Important for all web pages, sales pages, blog posts, articles, and emails. Headlines often appear in a different font style and larger size, bolded or otherwise made to stand out.
Heat Map – a graphical representation to show varying degrees of a single measure; on websites, a heat map can show concentrations of clicks or eye-tracking.

Impression – a single instance of a post or online ad being ‘displayed’ to a viewer.
Inbound Marketing – is often used interchangeably with ‘content marketing, but they are NOT the same; Inbound draws visitors, potential customers, and prospective patrons towards you into your organization's ‘traditional’ or old-school advertising, which pushes its message out. Inbound is about attracting visitors, being easily found online, and having visitors come back to your site repeatedly who can, usually with high-quality, helpful content.
Influencer – A person or organization influences potential product or service buyers by promoting or recommending the items on social media.
Infographic – visual content that uses graphs, icons, arrows, or other elements to visually present statistics, a timeline, or a story.
Integrated Marketing – process/system/framework that emphasizes planning and connecting all marketing elements is preferred; to ensure all the points of contact and communication between a brand and a consumer are coordinated and consistent over place and time.
Incentives – something offered to reward or motivate action by sellers, users, consumers, or donors; bonuses, promotions, contests, competitions or games, give-backs, freebies, premiums, sales promotions, pass-along deals; can be coupons, discounts, prizes, money, virtual or physical items.

Jargon – that language, set of terms, acronyms, created words, and more that are special and specific to a profession, niche, trade, or group. Words that members of the group know and understand (or they come to know), but which are confusing to the ordinary public or non-members. These are often technical terms, industry-specific words, or words whose meaning differs for the ingroup vs. others.

Keyword Phrase – a phrase that someone enters in a search engine to try and find something they’re looking for. Website creators and owners attempt to build pages to best rank for these phrases in search results by writing content that features a phrase and related words.

Landing Page – a single web page where one sends traffic to encourage a single action; it doesn’t have additional navigation, links, or ways for someone to quickly leave without completing the desired action. The goal usually involves capturing a visitor’s information in exchange for an offer of something of value for email marketing and follow-up contacts.
Layout – the physical design or format of a physical piece of marketing material, showing the placement of artwork/images, header, headlines, subheads, body copy, contact info, and any other graphical elements; mainly used to describe printed ads, pieces of direct mail, publications, and other physical collateral.
Lead Generation - Lead generation generates consumer interest in a product or service to turn that interest into a sale. Online marketing typically involves collecting a visitor's contact information (called a “lead”) via a web form.
Lead Magnet – an enticing, practical, educational, helpful piece of content or free resource offered to visitors in exchange for contact information (usually a name + email address); content is emailed or digitally delivered after completion of the form, and further follow-up takes place.
Lifecycle – stages or phases to describe the evolution of the relationship between you and your audience, users, or customers. There are various lifecycles discussed among marketers and marketing experts.
Longtail – a search phrase with three or more words, usually a key term and additional descriptors. They are more specific than a single or two-term search, and if your content matches these longer phrases, the visitor who follows that longtail search term to your site is more qualified and more interested in your site's offers. More and more online searches use longtail phrases, so it’s useful for your web pages and posts to use the exact long phrases your audience will search on.

Marketing Channel - A marketing channel is described as a set of people, organizations, and activities that work together to transfer goods (products and services) from the point of origin to the point of consumption. A marketing channel's primary purpose is to connect the organization that creates a product or service and prospective customers who may want to purchase it.

