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Marketing Terms Glossary

Discover essential marketing terms with our comprehensive glossary. From social media platforms and SEO to PPC terminology, enhance your understanding of marketing concepts and improve your strategies today!

Social Media Platforms

  1. Facebook: Facebook is a social media platform that allows users to connect with friends and family, share updates, photos, and videos, and join groups or events. It features a wide range of content, including news, entertainment, and community interactions. The platform has a diverse user base, but it’s mostly used by adults aged 25-54, with significant engagement from users in the 35-54 age range. While Facebook remains popular across various age groups, its user demographic skews slightly older compared to newer social media platforms. It serves as a hub for both personal connections and community engagement.
  2. Instagram: Instagram is a social media platform focused on sharing photos and videos, with features like Stories, Reels, and direct messaging. This platform is especially popular among younger users, with the largest demographic being between 18 and 34 years old, seeing even higher engagement in 18–24-year-olds. Instagram’s visual nature and interactive features make it a favored choice for both personal and influencer-driven content.
  3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a professional networking platform designed for career development, job searching, and business networking. The platform is most prominently used by adults aged 25-54, with a strong presence among those in the 30-49 age range. LinkedIn is particularly valuable for professionals looking to advance their careers, expand their networks, and stay informed about industry trends and opportunities.
  4. Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual discovery and bookmarking platform that allows users to find and save ideas for various interests, such as home decor, fashion, recipes, and DIY projects. The platform is particularly popular among individuals seeking inspiration and planning for personal projects or future purchases. In terms of demographics, Pinterest is used by adults, with a strong presence among women, especially those aged 25 to 54.
  5. TikTok: TikTok is a popular social media platform that allows users to create and share short-form videos, typically set to music or audio clips. TikTok features a wide range of content, including dance challenges, comedic skits, and DIY tutorials. It is known for its highly engaging and viral content, often driven by trending sounds and hashtags. The largest demographic is individuals aged 16 to 24, who are highly active and create a huge portion of the content on the platform. Users aged 25 to 34 also make up a notable segment, often engaging with trends and challenges while exploring niche interests.
  6. X: Formerly Twitter, this platform is known for its real-time updates, trending topics, and diverse conversations on various subjects. The most active age demographics are typically between 18 and 34 years old, with a notable presence of users in the 25-34 age range. X’s user base includes a mix of professionals, influencers, and everyday individuals. The most notable thing to keep in mind with X is there is a character limit of 280 or less.
  7. YouTube: YouTube is centered around videos. This platform allows users to upload, view, share, and comment on videos. Content ranges from user-generated clips and music videos to professional productions, including tutorials, vlogs, and live streams. It’s also a significant platform for content creators, advertisers, and entertainment companies. The largest group is individuals aged 16 to 24, who are particularly engaged with content like music, gaming, and trending challenges. Users aged 25 to 34 also form a sizable portion of the audience, often seeking out tutorials, reviews, and professional content.

