A
A/B Testing
This is the process of comparing two variations of a single variable to determine which performs best to help improve marketing efforts.
About Us Page
An interior page on websites that contains information about the person or organization that is responsible for the website. The primary purpose is to inform the reader about the company and its operations. It usually includes a description of the company’s history, vision, mission and/or purpose.
Ads
A tool that allows you to connect a Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn ad account to create, track, and report on your ad campaigns.
Ad account
An administrative profile on Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn, separate from your user account, used to create ads.
Ads audience
A group of users on an ad network that you can target when you publish an ad.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is based on a relationship where the advertiser pays for leads or revenue originating from traffic on the partners’ sites. Bloggers are an excellent example of affiliate partners. Partnering with affiliates extends your advertising reach and increases your relevance with target audiences.
Analytics
Marketing analytics is the practice of managing and studying metrics data to determine the ROI of marketing efforts like calls-to-action (CTAs), blog posts, channel performance, and thought leadership pieces, and identifying opportunities for improvement. By tracking and reporting on business performance data, diagnostic metrics, and leading indicator metrics, marketers will be able to provide answers to the analytics questions that are most vital to their stakeholders.
B
B2B (Business-to-Business)
An adjective used to describe companies that sell to other businesses. For example, Google and Oracle are primarily B2B companies.
B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
An adjective used to describe companies that sell directly to consumers. For example, Amazon, Apple, and Nike are primarily B2C companies.
Backlinks
Links on websites other than your own go back to a page on your website. Backlinks are also called inbound links because they represent traffic coming to your website from somewhere else.
Blog post
A blog post is any article, news piece, or guide that’s published in the blog section of a website. It typically covers a specific topic or question, is educational, and contains images, videos, infographics and more. Blog posts typically range from 600 – 2k words.
Blog posts help to create a more engaging website and help drive the right kind of people to the site via SEO. Please see 15 blogging best practices for SEO here.
Blogging
Blogging is a core component of inbound marketing, as it can accomplish several initiatives simultaneously — like website traffic growth, thought leadership, and lead generation
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is the extent to which people can recall and recognize your brand.
Buyer’s journey
The buyer’s journey is a contact’s progression when researching and purchasing a product. It starts with the awareness stage, when buyers realize they have a problem, moves to the consideration stage, evaluates different solutions to that problem, and concludes with the decision stage when they decide which contender best aligns with their needs and objectives to purchase it.
The buyer’s journey differs from the customer’s journey because not every prospective buyer becomes a customer. Individuals might go through some of the buyer’s journey stages without ever making a purchase.
Buyer Persona
Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers.
Buyer personas should include demographic, psychographic, and behavioral information. In addition, they tend to go more in-depth about the role and influence these people have within their companies, emphasizing their goals and motivations.
C
Call-to-Action
A call-to-action is a text link, button, image, or some type of web link that encourages a website visitor to visit a landing page and become of lead. Examples of CTAs are “Subscribe Now” or “Download the Whitepaper Today.”
Campaign Calendar
A calendar used to schedule and organize all campaign assets and activities for that month, including but not limited to emails, social media posts, ads, landing pages, forms, blog posts, and downloadable content.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
The percentage of your audience that advances (or clicks through) from one part of your website to the next step of your marketing campaign.
Contact Page
An interior page on websites where visitors can contact the business or organization. This is a simple page with a clear call to action, phone number and/or form.
Content
In relation to inbound marketing, content is a piece of information that exists to be digested (not literally), engaged with, and shared.
Content Management System (CMS)
A web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to create, edit, and manage a website. It helps users with content editing and more “behind-the-scenes” work like making content searchable and indexable, automatically generating navigation elements, keeping track of users and permissions, and more.
Conversion Path
A conversion path is a series of website-based events that facilitate lead capture. In its most basic form, a conversion path will consist of a call-to-action (typically a button that describes an offer) that leads to a landing page with a lead capture form, which redirects to a thank you page where a content offer resides.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of people who completed the desired action on a single web page, such as filling out a form.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A set of software programs lets companies keep track of everything they do with their existing and potential customers.
At the most superficial level, CRM software lets you keep track of all the contact information for these customers.
D
Demand Generation
Generating demand for your product or service. More formally, it is the data-driven focus of marketing programs to produce awareness and interest in a company’s offerings.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is any form of communication aiming to persuade people to purchase a product or service that occurs through some form of digital device.
