If you’re looking to get into the digital marketing industry, it’s important that you get the lingo down first. Make sure you know all the terms by consulting our comprehensive marketing terms glossary.
Important Marketing Terms to Keep in Mind
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is the practice of attracting prospective customers to a product or service using blogs, social media or search engine optimization. The idea is to create a brand identity for a company that allows them to have greater visibility and recognition.
By producing interesting, relevant content, you will have customers relying on you as an industry thought leader and a business aligned with their interests.
Inbound Methodology
Inbound methodology is the process of converting your website visitors to leads and then eventually customers. The four stages include attract, convert, close and delight. You attract complete strangers to your site by crafting interesting content. Then, using calls-to-action, forms and landing pages, these visitors will become leads. Down the line, through email marketing and smart, targeted content, these leads may become customers.
Target Audience
A target audience is the intended group that businesses market specific products and services towards. Marketers will study their customers to determine what traits and attributes they share so they can better craft future campaigns to appeal to these groups.
Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a fictionalized representation of a customer based on data and market research of your existing customers. They are used to determine and define target audiences for specific campaigns.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the manipulation of variables like inbound/outbound links and relevant keywords to control where a webpage ranks when looked up on a search engine.
Keyword
A keyword, commonly referred to as a keyword phrase, is the term or phrase that a person will type into a search engine when looking for specific results. Digital marketers will craft content using frequently searched for keywords so they can zero in on their target audience. This requires the process of keyword research to find out which ones rank higher and are searched for more often.
Blogging
Blogging is a key component of inbound marketing. The purpose of a business blog is to drive traffic, draw in leads and establish your company as an industry thought leader. Using a mixture of keyword research and relevant topics, a business’s blogs should resolve the everyday issues of their target audience.
Call-to-Action
A call-to-action is usually an image, link or button that stands out to encourage interaction with a prospective customer by providing an incentive, like a blog subscription, white page download or special offer. In return, a business will collect valuable data from that contact. The ultimate goal of a CTA is to attract visitors to a website or landing page so they can hopefully become a lead and eventually a customer. This is the start of the buyer’s journey.
Landing Page
After clicking on a CTA, a user will be directed to a landing page, a specific webpage where they must fill out a form with their information to unlock access to the aforementioned content offer. After filling out the form and retrieving the content, that person will become a lead.
Social Media
Social media is one of the many elements of inbound marketing. It consists of websites and applications that allow users to share content and interact with one another. Businesses use social media as another platform to communicate with customers, increase reach and expand growth.
Analytics
Analytics account for all of the data representative of important patterns and growth for a company’s online presence. Some common marketing analytics include website visits, click-through rates, PPC and social media interactions. Marketers will refine future campaigns to account for any insight gained from these figures.
Are there any other important marketing terms that you’d like to learn more about?
