If you are scratching your head trying to make sense of all web 2.0 and internet marketing jargon, then this should help you make sense of it all. Don't let all the acronyms and terminology intimidate you from moving forward with your Internet Marketing needs. Stay ahead of the competition by breaking down some of these common definitions used in today's marketing world. Of course, if you would rather not even deal with staying on top of all of it, you can always contact the professionals and leave it up to us to manage your online strategy and internet marketing efforts.
TRADITIONAL MARKETING
B2B- Business to Business: Trade between businesses rather than between business and consumers.
B2C- Business to Consumer: Businesses selling products or services to end-user consumers.
CRM- Customer Relationship Management: Improving interaction with customers through better understanding with the goal of increasing profits via customer satisfaction and loyalty.
ROI- Return on Investment: The profit made after advertising and other costs are subtracted. It measures how successful a marketing campaign is when looking at returns on money spent.
INTERNET MARKETING
SEM: Search Engine Marketing: Involves ways to generate quality traffic by marketing and advertising your business and its products and services on the web. It focuses on your target customer and how to sell directly to them.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization: Process of optimizing web pages to rank higher in search search engines. The goal is to attract more visitors (and generating more sales) by being found on the first pages rather then beyond where no one is looking.
SERP- Search Engine Results Page: The listing of web pages displayed for the keywords used in a search engine query.
PAY-PER-CLICK MARKETING
CPC- Cost Per Click: Cost to an advertiser each time a visitor clicks on a promotional link or advertisement.
CPL- Cost Per Lead: Advertising cost to obtain each new lead.
CPM- Cost Per Mille (Thousand): The cost charged per thousand impression showings of an ad. "M"- is the roman numeral for 1,000.
CR- Conversion Rate/Ratio: The percentage of conversions/sales in relation to how many times your site was visited via a P.P.C. campaign.
CPS- Cost Per Sale: Advertising costs divided by sales generated to determine the cost to make each sale (the commission payable for each sale generated by an affiliate).
CTR- Click Through Rate/Ratio: Percentage of website visitors who click on particular link. A way to measure response to ad or sales message.
IMPR- Impressions: How many times your ad is displayed when a visitor is shown results for their keyword search that you are marketing.
PPI- Pay Per Impression: When an advertiser pays for each individual showing of their advertisement such as a banner ad.
PPL- Pay Per Lead: When a commission is paid to an affiliate for each individual sales lead generated. A "lead" is described as someone signing up for a free trial, or requesting more information.
PPC- Pay Per Click: When an advertiser pays each time their ad is clicked on (regardless of a completed sale or not).
PPS- Pay Per Sale: When a commission is paid for each sale generated by an affiliate. The commission is usually a percentage of the sale, but sometimes it is a fixed amount.
GOOGLE SPECIFIC
PR- Page Rank: An assessed value according to Google for a specific web page, based on a scale of 1 - 10. You can find out this measure of value by downloading the Free Google Toolbar that can be attached to any Firefox or Internet Explorer web browser tool set.
BL - Back Links: An assessment of inbound hypertext links to a specific web page from other web pages on the internet. The amount of inbound links to your webpages is evidence of your public reach. One of the best ways to increase this is through a link building campaign.
LINK SPECIFIC
Direct Links: One way links that are directed to a specific web page on your site without giving them a reciprocal link back to their site.
Reciprocal Links: An agreement in which you exchange links with another website so that each website places a link to the other site within their site. An example is if website "A" promotes website "B" by placing a link to website "B" on its site and website "B" does the same by placing a link to promote website "A" on its own site.
Three Way Links: When 3 unrelated websites are indirectly connected through 3 way linking. An example would be if website "A" puts a link on their website to promote website "B"; website "B" does the same for website "C" and website "C" promotes website "A" with a link on its site back to website "A".
COMPUTER SPECIFIC
ASCII- American Standard Code for Information Interchange: what people call plain text.
CSS- Cascading Style Sheets: used to globally define how elements in a web page are displayed instead of relying on HTML code in the page. Makes designs more flexible and reduces HTML file sizes.
FAQ- Frequently Asked Questions: A list of common questions asked by visitors.
SSI- Server Side Included: The way a web server includes variable values and information from an external source into a web page as it is requested by the browser. Uses include automatic display of data like the Last modified date of the page, storing common page elements in their own files, enabling site-wide updates by modifying a single file.
XHTML - Extensible Hypertext Markup Language - think of this as regular HTML, the stuff that codes our web pages, only with a nice upgrade that helps web developers keep a set of standards for programming.
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium - this is a league of super geeks that helped formulate the standards that web developers use to program their websites. Many people ask if your website is "W3C compliant" which basically asks if your website is written in standard coding practices.