Search engine optimization (SEO)
Content marketing
Email marketing
Social media marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM)
Influencer marketing
Offline advertising
Online advertising
Partnership marketing
Community building

Marketing Mix – the mix of tactics, channels, and variables that an org uses to achieve desired business and marketing goals; see the 4 (or 7) Ps model [the combo of price, product, promotion, place]; the mix includes what to budget to each variable, amount of time/resources, how to measure, and timing.
Metadata - Metadata describes other data. It provides information about a certain item's content.
Metatag - This is a unique HTML tag that is used to store information about a Web page but is not displayed in a Web browser. For example, meta tags provide information such as what program was used to create the page, a page description, and keywords stored relevant to the page. Many search engines use the information stored in meta tags to index Web pages.
Metrics – a system or set of measurements to help quantify marketing elements or characteristics such as overall traffic, search engine traffic, conversions, top traffic-driving keywords, and keyword rankings; social media metrics include impressions, engagement, reshares, and followers.
Mobile marketing – there are now more searches on mobile devices than desktops/laptops; responsive web design is key, and your organization and site need to be easily found and seen on mobile devices – so it makes sense your marketing needs to work on mobile too. Mobile marketing refers to optimizing your messages, visuals, site, emails, and more for viewing on mobile devices, being seen, and sending promotions in time- and location-sensitive ways.
Multichannel – interacting with a customer via campaigns designed to appear simultaneously across multiple channels to promote goods or services; increasing the number of channels increases the odds that a brand or org will reach a consumer in their preferred method or channel; direct channels = org proactively reaches out to the customer via a physical location, catalog, direct mail; indirect channels, websites, social media, email, text messaging, mobile marketing.

Newsjacking – piggybacking on, or taking advantage of, a breaking news event or hot item/trend in a news cycle (overall or in your given industry, niche, field, or local market) to insert your brand/organization into the news stream. Requires fast action and treading carefully, not negatively affecting the brand.
Newsletter – either printed or online via email, a digest or collection of organizational news, tips, or noteworthy info to share with a specific audience; newsletters can be free, paid, available to the public or a limited membership/audience; generally a quicker production and distribution than a magazine, less formal than a newspaper, different from a blog post.
Niche – specialization, segmentation, or subset of an overall market or audience; a small, specific, well-defined portion of the total population; marketers create niches by using research to find the needs or wants that aren’t being addressed or met by other brands or organizations and developing a way to identify similar members of that niche and deliver their goods or services to them; a big fish in a small pond strategy.
NoFollow – a website and SEO-related term; it tells SEs (search engines) NOT to count that link or pass on its ‘trust’ factors to the destination URL. By not passing on ‘credit’ or ‘trust,’ you can avoid associations with potential spammy sites, sites with questionable content (but that you might still have a good reason to link to or show as an example of something), or to not run afoul of specific webmaster guidelines.
Nonprofit Marketing – marketing of a product, service, or cause for which the overall goal is not to make a monetary profit for the organization/marketer; may include promoting or selling goods or services to support the organization, but profit is not primary; often includes the same marketing mix, channels or tactics as for-profit marketers.

Objective – a desired result to achieve by a particular time; usually broader than a goal, an objective can be broken into several more specific goals; there are organizational and marketing objectives.
Off-page SEO - Off-page SEO is a type of search engine optimization that uses off-site optimizations to improve a website's or page's rankings in relevant search results. Off-site optimizations occur outside your site link building, local citations, and more. View Off-Page SEO Services.
Offer – in content marketing, they, including these, do NOT have to mean things for sale; they can be offers of high-quality content that is ‘gated’ behind a password or requires an email subscription entry in a form on a landing page. An offer might be for a checklist, worksheet, template, free webinar, ebook, free software, etc. It’s what you are ‘offering’ in exchange for something else, such as an email opt-in, small payment, or trial.
On-Page SEO - On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, refers to; optimizing web pages to improve a website's search engine rankings and earn organic traffic. In addition to publishing relevant, high-quality content, on-page SEO includes optimizing your headlines, HTML tags, title, meta, header, and images.
Opener – the part of content or copy that comes after a headline. It should be compelling and engaging and entice the reader to keep moving down the page. Also known as an ‘introduction’ or introductory paragraph.
Opt-in – when some material is restricted in access and requires the giving of contact info or a request to receive the material specifically; for example, for email marketing, someone must opt-in to the list/membership, showing they choose to receive your messages CAN-SPAM compliance; See also, Lead Magnet, offering something to encourage someone to opt-in to receive an email newsletter give an ebook, coupon, video, e-course, free event ticket.
Organic Search Results – Organic search results are unpaid listings on a search engine results page (SERP). These results are based on relevance to the user's search query, incoming links, valid search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, and domain authority.
Outbound Marketing - Outbound marketing is a traditional marketing approach where businesses reach their target audience through various advertising methods such as TV commercials, cold calling, and direct mail. While outbound marketing can effectively reach many people, it is often considered interruptive and can be seen as annoying by potential customers. In contrast, inbound marketing is a more modern approach that focuses on attracting customers to a business by creating valuable content and experiences they are actively searching for. This includes tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and content marketing. Businesses using inbound marketing can generate leads and build long-term customer relationships by providing helpful information and building trust with their audience.