Social Media Marketing Terms

  1. Boosting Posts: Boosting a post on social media means paying to promote a particular piece of content to reach a larger or more targeted audience than it would organically. This process is typically used to increase visibility, engagement, or reach for a specific post.
  2. Comments: In social media, comments are written responses or feedback that users can leave on posts, photos, videos, or other types of content. They allow users to engage actively with the content by sharing their thoughts, opinions, or questions. People can also tag other accounts through comments. On Facebook, comments are more valuable because they can bring the post to the top of a person’s feed again if they know the commenter or show it to a new audience of people if they weren’t following the original account.
  3. Content: The information, media, and messages shared on social media platforms. This includes text posts, images, videos, links, and any other form of digital communication.
  4. Creative: Content designed to capture attention and resonate with an audience in picture or video form.
  5. Direct Message (DM): A direct message, also known as a DM, is a message sent to an account, or a group of accounts. This does not show up on a feed and is private to those that received the message. These are important to stay on top of because they can bring opportunities and new connections.
  6. Engagement: In social media, “engagement” refers to the interactions and responses that users have with content. It encompasses various actions that indicate how users are interacting with posts, including views, likes, reposts, comments, and clicks.
  7. Feed: In social media, a “feed” refers to a continuously updated stream of content that appears on a user’s profile or homepage. This content is typically organized chronologically or algorithmically based on relevance and engagement.
  8. Facebook Groups: A Facebook group is a feature on Facebook that allows users to create and join communities based around shared interests, activities, or goals. Groups cannot be tagged on photos. Groups can be public, private, or hidden:
    1. Public Groups: Anyone can see the group, its members, and its posts. Anyone can join or leave without approval. This also means posts in public groups can be shared.
    2. Private Groups: Only members can see the posts, and joining requires approval or an invitation from a group admin.
    3. Hidden Groups: These are a type of private group where only members can find the group through search or see its content. New members must be invited by existing members.
  9. Instagram Story: An Instagram story is a full-screen post that only appears for 24 hours.
  10. Likes: In the context of social media, “likes” are a form of engagement where users can show their appreciation or approval of content by clicking a thumbs-up icon, heart, or similar symbol. When someone likes a post, photo, video, or comment, it often indicates that they find it enjoyable, interesting, or relevant.
  11. Platform: A digital service or application where users can create, share, and interact with content. Examples include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
  12. Posting Natively: Posting natively on social media means creating and sharing content directly within the platform itself, rather than using third-party tools or external websites.
  13. Public Groups: Anyone can see the group, its members, and its posts. Anyone can join or leave without approval. This also means posts in public groups can be shared.
  14. Regramming: On Instagram, while there isn’t a built-in repost feature, users can use manual methods (like taking a screenshot and re-uploading) to share someone else’s post, giving credit to the original creator. Alternatively, users can regram posts to their story.
  15. Repost: Reposting refers to sharing someone else’s content on your own profile or page. This can be done in several ways:
    1. Reposting Directly: On platforms like Twitter, you can retweet someone’s tweet, which is a direct repost of their content.
    2. Sharing or Reposting: On Facebook, you can share someone else’s post to your own timeline or to a group. This allows your followers to see the original content along with your comments or context.
    3. Regramming: On Instagram, while there isn’t a built-in repost feature, users can use manual methods (like taking a screenshot and re-uploading) to share someone else’s post, giving credit to the original creator. Alternatively, users can regram posts to their story.
  16. Share: On Facebook and LinkedIn, you can share posts, articles, photos, or videos to your own timeline, in groups, or through private messages. Sharing allows you to spread content to your friends or followers, potentially increasing its reach and visibility.
  17. Sprout Social: This is the platform Sage Island uses to plan and schedule posts for ourselves and our clients. It is a third-party platform that allows us to post for you without being logged into your accounts. We will send a link where you can see the content, provide feedback, and approve posts. The link remains the same, the dates will be dynamically updated and feature the upcoming posts. You will be able to see the content including the graphic and caption along with links if included.
  18. Sprout Social: This is the platform Sage Island uses to plan and schedule posts for ourselves and our clients. It is a third-party platform that allows us to post for you without being logged into your accounts. We will send a link where you can see the content, provide feedback, and approve posts. The link remains the same, the dates will be dynamically updated and feature the upcoming posts. You will be able to see the content including the graphic and caption along with links if included.
  19. Tag/Tagging: Linking a user, brand, or entity to a post, photo, or comment. This feature helps to notify the tagged person and can increase the visibility and engagement of the content. Additionally, tagging can enhance discoverability by associating the content with relevant profiles or topics, making it easier for others to find and interact with. It also fosters connections and interactions between users, brands, and entities, creating opportunities for collaboration and community building.

