45 Marketing Acronyms and What they Mean
1. ROAS - Return on Ad Spend
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) refers to the amount of revenue generated from the amount spent on advertising. You can calculate the true ROAS by dividing the total conversion value by the spend on a campaign.
2. CTR - Click-through Rate
Click-through rate is calculated by the amount your link is shown (impressions), compared to how many clicks that ad receives. Click-through rate is most commonly calculated for email marketing and paid advertisements.
3. CPM - Cost per thousand
The CPM is measured to give you a cost per thousand impressions your ad received.
4. KPI - Key performance indicators
KPI’s are a way to measure success against a certain project or process in your business. You’ll need to select KPI’s to measure the success of various advertising campaigns so that you can see how well a technique is working. KPI’s include data like the number of new users to a landing page, the CTR on a new ad, or the amount of conversions generated by a campaign.
5. CRO - Conversion rate optimisation
CRO is the practice of making improvements to your website to increase the amount of users that end up converting. Conversion rate optimisation techniques include trying out different page layouts, changing CTA colour buttons or updating the content of a landing page.
6. USP - Unique selling point
Also known as a unique selling proposition, a USP is something that your product or service offers which differentiates it from other businesses in your space.
7. CPC - Cost per click
CPC is a style of bidding on advertising through Google Ads that means you pay per click on your advert. It’s also a metric used to measure how much you paid per click on your ad across other advertising platforms. When the CPC is low, you know that your ad is relating well to the audience.
8. SEO - Search engine optimisation
Search engine optimisation is the practice of making your website rank more highly on search engines, and therefore attract higher levels of traffic organically.
Typical SEO techniques include keyword research followed by creating keyword-rich content, generating more backlinks to your website, and writing relevant meta descriptions.
9. SEM - Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing can refer to paid advertising efforts in search results, or to any marketing campaigns designed to increase visibility in search results.
10. MSV - Monthly search volume
MSV stands for monthly search volume, and is most commonly associated with keyword research. The monthly search volume of a keyword helps you identify the most popular and relevant keywords to your audience.
11. ROI - Return on Investment
The amount of revenue generated from investment into a project or service.
12. TOFU - Top of Funnel
Top of the funnel refers to the first step in a marketing funnel. TOFU marketing has the aim of spreading awareness about your business, and enticing new leads.
13. MOFU - Middle of Funnel
Middle of the funnel marketing usually has the aim of educating leads and answering any questions or objections they might have about your service or product. MOFU audiences are usually aware of your business, but not educated enough to take action yet.
14. BOFU - Bottom of Funnel
This is the last step in the marketing funnel and is where you’ll ask your leads to take a desired action. BOFU content will have stronger CTA’s like ‘sign up today’ and ‘buy now’ because the leads have already seen lots of other marketing to educate them.
15. AR - Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is when a graphic or computer-generated image is projected into the real-world through a device.
16. VR - Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is an experience that completely immerses an individual into a new setting.
17. SME - Small-medium Enterprise
Businesses are classeD as SME’s when they have ‘fewer than 250 employees and a turnover of less than €50 million or a balance sheet total less than €43 million.’ (Gov.uk)
18. B2B - Business-to-business
B2B is used to describe brands whose product or service is targeted at other businesses.
Examples of B2B brands include Hubspot, Sage and Asana.
19. B2C - Business-to-consumer
B2C is used to describe brands whose product or service is targeted directly to consumers. Examples of B2C brands include Coca Cola, Nike and Spotify.
20. CMO - Chief Marketing Officer
A chief marketing officer will head up a marketing department. They will take a leading role in planning a strategy for the business, and in the research of competitors as well as the execution of marketing techniques that generate revenue for a brand.
21. CEO - Chief Executive Officer
The CEO of a business will be responsible for setting the overall mission of the company, and keep an eye on all operations within it. Chief Executive Officers are very senior level employees and will take the lead in decision-making throughout the business.
22. CTO - Chief Technology Officer
A CTO is responsible for leading the operations of the entire information and technology section of a business.
23. CMS - Content management system
Software used to manage the uploading, editing and management of digital content.
24. PPC - Pay-per-click
A form of advertising in which you pay for the clicks on your ads only. This model is used on Google Ads, the ads of which you can notice when searching on the platform at the top of the search engine results.
25. PV - Page view
When either a user or new visitor views a landing page.
26. GA - Google analytics
Software that collects and gives insight into the data of your website including new visitors, bounce rates, average session duration and most popular pages.
27. SERP - Search engine results page
The results that appear after searching for a specific term or phrase in a search engine.
28. PR - Public relations
Managing the impression that the general public has of a brand or person through the careful management of information. PR also includes the work that brands or individuals do to gain positive sentiment from the public, like getting involved in charity work or helping the community.
29. CLV - Customer lifetime value
The total revenue generated during the time in which the individual was a customer.
For example if you’re customers tend to stay with your agency for 6 months, improving that to get them to stay for an average of 8 months would increase your CLV.
30. SAAS - Software-as-a-service
Software systems that operate on a subscription basis, rather than being purchased for a one-time fee.
31. CTA - Call to action
The copy used to incite a viewer to take an action. Examples include ‘buy now’ or ‘sign up here.’
32. CR - Conversion rate
The ratio of which can lead takes an action and then converts.You will have different conversion rates for various aspects of marketing. For example, the conversion rate of your landing page. What is the ratio of people who land on the page to those that end up converting? Or, the conversion rate of an ad. How many times does an impression lead to a conversion?
33. SER - Search Engine Rankings
The results that appear when a term is searched for are called search engine results. Your position in the order of results is known as your search engine ranking.
34. MLM - Multi-level marketing
Multi-level marketing can also be known as a pyramid scheme, and there are very mixed opinions on MLM as a strategy. They are not illegal The practice of multi-level marketing is that of selling to consumers through an independent representative. Representatives are often recruited through advertising efforts, and then will make commission when selling the product.
35. ABM - Account based marketing
Account-based marketing is when a campaign aims to target a group of individuals, rather than just one person.
36. BANT - Budget, Authority, Need, Timing
A process that can be used by those in sales functions to qualify a prospect depending on each of the four points to see if they are a good fit or not.
37. DM - Direct Message
Sending a message straight to a profile on social media.
38.RT - Retweet
Posting somebody else's tweet to your own timeline.
39. UI - User Interface
The navigation system a user will interact with on a piece of software like an app or a computer, like a phone.
40. UX - User experience
The experience that a user will have when interacting with your product, platform or service. UX includes how easy the user interface is to navigate through, the general look and feel of a product as well as the ease-of-use.
41. CX - Customer experience
The complete experience a customer has through all parts in the purchase journey from being a cold lead through their entire customer lifecycle. It includes the impression the customer receives from every aspect of your brand, from visual identity through to actual use of your product or service.
42. UTM Code - Urchin Tracking Module
A piece of code that can be added to a URL to add more identifying information such as which campaign the URL is part of, or where the customer has clicked the link from. UTM codes are used to narrow in on where exactly your traffic is coming from.
43. QR Code - Quick response code
A 2D code that, when scanned through the camera of a device like a phone or tablet, will take the user directly to digital content.
44. SM - Social media
Platforms built for the sharing of digital content between people.
45. SMM - Social media marketing
Advertising on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Social media marketing includes both paid advertising and organic.
