Glossary of Internet Marketing Terms

The terms below, you will come across on all the forums, blogs and videos dealing with the subject of Internet Marketing.

If your new to IM, these will be a complete mystery and will give you no context of what you might end up in conversation about.

So we have prepared a handy list below, which you will pick up fairly quickly anyway. To arm you with the necessary IM lingo talking to other Internet Marketers out there.

A/B Testing

Split testing two versions of a landing page. Creative differences will be applied to layout, CTA’s, colours to see which page gives you a better performance in terms of conversion rate.

Above The Fold / Below The Fold

The imediate static area of the webpage that is displayed when you land on a website/landing page, when you scroll down, you are entering below the fold. As a line, think of the exact fold at the bottom of your screen.

Ad Blocking

When adverts are blocked from being shown on a webpage.

Advertising

Paying to have exposure on a brand, its services, products through online or offline activity.

Affiliate

An individual who drives web traffic, which can be purchased by a business or affiliate network.

Affiliate Network

A company that brokers or owns its own offers/products, that affiliate members who are part of the network can run web traffic to, to earn income.

Analytics

Collection of data, usually gathered together in software such as Google Analytics. This is the tracking of every action someone can perform on a webpage or device.

Annual Recurring Revenue

Yearly income, (ARR) is usually referring to the positive/negative balance of subscription type services online.

Autoresponder

An email program that sends automated emails, once certain conditions, set by the user have been met.

Banner Ad

An area measured by pixel widths and heights, that is used to display advertisements.

Blogging

A term to describe a website that publishes articles focused on specific, or a wide variety of related topics. A blog can be run by an individual or a company. Used to help with SEO for the website owner, it can also be used to help drive traffic, or convert traffic into leads etc.

Bounce Rate

A percentage of the number of people who visit a page of your website, and exit without performing any other action.

Buyer Persona

A description of the ideal buyer of products or services, profiled through research.

Business-to-Business (B2B)

Used to describe a business that purely sells to another business.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Used to describe a business that will sell to consumers only.

Caching

The local memory of a website, stored for quicker loading time.

Call To Action (CTA)

A call to action can be a clearly written instruction, or a button on a website containing a hyperlink to point the user to a desired outcome.

CDN

Content delivery network, a system of globally located servers, that helps your website load faster through delivering server requests from the nearest server to you.

Churn

The percentage of your customers that cancels your service or product, and leaves.

ClickThrough Rate (CTR)

The CTR is a calculation of the clicks divided by impressions. Used mostly in paid marketing campaigns.

Cold Calling

Ringing individuals by phone, without ever having spoken to them before.

Cold email

Similar to cold calling, but using emails instead to contact individuals.

Content

Simply information created and published online, in the form of text, image, video or audio files.

Content Management System (CMS)

Software that is a foundation of creating content, and makes management of it easier.

Contextual Advertising

Serving adverts directly related to the actual content of the webpage.

Conversion Path

The journey a user will take, from A to B of a webpage or layout, from performing actions required, where they will become a lead or purchase a product.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of people who perform an action on a webpage. This could be filling in a form or downloading content etc.

Cookie

Locally stored information on a users computer, in terms of website preferences.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

The cost of each click a user performs.

Cost Per Impression (CPI)

The cost per thousand impressions.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

The final end cost to you the lead buyer, of acquiring a lead.

Cost Per Mille (CPM)

The total cost of views or clicks per thousand serves of an advertisement.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The full cost of acquiring each customer, by dividing to total amount spent obtaining them.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Software used to manage and organise all the details of customers you have.

Dedicated IP and Shared IP

A dedicated IP (which stands for Internet Protocol) is a numbered web address 111.233.455.67 for example, that is owned by you through whatever service or business you purchased it from. A shared IP simply means you share the same IP with other individuals.

Demographics

A profiling of people, based on age, gender etc.

Digital Marketing (Online Marketing)

Marketing via numerous types of online marketing to your ideal customers.

Domain Name

Simply your website name!

Domain Name Servers (DNS)

The IP’s on which your domain name sits.

Ebook

A digital book, which usually comes in PDF format, but there are quite a few other formats.

E-Commerce

The name given to selling both digital or physical products online.

eCPM

Stands for effective cost per mille, and is usually used in email marketing as a more accurate CPM.