PCC Management - PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Management oversees and manages a company’s PPC campaigns and budget. Most people think of Google Ads first. However, PPC is a common type of advertising used by different search engines, affiliate networks, and even social media platforms.
Personas – avatars or ‘people types’, a collection of demographics, psychographics, and attributes to describe some subgroup, particularly of your target audience/marketing, customers used to focus your messages to the correct audience, to help segment and select media channels.
Positioning – how you want your organization, brand, or product to be perceived relative to your competitors and alternative options in your key user's/customer's minds.
Power Words – emotionally charged words or phrases. Often used to set a scene, create a mental image, inspire, persuade, or influence a reader. There are positive and negative power words- be careful not to overuse the negative ones.
Promotion – 1) promotion techniques include advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and public relations as ways to achieve specific marketing goals; 2) a type of advertising or communication that offers a special price, sale, discount, temporary price change, new season, limited-time availability of goods or services, new product/service debut – the key is that this is limited in duration and different from ‘every day’ communication about the org, brand, product or service.
Psychographics – attributes based on consumer behaviors, values, lifestyles, or interests, not personal info; organizations can segment a market or target based on lifestyles or psychographic information for better results. e.g., the company Orange Boy has been hired by many libraries to perform data analysis and segmentation using library and community data as well as psychographics to create user personas and influence marketing strategies and promotions.

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Quality score – Within Google Ads, a diagnostic score shows how relevant your ad and landing page are for any given keyword compared to advertisers.
Query (search query) – The exact string of words a user types into a search engine.

Rate card – document or information detailing the prices for paid ad placement options in a publication.
Reach – the number of people or households exposed to a particular piece of paid advertising or media during a specific period; reach is often given as a percentage of the total number of people in an audience, target market, or geographic area.
Relationship Marketing – marketing designed to develop, manage and maintain long-term, trust-built relationships with customers, suppliers, distributors, and others in the marketing cycle; often uses automation, social media, and tools like CRM software or loyalty programs.
Reputation Marketing - Reputation marketing uses your company’s reputation to market your business to new leads. Reputation marketing is about acquiring and amplifying positive brand content to use your reputation as a promotional asset in marketing campaigns.
Responsive web design – websites or website themes that automatically adjust to fit any device – from desktop to smartphone – and show content optimized for the device a visitor/viewer uses. The user experience should be seamless and not require adjustment from them to view/interact with content or navigation. Responsive web design has become a standard requirement. If you can’t use or create a responsive web design, consider a separate mobile website or app so your users can optimally view and use your site on various devices.
ROI (Return on Investment) – ROI, or return on investment, is a standard business term used to identify past and potential financial returns. Managers and executives look to the ROI of a project or endeavor because this measure indicates how successful a venture will be. Often expressed as a percentage or a ratio, this value describes anything from a financial return to increased efficiencies.; e.g., if you invested $100, you earned back $150 or its equivalent, and your ROI is 50%.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – paid search result placements or ads; sometimes refers to all search-marketing activities, paid and organic search efforts.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Simply put, it means improving your site's visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better your pages' visibility in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.
Segmentation – Dividing an entire geographic, behavior, interest base, or entire market into more specific, distinct subsets of potential customers who are likely to have the same interests, demographics, behaviors, or needs; each segment might get its marketing strategy or different plan and set of tactics or campaigns; segmentation reflects that not all customers are alike and can’t be reached or engaged with same media or message; segmenting makes marketing more efficient and effective.
Seven Ps – Product/Service, Price, Place, Promotion.

