Jargon… every business has it. Following the theme of today’s blog, the official definition for jargon (in case you wanted it) is “special words and phrases that are used by particular groups of people, especially in their work”. If you think about it, lots of friendships have it too. You might not consider it ‘jargon’ but those phrases or expressions you use that those outside of your group wouldn’t understand are basically jargon. And if you’re not in the know, jargon can be pretty confusing and even intimidating.
Considering marketers are a particularly guilty party when it comes to jargon. We figured it would be helpful to create an encyclopaedia of a few key words, terms and acronyms that you’ve probably heard, but can’t always remember the meaning of. This should help you tackle your marketing with confidence. Plus we’ve included a couple of Slerp/general phrases that we reckon might come in handy.
Okay this might feel a bit basic but when you think about it it’s not such a straightforward definition. Analytics is the identification and study of patterns in data. In the context of marketing this might involve establishing insights, analysing trends and actioning them. Often businesses use tools like Google Analytics or internal tools analytics in their CRM tools to evaluate the performance of campaigns and comms. Marketers can then make more informed decisions and back up hunches with data.
A bit of a techy one now, APIs are a way for two systems to send data to one another. Think of it a bit like two people having a conversation over the phone. At Slerp we use APIs all the time, for example when processing delivery orders. For example we use an API to transfer customers and order details between slerp and our courier partners so they can carry out their orders successfully.
With this one, it’s in the name. This is calculated as a percentage and looks at the number of people who land on a website page and ‘bounce’ off without clicking any further. So a high bounce rate would generally mean that a business was converting leads poorly because their website isn’t very ‘sticky’ (there’s nothing really gripping them or persuading them to take a look around).
Again, probably one you’re familiar with but it’s so commonly used we reckon people wrongly assume that everyone knows this term. B2B stands for business to business and is used to describe businesses who sell to other businesses. This naturally affects the style of marketing and communication channels used. So that means B2C stands for (you guessed it) business to consumer, and is used to describe businesses who sell directly to consumers. To confuse things, companies can target or sell to both but let’s not delve too deeply into that.
With this one, it’s in the name. This is calculated as a percentage and looks at the number of people who land on a website page and ‘bounce’ off without clicking any further. So a high bounce rate would generally mean that a business was converting leads poorly because their website isn’t very ‘sticky’ (there’s nothing really gripping them or persuading them to take a look around).
This is the percentage of people who move from one part of a website, post or email to another. It’s calculated as the total number of clicks divided by the number of opportunities people had to click. For example if you sent an email to 100 people and 10 of the 100 people who opened said email clicked on a link to your website, the CTR would be 10%.
This is the percentage of people who took a desired action. This is a big one in the world of marketing. Ultimately, the higher your conversion rate, the more effective a campaign is. This could apply to multiple channels, your website, an ad on social or an email.
Fairly self explanatory, this is the amount it costs a business to acquire a lead. Also a really important one as a low CPL means you’re getting a lot out of your marketing efforts for what you are spending.
You might work with a CRM agency or invest in a tool that helps you keep track of your existing and potential customers. CRM software might hold information for your customers such as email addresses and phone numbers that lets you contact them. It might also track your communication with them so you can see the history of your relationship. This could be across all sorts of different channels like email, phone, social etc.
This one is pretty similar to B2C, D2C stands for ‘direct to consumer’. The sales process bypasses any third party retailers or wholesalers and sells a product directly to the customer.
Short and sweet, it’s the process of selling products online.
This is a metric that’s used to assess how well your customers are ‘engaging’ with your content. By this we mean actions such as liking, commenting, sharing. All of these interactions give your content better visibility, in response social media algorithms will push posts out to more people. The higher the engagement rate, the more your content is resonating with your customers.
This term would be used to describe an element of a website that might be off-putting to a customer and cause them to leave the site. Believe it or not, this could actually be a good or a bad thing. Naturally if your website is hard to navigate, too text heavy or has poor imagery this isn’t ever going to be a good thing. But marketers might deliberately add friction (such as a very specific question) to a form to put customers off who aren’t the right fit for their product.
You will more than likely have heard us use this one. GMV stands for gross merchandise volume and is basically the total value of merchandise sold over a period of time. It’s commonly used in online sales by businesses like Slerp!
Again, one you’re probably familiar with. Key performance indicators are used by all kinds of businesses and departments to measure performance, growth and ultimately success. Marketers will set and track KPIs as they work towards their goals.
In a marketing context, keywords are an important aspect of SEO (we’ll get to this later don’t worry). Depending on your business, marketers would pick keywords that they want to optimise on their websites. This means including them in headings, page titles and copy so that when someone googles that word, you might pop up as a suggestion. These could be the location of your restaurant, the cuisine type or something more niche!
A landing page is a type of web page which is used as an entry point, which has a single focus or purpose. In marketing they are often used to host forms for lead generation purposes. They might be used for marketing offers like webinars or ebooks.
A lead is someone who has shown interest in your business’s product and a potential customer. Lead generation is therefore the process of attracting visitors and turning them into leads with the hope they will become customers.
The clue really is in the name here. This term is used in relation to the net profit that a customer contributes to your business over the course of your relationship. It’s calculated by multiplying the revenue paid in that time period by the average lifetime of your customers. It can be used to help identify the customers who are most valuable to you.
This is a really important one for those of us in the online ordering game (and any business with a website really). Even now, so many businesses make the mistake of focussing on desktop view and navigation when it comes to their website. But the reality is that the majority of people have smartphones these days and are therefore shopping on their mobiles. Mobile optimisation then, is the process of designing and formatting your website so that it is ‘mobile friendly’.
Omnichannel is a multi-channel sales approach where a business sells through several different mediums, such as in person, online (desktop), mobile.
PPC is the amount spent on a digital ad to get a click. It is a form of digital marketing that is used to drive people to a business’s website.
Performance marketing is a kind of digital marketing where the cost is based on the results achieved. It’s a form of advertising normally on social media, search engines or web content.
A heavily used metric in finance and marketing, ROI is a performance measurement used to evaluate the profitability or efficiency of an investment. It’s expressed as a percentage or ratio and is calculated by subtracting the cost of investment from the gain and dividing it by the cost.
This is a very commonly used marketing model which essentially looks at the different stages of a customer journey towards buying a product. The top of the funnel is focussed on the early stages – lead generation and targeting. The bottom of the funnel is where you want to get your leads to. This is where they convert from leads to customers.
Another big one, so big we’ve actually written a whole blog if you want a little more depth. But SEO is essentially the process of improving your website’s visibility on search engines like Google. There are many ways you can improve your ranking, including keywords (mentioned earlier), tags, and inbound links.
This is all about your brand. On a basic level it’s the way in which you talk, in a marketing context, it’s about the style of your copy and even your brand. This is naturally hugely affected by what audience you are targeting. From the font and size of copy, punctuation and specific wording, these all affect TOV and ultimately the general image of your brand.
Any form of content (images, videos, copy) that has been posted by a user online, such as social media.
Last but certainly not least, URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It’s a web address and basically specifies the location of a website.
Obviously there are tons of acronyms and terms and we could never cover all of them! But hopefully this gives you a good understanding of some of the core ones. Every business and profession has jargon and you should never feel embarrassed if you don’t understand it. You can use this blog as a reference point and remember we’re always here to answer any questions you might have.