Digital Marketing Funnel
Digital marketing funnel is a strategic model that represents the complete journey of the customer persona of a brand and highlights the steps they take from the moment they get to know about the product to the final moment of purchasing it.
DNS
A domain name system (DNS) takes a human-friendly Internet address, such as Website.com, and translates it into a computer-friendly IP address a web browser can use to find and display a website.
Domain
a website address where content is hosted.
E
Ebook
An eBook is a digital file containing a body of text and images suitable for distribution electronically. In the digital marketing world, eBooks are generally PDFs.
The aim of eBooks is to teach the reader about a subject manner. It helps build thought leadership and serves as a sales funnel lead magnet.
In its most basic sense, email stands for “Electronic Mail.” It’s a core marketing component because it directly connects to a contact’s inbox.
Email Automation
The use of predefined rules to trigger email messages based on specific actions customers take—or don’t take. Examples include a welcome email when a customer signs up for a mailing list or a quick reminder that the customer placed something in their cart but never finished checking out.
Email Newsletter
An email newsletter informs of the latest news, tips or updates relating to products or services. Newsletters generally follow a set schedule. The purpose is to share relevant and valuable information with customers, prospects and subscribers. The goal is to provide engaging content, promote sales and drive traffic to the website.
Engagement Rate
A popular social media metric used to describe the amount of interaction — Likes, shares, comments — a piece of content receives. Interactions like these tell you that your messages resonate with your fans and followers.
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is content that continues to provide value to readers no matter when they stumble upon it. In other words, it can be referenced long after it was initially published, and even then, it’s still valuable to the reader.
F
Forecast
A tool that helps your team predict future sales revenue.
Form
The place your page visitors will supply information in exchange for your offer. It’s also how those visitors can convert into precious sales leads. Information submitted on forms is stored in properties on records in your CRM database.
Friction
Any element of your website that is confusing, distracting, or causes stress for visitors, causing them to leave your page.
G
GDPR
the General Data Protection Regulation is an EU Regulation that will replace the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive.
Goals
Clear and actionable benchmarks that are set to determine success on a specific initiative
Going Live
The process where the Deuro.net team takes your site from the staging phase or testing phase and makes it live for the public to see and access through search. This happens only after approval. If there is an existing site, that old site will be replaced with the new site and can no longer be accessed by the public.
Google Drive
A tool from Google that provides a shared space where we collect all essential files shared with our clients. Similar to DropBox.
Google Search Console
A Google tool that helps you optimize your website content to improve its performance and your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. You can submit URLs and full sitemaps to Google Search Console to ensure your most important pages are indexed in Google’s search engine.
H
H1 Tag
An HTML tag used to identify the highest level of information on a page. In practice, page titles and headlines are usually marked with H1 tags and are the most prominent and significant pieces of text on a page.
Hashtag
Hashtags are a way for you and your readers to interact with each other on social media and have conversations about a particular piece of content.
Heat Map
A visual representation of data that uses color to communicate areas of highest use or likelihood using a scale of red (“hot”) to blue (“cold”).
HTML
This is short for HyperText Markup Language, a language used to write web pages.
Homepage
The homepage is the main page of a website that generally serves as the entry point when a user starts a web session. It’s the default or front page that’s loaded when visitors load the root domain and is intended to be the first page people see when they visit the website.
The homepage is also a pillar page, in that its goal is to provide a short overview and lead people to the important pages on the site. Generally these appear in the main nav (about, services, contact, resources, etc.).
I
Iframe
An iframe is a section of a web page containing content from another page. It’s a page within a page.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that draw visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospects’ attention. It’s all about earning customers’ attention, making the company easy to find online, and drawing customers to the website by producing interesting, helpful content.
Infographic
A highly visual piece of content popular among digital marketers to relaying complex concepts visually and straightforwardly.
Interior Page
These are the building blocks of the website and what you think of when you think “web page”. The interior pages tell the story.
Each interior page has a unique purpose such as providing information about what the organization does and how they’re different from the competition to showcasing products to displaying contact information. Interior pages should have clear CTA’s that lead people to important areas of the website or other related content.