- Product : the service that satisfies customer demand and all its features and benefits

- Price: what a customer exchanges for the product – setting or changing price is part of the overall business and marketing strategy; for nonprofits, this might include a membership fee, prices on items sold for fundraising, the time or resources given up in exchange for a service, the action requested by a cause, the other ‘costs’ for using a service or attending an event.

- Place: how and where the user/customer gets the product; marketing via changes in Place might include adding a new location, increasing hours, adding a kiosk at the seasonal location, taking services to the community, live-streaming an in-person event, or changing your website, adding a donation button online.

- Promotion: the methods of communication to a user about the product and its price and place. Examples- tactics; advertising, public relations, sales, sales promotions, etc.

- Physical evidence: the tangible aspects of a business that customers can see, touch or feel. It includes the store's layout, product displays, packaging, signage, uniforms or dress code of employees, and even the cleanliness of the store or website design. Providing a clean and organized store, an easy-to-navigate website, and aesthetically pleasing product packaging are all examples of how businesses can enhance their physical evidence to create a positive impression on their customers. Offering customer testimonials, awards or certifications, and high-quality product photos can also improve a company's physical evidence and build trust with potential customers.

- People: the staff members who interact with customers and represent the business. Well-trained and friendly employees can significantly impact a customer's experience and perception of a company. Their behavior, attitude, and communication skills can directly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. Businesses that invest in their employees' training and development are more likely to have satisfied customers.

- Process: systems or repetitive steps used to complete a service that affects delivering service.

Social Media Management - Social media management is the process of analyzing social media audiences and developing a strategy that’s tailored to them, creating and distributing content for social media profiles, monitoring online conversations, collaborating with influencers, providing community service, and monitoring, measuring, and reporting on social media performance and ROI.
Social Proof – refers to the psychological phenomenon that people will take recommendations and advice from others on how to act or think in a situation or what to do or buy. We are even likely to let the recommendations of strangers influence decisions over no bids. People tend to think, ‘If others are sharing something, it must be good,’ or ‘If others are buying this item, it has to check out this podcast with the definition and description.
SMM (Social Media Marketing) – tactics as part of an overall marketing strategy or plan that uses social media platforms to build interest and awareness of an organization or brand and to increase web traffic to the org’s site.
Split Testing (A/B Testing) – a method of using online tools or platforms to conduct a controlled test over marketing variables – such as email subject lines, website headers, opt-in offers, landing pages, variations in copy, the color +/or text on a Call to Action button, ads, etc. Any time you pit two variations against each other, measure for clicks, completions, opt-ins, purchases, or other desired actions. Your base/original is the Control (A), and the version with slight variation is the Test (B). Don’t change too much between A and B, or you won’t know what caused a difference in action.
Strategy – the statement, plan, or essential structure for how your organization aims to meet its marketing goals; strategy gives direction and purpose and helps make decisions on what tactics to use or not; strategy identifies the market, target audience, any subsegments, your brand positioning, your unique value statement, the specific goals and milestones to measure by, the particular marketing mix tactics you will use and your budget, time and resources as well as money.
Style Guide – a resource to document and standardize aspects of branding, communication, design, and marketing by an org; style guides help when an org has multiple members involved in graphic design, content creation, or creation of marketing materials to keep things consistent; it might include preferred abbreviations, spelling (is it ebook or e-book, “white paper” or “white-paper” or “whitepaper’), punctuation, or other grammar rules as well as how to use the logo, brand colors, brand fonts, image preferences, the corporate or organizational ‘vernacular’ or tone of voice; give visual examples of what to do, or not do.
Sub-head, sub-headline – the smaller headlines through your content, dividing it into easier-to-read chunks or sections. On a web page, these are often ‘header 2’ or ‘header 3’ or higher: smaller font sizes, less emphasis than a headline, and more than body text.