PPC Terms

    1. Ad Group/ Set: An ad group or ad set is a way to segment categories within a campaign. Each ad group or ad set has a unique set of keywords which allows the advertiser to track the success and search volume of each category.
      1. Ex: If you had a campaign for beach umbrellas, you could create an ad group for striped umbrellas and one for solid umbrellas. Over time, you’d be able to see which umbrella type is more popular with your audience.
    2. Ad Status: The current state of each campaign in your account according to a set of standards dictated by Google.
        1. Eligible: Your campaign is active and can show ads.
        2. Eligible Limited: Your campaign is active, but only showing ads occasionally due to budget constraints or a limiting bid strategy.
        3. Not Eligible: Your campaign is inactive because there are no ad groups or ads.
        4. Bid Strategy Learning: Google is still in the ‘learning phase’ where the algorithm is learning how to place your ads based on your selected bid strategy.
    3. Advertiser Verification: This is required of all Google ads accounts. Google randomly selects accounts for verification. If you do not complete this on-time Google will pause your account until it is completed. It typically requires you to upload documents verifying your business.
    4. Bidding Types:
      1. Maximize Conversions: This is for those wanting to push the algorithm towards people most likely to complete a conversion action on the website. So, if you want to put your budget towards finding people most likely to fill out your website form this is the best option.
      2. Maximize Clicks: This bidding action casts a broader net and finds people most likely to visit your website but who may or may not take a conversion action yet. This is best for brand awareness.
      3. Maximize Conversion Value: This conversion method allows you to give your conversion action different values. You can tell Google to push more traffic to one conversion action over another by giving it a higher conversion value.
        1. Ex: If you want to give more budget to bidding for lead form fills on your website over calls, you will give lead form fills a conversion value of $10 and calls a conversion value of $5 with this bidding strategy.
    5. Campaign: A set of ads and ad groups of a similar product or service with a shared budget. The main determining factor of a campaign is the budget.
      1. Ex: Say you advertise beach equipment, but you really want to push umbrellas over chairs. You would create one campaign for umbrellas and one for chairs, you would then give the campaign for umbrellas a bigger budget. You could then divide the umbrella campaign into different ad groups for assorted styles of umbrellas.
    6. Click Through Rate (CTR): The number of times an ad was clicked compared to the number of impressions it received. This is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions.
        1. Ex: If your campaign received 5,000 impressions and your ads were clicked 100 times, your CTR would be 2%.
    7. Conversions: A conversion is any action that we want your specific customer to take.
      1. Ex: If you want a customer to fill out a lead form on your website landing page, this is considered a conversion.
    8. Conversion Rate: The number of conversions your ad received compared to the number of times it was clicked. This is the percentage of people who converted after clicking the ad. This is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of clicks.
    9. Cost per Click: The amount you pay per click. This is calculated by taking the total cost of the campaign and dividing it by the number of clicks you receive.
      1. If you spent $100 in a week, and you got 75 clicks, your cost per click would be $1.30.
    10. Cost Per Conversion: The amount you pay per conversion. This is the total amount it costs to take a prospect to the conversion phase. The average cost per conversion is calculated by taking the total cost of the campaign and dividing it by the number of conversions.
      1. Ex: If you spent $100 in a week on Google ads, and you got 10 conversions, your cost per conversion would be $10.
    11. Google Ads: Google Ads is the platform on which you can run paid advertising across various websites including the Google Search Results Page. Google ads can be driven by keywords or by target audiences.
    12. Impressions: The number of times an ad was seen.
      1. Ex: If an ad was shown 5,000 times, your impression count would be 5,000
    13. Key Performance Indicators (KPI): Performance metrics that are relevant to your campaign.
      1. Ex: If you are interested in website traffic, then you would be the most interested in tracking clicks on your google ads. Whereas, if you were the most interested in a form fill on your website, then your KPI would be conversions.
    14. Keywords: Keywords are the search terms that you want to bid on for your campaign.
      1. Ex: If you really want to reach customers who are searching for beach umbrellas, you will use keywords like “beach umbrellas”, “beach umbrellas for sale”, “where to buy beach umbrellas”.
    15. LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn ads are paid advertising on the LinkedIn platforms. These can be video or image ads and are driven by target audiences. More specifically, target audiences are driven by job titles and companies on the LinkedIn platform.
    16. Meta Ads: Meta ads are paid advertising on the Facebook and Instagram platforms. These can be video or image ads and are driven by target audiences.
    17. Negative Keywords: These are search terms for which you do not want your ads to appear. We use negative keywords to avoid wasting money on people who will not purchase your product.
      1. Ex: If you ONLY sell beach umbrellas you don’t want your ads to show to people searching for rain umbrellas. To help with this, we would add the word ‘rain’ to your negative search terms.
    18. Performance Max Campaign (PMax): These are AI driven ads that Google recently started recommending be on every account. These campaigns use audience signals that you provide to reach a broader audience. They are a mix of search and display and contain both text and images.
    19. Reach: The amount of people an ad was shown to.
      1. Ex: If an ad was shown to 500 people, the reach would be 500.
      2. Ex: If your ad was clicked 100 times and 10 of those clicks turned into conversions, your conversion rate would be 10%.
    20. Sitelinks: Sitelinks are extensions of your ad that allow you to:
      1. Increase your ad ‘real estate’ on the search engine results page.
      2. Provide additional information to prospects by linking to other pages on your website.

