Your Guide to Online Marketing Acronyms

November 26, 2016

Now you will understand your marketer’s jargon

By Maureen McCabe

Every professional speaks their own language relative to the industry they are in. It just so happens that sometimes industry-specific jargon finds its way in front of the rest of the world, which means people who are not versed in that verbiage are left to figure out how to communicate and navigate this foreign fixture of words, acronyms, and sounds.

You probably use tons of shorthand that you speak every day in your own industry, and if you are like most people, you probably do not even realize it because you are so well-versed in your own verbiage. Digital marketers feel the same way when they speak to others, but unless you are a digital marketing expert, you have probably found yourself in the face of a search engine or two as you try to clarify whatever is being explained to you.

Fear not! To help you navigate the muddy waters of marketing acronyms, we have created this quick-reference guide.

• CMS: Content Management System. These systems utilize software to organize, edit, analyze, publish and promote online content such as blogs and social media blasts.
• CTR: Click-through-Rate. This term relates to the measurement of the number of people who click on a particular link. Essentially, this acronym can be used to measure the interest people express in a particular page or properly placed link on your website. You can compare the number of people who visit your homepage to those who click a link and land on another page for one form of measurement. Alternatively, marketers use this term frequently when describing success (or failure) of email marketing campaigns.
• KPI: Key Performance Indicator. A KPI is a metric put in place to help you measure your online marketing successes and opportunities.
• PPC: Pay-per-Click. PPC is one of those marketing acronyms that have been around for a while, but it still causes confusion for many small business owners. With PPC, advertisers pay for their cyber real estate each time someone clicks on their ad. CPC (or cost-per-click) is the cost attributable for each click.

SEO

• SEO: Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of getting search engines to recognize you so they send online searchers in your direction. SEO is based on many factors including keywords, relevant content, backlinks, user-friendly navigation and site-friendly naming conventions.
• SERP: Search Engine Results Page. A SERP is the product of users’ searches and the page on which they land after they have entered a key phrase into the search bar. Although each search engine’s layout is different, the page on which each one delivers results is its SERP.
• SMM: Social Media Marketing. SMM refers to your company’s persona on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn, just to name a few. It is related to SMO, or social media optimization, whereby you utilize these social outlets to further embrace your audience and invite them to learn more about you and your company.
• URL: Uniform Resource Locator. URL is one of the marketing acronyms that is almost exclusively known by its letters. URL refers to each site’s specific Internet address, e.g., the domain name.
• UX: User Experience. Web developers use certain marketing acronyms as a normal part of their vernacular, but they can be difficult for non-techy people to understand. UX is one of the easier marketing acronyms to understand, and it simply refers to the way your audience uses your website and how their total experience can be summed. The experience users have on your website largely determines how likely they’ll be to return in the future.

Marketing Acronyms

Did we miss some of the acronyms you have found yourself Googling? If so, please add them to our list below!

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