Taglines – also called a slogan, a brand line, or catchphrase; a short set of memorable words or a key phrase that sums up the main idea of your brand or a particular advertising campaign; good taglines include a crucial benefit, help differentiate and give a positive feeling about the brand.
Target Audience – Your target audience refers to the consumers most likely to want your product or service and, therefore, the people who should see your ad campaigns. The target audience may be dictated by age, gender, income, location, interests, or many other factors.
Target Market - A target market is a specific group of people with shared characteristics to which a business markets its products or services. Companies use target markets to thoroughly understand their potential customers and craft marketing strategies that help them meet their business and marketing objectives.
Testimonial – written or video recommendation or referral from a happy, satisfied customer; testimonials affirm the quality, value, customer service, and performance of a product or service; powerful marketing tool because of the weight we give to evaluations from other customers and their experience.

Unique Visitor – web measurement/analytic term; the number of visitors to a site, each counted only once, who visit a site over 30 minutes as measured by your stats/analytics software.
User Generated Content (UGC) – content created by your users, audience, and fans and shared online (can be on your site, system, or platform or a social platform, or shared to the library’s account on social media sites). UCG may be part of a promotion or contest to offer personal experiences, for self-expression initiated by the users, and to share or connect with other users. Make sure you work out ahead of time why you are collecting UGC, and be sure to get permission and give credit to creators.

Video Marketing – incorporating video-based promotional content for a product or service into your marketing plans; videos of various types are created and uploaded online for sharing; videos for marketing are usually short, 2-5min or less, and make use of popular video sharing sites and visuals, storytelling; videos are uploaded to 3rd party video sites to take advantage of their significant traffic and search capabilities as well as ease of social sharing; don’t overlook hosting the videos on your organizational site as well.
V/O (voiceover) – the voice of a person reading a script over a radio or TV ad, or over presentation slides turned into a video, or voice narrating or reading script. At the same time, the footage shows in a film or video.

Web Copy - Website copy is the core text that narrates visitors through your website and tells them what they need to know about a brand or the site. Website copy is on your home page, the About page, all products and service pages, and primarily all your site's other top-level pages.
Webinar – a learning or training experience conducted using web-based software, often with visuals, presentations, videos, and audience interaction components. Some webinars show the speaker in addition to slides or visuals, some allow the audience to be seen, and some have forms of audience interaction. They are often used for teaching, training, panel presentations, or presenting new products or services in a demonstration. It can be offered free or paid as a form of marketing and lead generation, a premium offering to membership, or a way to reach a wider audience.
White Paper – shorter than an e-book; well-written, researched paper, guide, or report to address a problem and present solutions – often with the organization’s product or service featured as one of those solutions. It may also present recent research and statistics in text and graphical form. Often seen in a business-to-business (B2B) marketing or sales scenario. White papers can be technical, serious, and slightly academic in tonality.
Widget – web term, a small piece of software built into a site or interface to give additional, discrete function, personalization, or added content, particularly in sidebars or footers of content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, etc.; Example - displays the latest tweets, shows local weather, add an RSS feed.
Word of Mouth (WOM) – sharing news, communications, recommendations, or product or service referrals by informal oral or written communication from a satisfied customer to a prospective brand customer.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) Sitemap: this is a website term for a file with all the URLs on your site like a map that helps search engines crawl your site more intelligently. Some plugins can help create an XML sitemap.

You – Speaking directly to your audience, users, and patrons in marketing messages using "you."

Zero Cost Strategy – a decision or tactic that doesn’t have any costs or expenses when you implement it.

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