Digital Marketing Slang Survival Guide

The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving. With new terms and acronyms popping up daily, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning in digital marketing slang. Good news! Our team is fluent in this digital language and happy to help you decode and decipher some of the most common acronyms in digital advertising.

Whether it’s in everyday business conversations or analyzing Google Analytics reports, these phrases might appear in more places than you think!

CPC (Cost Per Click)

Cost per click is pretty self-explanatory: it’s how much clicks end up costing you. As far as measuring goes, the lower the better with this metric, because who wants to spend more money than you need to? CPC is commonly used with campaigns associated with Google Advertising. To find your cost per click, take your total investment and divide it by the total amount of clicks.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

One phrase you’ve probably heard of the most in the world of digital marketing is SEO (which stands for “Search Engine Optimization”). It involves tactics to make your website more visible on search engines, so that more people can find it. Since search engines are the main tools that people use to look for information and products, it’s important to help those same search engines prioritize your website’s content. By optimizing your site for search engines, you can make it more discoverable and user-friendly, which can help it to rank higher in search results and attract more visitors. While the goal is to show up on the first page of a search, there’s no way to guarantee this result because the algorithm is continually changing and evolving and searches are different for everyone depending on history, location, and more.

CTR (Click Thru Rate)

If you’re into video games, you probably already know that CTR stands for Crash Team Racing. However, the version we will be breaking down and unfortunately involves less bandicoots is Click Thru Rate. Click thru rate is the percentage of people who clicked on your ad vs. the amount of impressions. An example would be if 1,000 people saw your ad and it got 20 clicks, the ad had a click thru rate of 2%. The formula to find the CTR is clicks divided by impressions and multiply 100 to find the percentage. CTR is an important metric to keep track of because a high CTR means that your ads are capturing the interests of your audience enough for them to click to learn more.

CR (Conversion Rate)

Conversion rate is percentage of engagements that turns a visitor into a customer. For example, if 100 people saw your ad and 25 of the people that clicked on it bought your product, your conversion rate would be 25%. So, it’s a way to measure how successful your website or advertising efforts are at getting people to take the action you want, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or simply filling out a contact form. Measuring conversion rate can help guide future advertising decisions.

ROI (Return on Investment)

Return on Investment (sometimes referred to as “return on ad spend” or ROAS) is one of the most important metrics in business but can also be the hardest to measure. (Hello, awareness campaigns!) But if you can measure it, ROI helps you determine how much revenue you’re generating for every dollar you spend. So, the higher the ROI, the more successful your campaign is. ROI can help you better understand which advertisements are delivering the biggest bang for your buck, and which ones could use some improvement.

So, whether you’re new to the world of digital marketing or looking for a lingo cheat sheet, knowing these terms and the importance of them when it comes to analytics is a great foundation to increase online visibility, engage with audience effectively, and drive results that matter. Want to take on some digital advertising but not sure how?  Reach out to our team to learn how our digital marketing masters can produce results.