By now you’re familiar with at least some of the text jargon commonly used such as “lol” (laugh out loud). But are you familiar with the acronyms used in the digital marketing world and what they mean? If you are confused or just want to brush up on your knowledge, you’ve come to the right place. Below are some common terms you’ll find throughout your digital marketing journey. This is just a brief overview.
PPC
This stands for pay-per-click. When running a PPC campaign, it’s extremely important to know it will be a time-consuming process if done correctly.
How does it work?
You can purchase a PPC ad through a multitude of services – the most popular of which is search engine advertising. For our example, we’ll use Google since most people are familiar with them. Now, think about your business. What keyword would someone type in to find the product or service you sell? You would bid for ad placement in the sponsored links section to determine where you would show up on the results page. You will be charged each time the ad is clicked.
CPM
This stands for cost-per-thousand. Most digital advertising offers a fixed price based on impressions.
How does it work?
On a popular ad size such as a banner ad, you might pay a $12CPM which means you will get 1,000 impressions for each $12 you spend. Most advertising will guarantee a certain number of impressions each month or give you a minimum requirement of a certain number of impressions per month.
CPC
This stands for cost-per-click. When bidding on advertising, your maximum CPC (what you feel you can pay per click) is one of the determining factors in winning an auction.
How does it work?
This is where budgeting comes into play. If you want to spend a certain dollar figure each month, you would break down how many clicks you would think an ad would get and divide your budget amount by that number. Usually, advertisers often winning a bid slightly under their maximum CPC amount.
CTR
This stands for click-through-rate. CTR measures the success of your online advertising campaign for your website, a landing page, or email campaign.
How does it work?
The click-through rate is the ratio showing how often people who see your ad or link end up clicking on it. So it’s the clicks divided by the impressions. The average campaign’s CTR is between 0.02 percent to 0.04 percent.
CTA
This stands for call-to-action. CTA is a popular term in advertising and is used in print advertising as well. For digital advertising, a CTA is usually a specific action.
How does it work?
The purpose of marketing our business is get generate leads and turn leads into customers. By creating a CTA, you are capturing prospective buyers when they interact with your ad campaign or website. CTAs are usually a button where a visitor will submit information, download information, or look at additional information. Your CTAs can be measured by how many CTRs you get.
SEO
This stands for search engine optimization. SEO is a process to get traffic from free search engine results (remember PPC is paid results) to your site. You will often hear the term “organic” used with SEO. That means the search results that aren’t ads.
How does it work?
Keywords and optimizing your website for better results takes time. This is a slow process, and might take up to a year if you have a new site. Content is key.
SEM
This stands for search engine marketing. Basically, SEM is a combination of the best from both worlds.
How does it work?
SEM is the process of gaining traffic through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing through paid and free efforts. By combining PPC ads and SEO on your site, you can increase traffic and generate more leads.
As you can see, there’s a lot to consider when placing a digital marketing campaign. And even after the campaign begins, constant evaluation and improvements need to be made to make sure you get the best results for your money.
To learn more about digital marketing, contact us. We can provide information to help you make the right decisions for your business.