J
JavaScript
A coding language that works with HTML to make dynamic web page content possible. Uses for JavaScript include pop-ups, slide-in calls-to-action, security password creation, check forms, interactive games, and special effects. It’s also used to build mobile apps and create server-based applications.
K
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A type of performance measurement companies use to evaluate an employee’s or an activity’s success. Marketers look at KPIs to track progress toward marketing goals, and successful marketers constantly evaluate their performance against industry-standard metrics.
Keyword
A word or phrase in the content of your web pages that matches the words and phrases users are entering into search engines as closely as possible.
L
Landing Page
Landing page (conversion / campaign driven) – Landing page is used as a place where people “land” when they click through from an email, ad, or other digital location.
The goal of a landing page is to convert visitors.
Oftentimes the goal here is to capture information from contacts in exchange for something of value, like an eBook, retail offer code, webinar etc.
The conversion goal should be clear to the user and preferably above the fold. Short, succinct copy here with a single, focused purpose.
Lead
A person or company who’s shown interest in a product or service in some way, shape, or form.
Lead Nurturing
Sometimes referred to as “drip marketing,” lead nurturing is the practice of developing a series of communications (emails, social media messages, etc.) that seek to qualify a lead, keep it engaged, and gradually push it down the sales funnel.
Lead Nurturing Email
A lead nurturing email is aimed at building a relationship with an already existing lead. It should converse in a personal way and eventually move people from the consideration stage to the decision stage of the sales funnel. These emails aim to show more details about a product or a service and highlight its best features.
Lead nurturing emails often appeal to emotions by using social proof and user-generated content. Sometimes they offer discounts or incentives for making a purchase. But overall they should not be too sale-sy.
Long-form content
Piece of writing that is between 1k – 7.5k words. The purpose is to do a deep dive into a topic and provide valuable information to the reader.
M
Marketing Automation
This process enables technology to take over repetitive marketing tasks from people, freeing people to focus on strategy. Think of marketing automation as a way to automate task creation, follow up reminders, automatically send emails to your leads and customers, and update your CRM system.
Middle of Funnel
This is a critical step in the funnel as your potential customers are now aware of your business and are looking for how your business specifically can provide a solution to their problem. Typical middle of funnel offers includes case studies or downloadable assets — essentially anything that showcases your business the answer to the problem the lead is looking to solve.
N
No-Follow Link
A no-follow link is used when a website does not want to pass search engine authority to another webpage.
O
Offer
Offers are content assets that help marketers generate leads for your business. You could create many different types of offers, including ebooks, checklists, cheat sheets, webinars, demos, templates, and tools.
Organic Search
The natural and unpaid results users receive after searching queries. You can improve your ranking through search engine optimization (SEO) activities, including keywords in headlines.
P
Page View
A request to load a single web page on the internet. Marketers use them to analyze their website and to see if any change on the webpage results in more or fewer page views.
Paid Search
Online advertising is triggered when users perform searches using keywords that a company has purchased. Ads look like organic search results, but they appear more prominently on a search engine results page (SERP) than they would have organically. They are also labeled as “ad” or with another word indicating “paid.”
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
An online advertising campaign that you pay for only when users interact with the ads. Instead of paying for your ads to simply show up on a publisher’s website, you pay for user clicks.
Pillar page
High level piece of content that broadly overviews a core topic and links out to more in-depth internal pages about the specific subtopics.
Think of it like a table of contents and the cluster pages like individual chapters.
Pillar pages provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, but leaves room for more details in the cluster pages. More examples of pillar pages here via SEMrush.
Pillar pages tend to be the parent pages in the main navigation of a website. (e.g. services, about us, resources, etc.) In this case those pages would provide a short overview of the pages that appear in the drop down menu with a link to explore more of that specific service / resource, etc.
Best SEO URL practice is to make the cluster pages child pages of the parent URL.
Press Release
Is a written document prepared for the media or press that announces something newsworthy. The purpose of a press release is to get coverage and get noticed by a target audience.
Proposal
A document we share with a prospective client that outlines our recommendations and services we can offer to take your marketing efforts to the next level. This includes the project scope, potential timelines and phases, key people you will be working with during our engagement, the cost of these services, and a signed agreement between both parties.
Q
QR Code
A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera telephones.
