Marketing Jargon

Affiliate

An e-commerce affiliate is a website which links back to a third party e-commerce site such as Amazon.com. When a visitor clicks on an affiliate link, they are connected to this third party site. If a purchase is made the owner of the original site will receive a small payment (usually a percentage of the money the customer spends).

Affiliate marketing

A system of advertising on the web in which site A agrees to feature links from site B. Site A gets a commission on any sales generated for site B as a result.

Banner

A web banner or 'banner ad' is a form of advertising on the web which entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract a web surfer to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. When the web surfer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website advertised in the banner. This is known as a 'click through'.

Bidding

Pay per click search engines are designed around a very simple concept - the more you are willing to pay for a click through, the higher up the search engine results you will appear.

It works on a real-time auction system between competitors for the top few positions (which receive the vast majority of the click throughs).

For example; if company A is bidding £3.50 for the term “marketing consultants" and is in the top spot, a bid of £3.51 will put company B into No. 1 and push company A down to No. 2.

Black Hat

Black Hat is the term used to describe techniques used by some search marketers to promote websites. These techniques are those that go against guidelines published by search engines, and in many cases their use can result in a site being penalised or removed from search engine listings. Black Hat is the opposite of White Hat.

Bounce

In search marketing terms, 'bounce rate' is the percentage of web site visitors who arrive at an entry page, then leave without getting any deeper into the site.

This term is also frequently used to describe the return of a piece of e-mail due to an error in the despatch process.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a technique used to show content to a search engine and different content to a user. The content shown to the engine is usually designed to help a page rank very well for a certain phrase or word, and the content shown to the user usually designed to maximise the conversions from that page. Search engines dislike this technique and many sites are banned for using it. It is a Black Hat technique.

Cost per click

An alternative to buying internet advertising per impression. The advertiser pays the site displaying the advertisement for the number of times a visitor clicks through, rather than just views it.

Co-branding

A strategy in which two or more organisations join together in promotional activities to associate the two brands. Co-branding allows the partners to benefit from combining their complementary strengths.

Conversion

A conversion is when a website user completes a specific goal. On some sites that can be a sale, on others signing up for a newsletter or making an enquiry.

Cookie

A cookie is a small text file stored on a website user's computer. It identifies a repeat visitor to a site, often with a unique code, allowing people to shop online and removing the need to log in to sites repeatedly.

CPM

CPM stands for ‘cost-per-mille, and is a form of advertising system. An advertiser pays a specific amount for every thousand times his advert is seen on a site, regardless of how many of the users who see the advert actually click on it and visit the advertiser's site.

CTR

CTR stands for "Click-through Rate". It is an indicator of the percentage of people who see an advert who actually click on it. For example, if one out of every hundred people who view an advert click on it, the advert with have a CTR of 1%.

e-zine

An electronic magazine: newsletters, magazines, and other publications that are distributed either over the web or via email.

e-catalogue (or e-brochure)

An electronic version of a paper brochure in which the viewer can turn the pages on line.

Guerilla marketing

A term coined by Jay Conrad Levinson that refers to unconventional marketing strategies designed to get maximum results from minimal resources. These may include ‘high-jacking’ third party events and activities (e.g. standing behind a celebrity being interviewed on film with a product poster).

Hit

When searching the web, a hit can be a result found by a search engines that matches the search criteria. In analytics, a hit is when a file is requested by a server.

In the past some used hits as a measure of website traffic. However hits to a server include images and repeat visitors, and are a poor indicator of traffic. One thousand hits very rarely equal one thousand visits.

Keyword

A Keyword is a word or phrase - typically a phrase of two or three words - which has been identified as one which potential customers use when they are searching the internet.

In order for the search engine indexes to offer your web page as a relevant result to searching customers, this word or phrase MUST appear visibly in your site and ideally in the source code of your web page.

Link

A clickable reference attached to highlighted words or images that contain a web address (or URL). Clicking on the link causes a web browser to jump to the website or page.

Link building

Link Building is the process used to increase the number of links to a website. This can include submitting a website to directories, creating more content for a website, link rental, and many more techniques.