SEO/Google Analytics

  1. Bounce Rate: The percentage of people that visited your website but left without visiting any other pages.
    1. Ex: If 200 people visited your home page in a week and 25 of them left without navigating to another page, your bounce rate would be 12%.
  2. Engagement Rate: The percentage of people who interact with your site once they have visited.
    1. Ex: If 100 people visit your page, and 20 of them interact with your site (clicking on a link, scrolling etc.) then your engagement rate would be 20%.
  3. Events: Actions on your website that you want to track on Google Analytics
    1. Ex: Clicks on a button on your site.
  4. Session: The amount of time a user spends on your site.
  5. Google Search Console: Google search console provides information on how users find your website and how well your website is ranked in Google search results. Google search console will also alert you to any errors on your site.
  6. Google Analytics 4 (GA4): GA4 provides insights into what is happening on your landing page. It also gives you the ability to track specific events and monitor user behavior.
    1. Ex: If you wanted to see how many people visit a certain landing page on your site in a week you could see this on GA4. You could also see where they came from before coming to your site.
  7. Landing Page: The page on your website that users are sent to from an external link.

CRO Terms ( Conversion Rate Optimization)

  1. A/B Test: A method of testing two versions of an asset. This could be a campaign, an ad, or a landing page.
    1. Ex: If you wanted to test a headline on a landing page, you can set up an A/B test where 50% of visitors receive version A with one headline, and 50% of visitors receive version B. You could test for things like time spent on the landing page, events, or clicks.
  2. B2B: Business to business marketing. These are campaigns that are focused on reaching businesses as their primary prospect.
  3. B2C: Business to consumer marketing. These are campaigns that are focused on the consumer as a prospect.
  4. Behavioral Targeting: A method of targeting users with ads based on their online behavior.
    1. Ex: If you see that a user is shopping for beach umbrellas without making a purchase, you can serve them more ads for umbrellas from your site to entice them to make a purchase.
  5. Call To Action (CTA): A call to action button is placed on your website to attract attention from users and entice them to complete a desired action on your website.
  6. Conversion Rate Optimization: A process that aims to increase the rate at which visitors of a website complete a desired action.
  7. Experience Optimization (EXO): Reviewing the entire customer journey that a business offers, and looking for ways to optimize each touchpoint for a better conversion rate.
  8. Heat Map: A tool that allows marketers to see parts of a webpage with the most engagement.
  9. Inbound Marketing: Creating resources to bring the consumer to you. This can include newsletters, blog posts, and social media posts.
  10. Omnichannel Marketing: A marketing strategy that spans across multiple marketing channels. These can include online and offline tactics.
    1. Ex: Running paid ads on Google and creating local mailers.
  11. Outbound Marketing: Taking your business to the consumer. Examples of outbound marketing include digital paid advertising, flyers and posters, and billboards.
  12. Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Unique qualities that set your brand apart from competitors.
    1. Ex: These are often part of your tagline. For example, FedEx- “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
  13. Value Proposition: The main value statement for your business. Why a consumer should choose your business over others.

Web Development Terms

  1. 404 Error: An error that occurs when a page cannot be found, this often means the page a user has searched for has been deleted.
  2. Alt Text: Used within the websites code to describe images used on the page. Alt text can also improve your website’s SEO
  3. Domain Name: This is the name of your website and the main portion of your URL.
  4. Hero Image: The main image or graphic on a webpage. This usually contains a call to action.
  5. Meta Description: An HTML element that describes a webpages content. This helps search engines pair your website with search queries.
  6. Wireframe: The original layout of a website, before design.
  7. White Space: The space around each element on a webpage.

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