Digital Marketing Acronyms: Learn Them And Be Popular In 2020!

Do you know your SEO from your UFO, or get mixed up between your PPC and KFC? In this quick guide, we will explore the wonderful world of digital marketing acronyms and help you sound like an experienced MD of a PLC in no time.

Click here to start editing your text. The text element box will pop up and allow you to change your wording along with your font style, size and colour. You can also change the margins and borders for this text box.

CR is short for ‘Conversion Rate’ and refers to the number of times that a planned process is successful – often on a specifically targeted landing page. The conversion rate is also connected to online ads and keeping track of their success and ROI. This process could be an email sign-up, a purchase, or a pre-defined action. The CR can be calculated by using this simple formula: total number of interactions ‘divided by’ the total number of conversions. Obviously, the higher this number is, the better! 

CRO means ‘Conversion Rate Optimisation’ and bears similarities with SEO. Once a visitor is on your site, CRO is how you entice the user to perform an action. There are different types of conversion and optimisation tactics that can be targeted dependent on the business goals of the website, including: clear and concise calls to action, customer-focused copy and incentivised purchases.

UX refers to the ‘User Experience’ whilst ‘CX’ is the ‘Customer Experience’. UX and CX are essentially the same thing, with slightly different approaches. The UX should be a slightly broader approach to enhance the experience of every visitor to your site. Once you have a confirmed customer, the CX is all about creating experiences designed to retain that customer.

CTR is the ‘Click-Through Rate’ to your website. The click can occur in the SERPs or could also be coming from ads. It is the number of times your ad or site is clicked on against the number of times it appears (often called impressions). Just like Conversion Rate, the success of CTR can be worked out using a simple formula.

CPC stands for ‘Cost per Click’ and is likely one of the earliest and most well-known of the marketing acronyms. It is linked primarily to online advertising and how much a website is willing to pay for a user to click on an online ad that directs them to their site. The CPC rates are part of a complex auction process that occur millions of times per second on the SERPs, but there are also fixed rates of advertising too.

CPL in marketing terms stands for ‘Cost per Lead’. This ‘lead’ can take the form of different specific pieces of data: it could mean the cost of an email address, a contact number or even a contact name at a particular type of business. CPL can also be the term broadly used to describe the cost of both inbound and outbound marketing processes that result in a lead. However, CPL can at times be difficult to quantify and is not always 100% measurable.

CMS stands for ‘Customer Management System’ and is a software that is used to help create, manage and edit digital content. Perhaps the most well known CMS, particularly online in the creation of websites, is WordPress.

B2B is simply an abbreviation of ‘Business to Business’. It is used to identify the process of one business selling or providing a service to another business.

B2C is short for ‘Business to Consumer’. It is different from B2B in that it is used to describe a business selling a product or providing a service to a consumer or customer.

The SERPs are the ‘Search Engine Results Pages’ that are presented on a desktop or mobile device after a search has been entered into the search bar. These are the pages that are presented every time a search term is entered into a search engine, such as Google. Successful SEO will hopefully help a business to appear in the top positions of the SERPs.

PPC stands for ‘Pay per Click’ and is associated with a type of paid-for marketing strategy that allows a website owner to bid on and pay for clicks on an online ad. This in turn drives visitors to an offer or specific landing page of a website. Google Adsense is perhaps the most popular platform for PPC advertising – or at least the most well-known.

A CTA is a ‘Call to Action’. This is often in the form of a clickable button that will take a user to the next step in a process or another step along the customer journey. A CTA has historically been a ‘button’ or perhaps a ‘Click Here’ instruction but isn’t restricted to this alone. A CTA could as easily be an instructional sentence or an image. Visible and ‘obvious’ CTAs are very powerful on-page marketing tools.

A KPI is a ‘Key Performance Indicator’. This can take many forms dependent on the sector and the goals of a business. Having a clearly defined, goal-driven KPI will help to align methods and strategies throughout an organisation of any size. A KPI is often based around growth or profit indicators and is made up of a series of progressive small steps leading to a larger goal.

An RFP is a ‘Request for Proposal’ that is perhaps more commonly known as a ‘website brief’ or ‘creative brief’. It is a document that a client can send out to agencies or freelancers to invite proposals based on their own individual requirements and expectations. It is an important document in the planning phase of any new project and can provide strong foundations for the design and development process.

ASO is short for ‘App Store Optimisation’ and is more of an app related marketing acronym. This is similar to Website SEO, but more laser-targeted at optimising a Mobile App (and its marketing copy) for promotion in both the Apple and Google App Stores. This is of increasing importance as it is suggested that around 65% of app downloads occur through the ‘Search’ function in App Stores.

ROI is the business acronym for ‘Return on Investment’ and is the lifeblood of most industries. Without seeing a return on what you have invested in staff, processes and technology, the lifespan of any organisation is extremely limited. ROI is not the same as profit and will differ between different types of company.