Email

A digital message you send to other individuals or a list of individuals.

Engagement

Engagement can be measured in plenty of different ways, and applied in quite a few online mediums. But it is a way to simply keep track of how much your audience is paying attention to what content you put out.

Engagement Rate

The measurement of any action performed on content. Likes, shares, comments, views etc.

Funnel

A streamlined webpage journey with no exits designed, for the users to perform a desired series of actions.

Hashtag

Used mainly in social media, a word to put in your posts related to the topic you are talking about, used for trending purposes.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language, the basic code foundation of websites.

Impression

A term to describe the view of a piece of content.

Inbound Marketing

Content produced and optimised to engage and draw users to a website, rather than paid advertising.

Infographic

Content that combines text and imagery for better illustration.

Keyword

A specific word or phrase your target audience is searching online for.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

The term to measuring what metrics of performance, are most important to a campaign or a business.

Landing Page

Used as a term to describe a singular piece of a website, mainly in the context of convincing the user to take an action on the desired page.

Lead

The collected details of an individual or company that has shown interest in your services or product.

Lead generation

Internet marketing activities that lead to the collection of a users details, which you need to complete an offer or transaction.

Lead Magnet

A piece of content, usually free on a webpage, that you want individuals to download after they sign up with their details.

Lead Nurturing

A captured lead, and using the details of the lead to reach out and engage, to create a relationship that will end in a sale or conversion.

Lead Qualification

Setting specific criteria that determines whether a lead is exactly what you are after.

Lifetime Customer Value (LTV)

The average monetary value you will get from a customer, over the lifetime of them using your services or products.

Margin

The profit from a product or service, after all other business expenses have been deducted.

Marketing Automation

The automation of a variety of marketing types that means they will continue being active, when you are not manually doing anything with them. Examples are lead generation and email marketing autoresponders.

Market Research

The research carried out, for whatever project you are about to undertake.

Merchant

In the context of ecommerce, the seller of products.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

The monthly revenue of subscribers to your product or services.

MTA

Mail Transfer Agent. This is the software that sends and receives emails.

Niche Market/Business

A very specific subset of a topic to target from Internet Marketing.

Onboarding

When referring to a new client, or affiliate if you are a network. The introduction of your products or services.

Opt out / Opt in

Used in email marketing, the permission part of whether you can email or an individual or not. Opt out means that a user does not want to subscribe anymore, you require an Opt in initially to start emailing them in the beginning.

Offer

This is the offering designed to appeal to the users on your website/landing page.

Pageview

The term used to describe the viewing of a webpage.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Used to describe online paid advertising wherever you have to pay for each click.

Pay Per Lead (PPL)

Used when you either pay or get paid for each lead produced.

Pay Per Sale (PPS)

Same as PPL, but for a sale of a product.

Qualified Lead

A lead that is qualified, meets the specific criteria set for it, or buyer attributes you set out to collect from online activity.

Referral

A potential customer that has been given to you, by someone you already know, or likely are working with.

Remarketing

The name given to selling again to existing customers.

Responsive Design

Where a website is coded specially so that when viewed on different devices, it automatically resizes to the dimensions of the device to give a clean user experience.

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

The money you get back from spending on advertising.

Return On Investment (ROI)

The positive or negative figure you get back from any investment you make in business.

Sales Funnel

The sales process as a whole, from the start when a customer is just a prospect, to the end where they become a paying customer.

Search Engine

The software by which, on a website where you enter your search queries and get your indexed search results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The onpage and offpage optimization of your website, enabling you to get properly indexed to gain more web traffic.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page, the page where you get a list of search results.

Shopping Cart

The feature on a website that stores your intended purchases whilst you continuing browser the store.

Social Media

Platforms such as Facebook, Linkedin, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest and Twitter.

Spam

This is in all its forms unsolicited and often misleading communication. It can be comment spam on your website, email spam to your inbox.

Traffic

Web traffic, the flow of visitors to a landing page or website.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator, the domain or subdomain name location of a website property.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

USPs are crucial in whether your selling a product or a service, it’s pointing out to the buyer what makes it special.

User Experience

The user experience is a measurement of how easy the user found all aspects of their experience on the web property they were sent to.

Viral Marketing

Marketing where content gains traction and engagement without you influencing that growth.

Vlog

A video blog.