In digital marketing, we live and breathe acronyms. Today’s marketing language is so full of marketing acronyms, it can be hard to understand what’s going on if you’re not in the know. Terms like BR, CPA and CPC can confuse even the most seasoned marketing professionals. In this article, we explain a few marketing terms that you should familiarise yourself with if you are involved in digital marketing or operating a small business.
KPI – Key Performance Indicators
KPI usually refers to a numeric unit or qualitative measurement that are used to measure the success, or lack thereof, of an online marketing campaign. What you measure depends on the goal of your campaign but as a general rule, you’ll want to track the number of visits, engagement and conversions that you’re receiving from your campaigns.
CPA – Cost per action
CPA is defined as the cost per action for any given advertisement campaign. This can be an impression, a click, a form submission or a sale.
ROI – Return on Investment
It’s a simple concept really. If you’re spending money on an advertising campaign, where does your money go? Return on investment is the amount of money you make in return for your investment in the marketing campaign. This can be measured by using the cost per action CPA that we talked about earlier. Using this metric will allow you to easily compare one campaign with another and see which one is providing more value for your investment.
CPM – Cost per thousand impressions
CPM is a popular metric that refers to the cost of 1,000 ad impressions, or times a particular ad was viewed by 1,000 people. This is another popular metric used by digital advertisers and the majority of online advertising campaigns are measured using this metric.
CPC – Cost per click
CPC is frequently used when thinking of online campaigns in traditional media like banner ads on websites and search results. It refers to the cost of every time a user “clicks” on the advertisement. This metric is easily tracked with Google analytics and you can use it as a comparison between different channels. For example, if you’re running Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you can see which one is showing higher conversion rates and which one is more expensive.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
SEM is a form of online marketing that uses keywords and pay per click advertising to drive traffic to your website.
ROAS – Return On Advertising Spend
ROAS is a metric used as an indicator of how effective an individual advertisement campaign was in generating revenue or conversions for your business.
CTR – Click Through Rate
CTR is an important metric in digital marketing that refers to the number of people that click on your ad divided by how many see it or saw it.
BR – Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of people that come to your site and leave right away. A website’s bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of single-page sessions by the number of total sessions on the site. For example, if 100 users land on your website (total sessions) and 15 of them exit without triggering another request (single-page sessions), your website’s bounce rate is 15%.
PR – Public Relations
PR or public relations is the art of managing your reputation and promoting your business. PR can be used to build positive momentum around your brand and/or products in the market.
And there you have it! Whilst we definitely didn’t cover all of the acronyms in digital marketing, we have highlighted some of the most common ones. Whether you’re a marketer just starting out, or a small business owner trying to wrap your head around all the acronyms that exist, this list should help you in the future!