Market

A group of people or organisations that share a need for a particular product and have the willingness and ability to use/pay for it.

Market segmentation

The process of dividing the market into smaller groups that share one or more characteristics.

Market share

The proportion of the total market that is using a particular organisation's product.

Marketing information system

A system for collecting and exploiting information on existing and potential clients.

Marketing mix

This usually refers to McCarthy's '4 P's': Promotion, Place, Price and Product.

Other words beginning with P (e.g. People, Process and Physical evidence) are sometimes also included.

Meta Data/Meta Tag

Meta Data is information held about a page or document. It is usually held invisibly within the page, and may include a description of the page, a list of relevant keywords, or the name of the author.

Mission

The key goal(s) of an organisation, usually disseminated in a Mission Statement.

Newsfeeds

Newsfeeds are a means of providing users with frequently updated content from a website. They allow subscribers to the feed to see when new content has been added to a site, and to read the new headlines without visiting the actual site.

They have two benefits – they create regular, fresh, search engine friendly content on a site, as well as allowing users to subscribe and receive the news directly to their inboxes or blogs. See too RSS.

Page title

A page title is an important part of a page - it is usually the part of the page that appears as a link in search results. It is usually visible in the title bar of your browser while you are viewing a page.

PPC or pay per click

An advertiser pays every time someone clicks on their link. Organic or natural results are produced by search engine robots crawling the web and finding sites to list. These can change at any time and the web site owner has no direct input into where the sites are shown.

The opposite is true of pay per click. They appear in a different place - mostly at the top of results or on the right hand side of the screen. Usually, they are identified with the words 'sponsored link'.

They change when the advertiser’s budget runs out - or when someone else pays more for each click on the link. The advertiser does have some control over their positioning therefore - provided that the budget is available to do this.

Permission marketing

Permission marketing or 'opt-in marketing' is a form of marketing centred on obtaining customer consent to receive information from a company.

Place

The way in which a product or service is distributed, or where it is located.

Positioning

Deciding where a product fits in, and how it should be perceived, in relation to its competitors.

Process

The process by which the customer obtains a product or service. .

Product

In marketing jargon, this means both products and services.

Product differentiation

What makes a product different from those of competitors (e.g. better quality).

Portal

A gateway to many sites on a single topic or area.

RSS

RSS is a type of XML (code) file and is the most commonly used file format for website feeds.

ROI

ROI stands for ‘return on investment’ and is a measure of the success of any marketing campaign.

A marketing campaign that cost £10,000 but made £3,000 would obviously have a low ROI. A marketing campaign that cost £10,000 but made £100,000 would have a high ROI.

SEM

SEM means ‘Search Engine Marketing’. SEM is broader than SEO and can include, for example, an online PR campaign or PPC (and other forms of) advertising.

SEO

SEO is an acronym of Search Engine Optimisation, and is the art of altering a website to improve a site's performance in search engines.

Search engine

A search engine is a database of web pages that has been collated from earlier searches on the internet. It is presented in such a way that you can quickly create a list of web pages that match the search terms that you have entered.

Search term

A single word - or group of words - used to query a search engine. This phrase can also refer to specific keywords used to optimise a website.

Spam

Spam usually refers to unwanted email, sent out indiscriminately to millions of people at once.

Spider

A spider (also called a "crawler") is a software programme created by a search engine to index pages on the web. It visits pages on the web, collects their content, and finds links within that page.

Splash page

A splash page is an introduction page to a website, often created using flash. While often colourful, they are no longer popular as they slow down entry to a website and usually provide no useful information to the user.

Target market

A group of people for whom you create and maintain a specific marketing mix (e.g. the product will be tailored to their needs, priced in a way that particular group finds attractive).

White Hat

White Hat is the term used to describe techniques used by some search marketers to promote websites. These techniques are those that adhere to the guidelines published by search engines. White Hat is the opposite of Black Hat.

 Marketing terms are kindly supplied by The Marketers' Forum Ltd. (www.themarketersforum.co.uk) 

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