Qualified Lead
A contact that opted in to receive communication from your company, became educated about your product or service, and is interested in learning more. Marketing and Sales often have two different versions of qualified leads (MQLs for Marketing and SQLs for Sales)
Quality Score
A Google Ads metric rates how relevant your pay-per-click (PPC) ads and landing pages are to your chosen keywords.
Questionnaire
A set of questions about a topic used for research purposes. Marketers can use these questions to gather information from clients and data from leads and customers for our clients.
R
Redirect
Sending a user to a different web page than they requested with a URL. Redirects send readers to a new page if the content has been moved or an older page has been deleted. This helps prevent 404 errors.
Responsive Design
This is the practice of developing a website that adapts according to the device someone uses to view it.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
The ratio of the amount of revenue generated by an ad campaign to its cost.
Return on Investment (ROI)
A calculation of the monetary value of an investment versus its cost.
S
Schema Markup
Bits of code added to a web page that help search engines understand the page’s content. With better understanding comes the ability to format content on the search engine results page (SERP).
Scholarly article
Scholarly or peer reviewed articles are written and reviewed by experts in academic or professional fields. They provide new information and research results. The authors are scholars or researchers with advanced degrees and/or credentials like Ph.D. or M.D. and known affiliations.
Scholarly articles tend to be longer in length and include technical terms and vocabulary. Sometimes they can contain raw data tables.
Scholarly articles should not contain photos or any promotions. The intended audience is researchers, scholars and/or faculties. They are often used as a way of communicating new knowledge and discoveries to a science or scholarly audience. They can be used to provide readers with details to replicate a study.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The practice of enhancing where a webpage appears in search results. By adjusting a webpage’s on-page SEO elements and influencing off-page SEO factors, an inbound marketer can improve where a webpage appears in search engine results.
Search Query
The string of words users enter into a search engine to receive a result.
Slide presentation
Includes pictures or pages of information (slides) often displayed on a large screen using a video projector or on a computer screen as a presentation for online viewers. The content should relay a topic, demonstration, lecture or speech in an easy to digest format.
Social media post
Content shared through social media that can be as simple as a blurb of text, but can also include images, videos and links to other content. The main purpose of social media posts is to increase brand awareness and visibility.
Social media posts also help to build relationships with your audience. Social media postings should not be overly promotional content. People who use social media are not really looking to buy something, they’re looking to connect with their friends, be inspired, entertained or informed.
Social media posts are a great way to build thought leadership and learn more about the target audience by asking them engaging questions.
Spam
The digital equivalent of junk mail. Spam can be an email, text message, social media direct message, or any other unwanted or unsolicited electronic communication.
SSL
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a method of encryption your website needs that protects data being sent between websites.
T
Tags
A piece of HTML code that tells a web browser how to render an element on a web page.
Target Audience
The people you want to reach with your marketing efforts. These are the consumers who will be most interested in your products or services—and most likely to convert from leads into customers. Target audiences can be based on demographics (age, gender identity, location), psychographics (aspirations, concerns, values), or behavior (likely to buy online).
Top of the Funnel
Sometimes called “TOFU”, the top of the funnel refers to the very first stage of the buying process. Leads at this stage are just identifying a problem that they have and are looking for more information.
Tracking Code
A small piece of code placed on a website that sends data to Google Analytics, Hubspot, or other tools for tracking visitor metrics and activities.
U
Unique Visitors
The number of individuals who visited your website in a defined amount of time.
User Experience (UX)
How a person feels about using a product or service. The discipline of user experience (UX) makes digital experiences efficient, effective, and sometimes entertaining.
V
Viral Content
This term is used to describe a piece of content that has become wildly popular across the web through sharing.
W
Whitepaper
A whitepaper is long-form content that requires more deep research on a specific topic. They should be persuasive, authoritative, and in-depth on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution.
Whitepapers serve as a great way to build thought leadership as they illustrate knowledge and expertise through facts and evidence. These are more serious in tone and more heavily researched than blog posts and eBooks.
Whitepapers should not be used to advertise or endorse a company’s product. More from HubSpot on Whitepapers here.
Wireframe
A blueprint for a website’s user interface (UI). Wireframes are simplified outlines of how content and functionality come together in a layout.
X
XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file of code that lives on your web server and lists all of the relevant URLs in your website’s structure. Think of this as a “floor plan,” which mainly comes in handy whenever the site gets changed.
Y
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos.