Being new to InfoTrust, I’ve had many of my friends and family ask a lot of questions about what our company does and what exactly digital marketing is. This led me to realize several of these questions are probably asked by others in the workplace who aren’t sure what their marketing departments are responsible for.
As marketers, we know what our jobs entail, but how can we effectively communicate these actions and terms to our colleagues so they can easily understand what we’re talking about? Not everyone is a marketing guru, so in order to communicate with your team, here are the top 10 terms to know in digital marketing.
1. Digital Marketing
I’ve realized not a lot of people actually know what digital marketing entails and how it can benefit a company. When I was explaining that InfoTrust was a digital marketing company to a friend, he asked “so they just email people to market other company’s products?” No, not really. Digital marketing utilizes several electronic platforms to reach the market but then digital marketers use analytics tools to review these marketing efforts. We can oversee how our content is working for or against our marketing goals; e.g. the source of website traffic, how long users stay on their site, which products/pages they view, and so on.
2. CRM
Customer Relationship Management is a key to marketing, but non-marketers rarely know this acronym. There are several software systems out there to help with managing your customer relationships but personally at InfoTrust, we’re a big fan of Salesforce. With these systems in place, a company can easily monitor which sales processes worked for securing customers and which marketing efforts need adjustments to properly nurture those delicate relationships.
3. Marketing Tags / Tag Management
I’m going to be honest, until I started at InfoTrust, I hadn’t even heard tag management mentioned in any of my marketing classes in my undergraduate career. Once I learned more about tags and tag management, I was surprised this isn’t a larger topic discussed. Marketing tags are essentially snippets of code embedded in each page that “fire” and collect data from the user on a given site. Tag Management systems can help eliminate problems with privacy and errors that occur during tag implementation. These tags are incredibly important for collecting data to effectively execute your marketing campaigns and measure their performance.
4. Big Data
Sort of like “Big Brother”, all actions we make on websites, apps and even devices we use are being collected and is referred to as big data. The data has such a high velocity, volume and variety that it can be difficult to sort through it all to find the meat and potatoes. This is where analytics is key, because without an analytics system in place it is nearly impossible to weed through every single piece of data — because trust me, when we say big data, we really mean BIG!
5. Dashboards
No, this isn’t referring to what’s inside your car. But these could be considered a marketing speedometer of sorts. Dashboards allow marketers to evaluate how their efforts measure up to their goals in one central location. This performance management tool makes it easy to see your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in a single place.
6. PPC/Search & Display Advertising
Pay Per Click, the name pretty much says it all. Advertisers will place an ad on a host site (this host site is often a search engine, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo) and then pay the site when their ad is clicked. This has evolved to incorporate targeting so your ad isn’t lost in the jungle that is internet marketing, instead it will reach more people who are likely to have an interest in what you’re selling.
7. News Hacking
This is becoming more popular for marketers — and rightly so, if you want to get your information seen by a larger audience. It’s sort of like hitching a ride on the back of a truck without telling the driver, but everyone else on the highway can see you. The concept of news hacking is when your company takes advantage of a situation (e.g. Oreo during the 2013 Super Bowl Blackout) to gain more traffic or business for themselves. The goal is to gain free press and larger exposure that will drive more customers and business.
8. Content Marketing
Content marketing is incredibly important right now for every marketing team. As marketers, we need to provide consumers with relevant information without as much self-promotion. Content marketing can include white papers, blog posts or case studies, and provides thought leadership to your audience. This shouldn’t be self-promotional, but rather showcasing expertise in a certain subject. Since you’re doing the work already, why not write about it? The goal is that with this constant stream of valuable information, your company will become an industry leader and those consumers will become loyal customers.
9. Inbound Marketing
Content marketing is essential to being a successful inbound marketer. Before, marketing used to mean cold-calling, sending out mailings to every business, and spamming everyone’s inboxes just to get your company’s name heard. Then things like Caller ID, DVR and Spam boxes were created to allow the general public to basically ignore all previous marketing tactics. Inbound marketing draws in users through valuable content in blogs, webinars, podcasts and social media. Our goal is for people to look to our companies as the thought leader on specific topics who will educate the public. This will allow them to feel comfortable with your company down the line. Hubspot is one platform that excels in assisting with your inbound marketing efforts.
10. SEO/SERPs
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is trying to gain more customers through search engine results. Each search engine has a ranking system and the goal for companies is for their content to be the top dog on the search engine results page (SERP). Everyone wants to get noticed and not blend into the crowd, so having relevant content and keywords will increase your ranking in organic search results.
These are the most commonly used terms used in marketing every day. This list will help your colleagues get a sense of what it is we as marketers actually do…that is when we’re not too busy on Facebook!
