The ABCs of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing moves at breakneck speed – constantly evolving into the next best practice. The burgeoning digital landscape, hastened by the pandemic, forcing almost all companies to operate solely online, has become more competitive than ever before. It can be hard to keep up. We spend our days entrenched in it, so the Digital Marketing Team has put together a list of the 2023 marketing terms you should know, and because it’s only February, we decided to keep it simple with an ABCs format!
*Hammer Marketing partners
A. Algorithm: Google, Facebook, Tik Tok, even LinkedIn all use their own algorithm to surface content to users. While we don’t usually know everything that goes into a specific algorithm, there are best practices to follow.
Honorable Mentions: Automation, Analytics, A/B Testing
B. Backlinks: An integral part of your SEO, links from other sites to your site tells the search engines and users that you are a trusted authority.
Honorable Mentions: Big Commerce*, Bots, Blogs
C. Content: You’ve heard that it’s royalty. This rule still reigns supreme — thoughtful and engaging content always has a place in your digital marketing plan.
Honorable Mentions: Campaigns, CTA, Cookies, Case Studies
D. Data: Every bit of marketing should be data-influenced. Whether it is which subject lines have the highest open rate, the amount of traffic to your site or if you are hitting your KPIs, data should always be in the driver’s seat.
Honorable Mentions: Domain Authority, Development
E. Email Marketing: One of the most profitable and cost-effective marketing channels available. With an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, email marketing is a must-have in your digital marketing toolbox.
Honorable Mentions: Ecommerce, Editing, eBook,
F. Facebook: A presence on Facebook is free, easy, and can help boost your business’ presence online. What’s more? Meta is making it easier to publish across their networks (currently Facebook and Instagram) while giving businesses more insight into who they are targeting and how to get noticed.
Honorable Mentions: Framework, Fonts
G. Google*: Arguably the most important company in the world of digital marketing – if you can optimize for Google, you win. Where does it fit into your digital marketing plan? In short…everywhere. The world’s largest search engine plugs into Google Ads, Analytics (UA & GA4), Search Console, Tag Manager, the list goes on.
Honorable Mentions: Gated Content, Gifs
H. HubSpot: A complete platform for managing leads to automation to email marketing, HubSpot helps organize your digital strategy and track KPIs.
Honorable Mentions: HTML, Hashtags, HTTPS
I. Images: Images increase engagement. Visual content is 40% more shareable than content without pictures. Don’t forget the alt tags!
Honorable Mentions: IP Address, influencers
J. Journey: The customer journey may be one of the most important parts of your marketing. Anticipating and influencing behavior will guarantee a great experience, and a loyal customer.
Honorable Mentions: Jargon, JavaScript
K. Klaviyo*: An all-in-one email marketing platform full of flows, automations, and integrations with eCommerce platforms to make digital marketing easier.
Honorable Mentions: KPIs, Keywords
L. Looker*: Formerly known as Google Data Studio, the Looker dashboard presents all your metrics in one place.
Honorable Mentions: Long-tail Keywords, Lead Generation, Landing Page
M. Marketing Automation: The process of automating marketing campaigns throughout the customer journey. This can mean moving the user further down the sales funnel with customized messaging, creating a smart welcome flow, or segmenting users into categories based on recent activities.
Honorable Mentions: Mailchimp, Meta Data, Mobile First
N. No Index: As per best SEO practices, make sure to add a “noindex” tag to any website page you don’t want to pop up in a Google search.
Honorable Mentions: Newsletter
O. Open Source: Open source means the code is available for anyone to contribute to the software in order to better its function or advance its features. A few popular open source software programs include Linux, SQL, and Git.
Honorable Mentions: Objectives, Opportunity
P. Persona Exercise: All marketing starts with persona(s) or target audience(s), period. Get your company campaigns aligned, start with a Persona Exercise.
Honorable Mentions: Photography, Pardot, Performance Marketing, PR, PPC
Q. Quality Leads: You might have plenty of leads, but are they quality? Define your leads in terms of revenue. You will be sure to make sure your sales team happy too.
Honorable Mentions: Queries
R. Redirect: Redirects allow moved or deleted pages to be sent to the corrected or new page, removing SEO issues that can occur from too many 4XX-level errors.
Honorable mentions: ROI, ROAS
S. SEO: Search Engine Optimization – the practice of optimizing and improving your website to increase visibility on search engines. There is so much to know about SEO, visit XXX to learn even more.
Honorable Mentions: Social, Sitemap, Smart Goals, Salesforce
T. Trending: Go viral on social channels by reacting quickly to the latest trends. Get witty with trending hashtags, sounds, and memes.
Honorable Mentions: Tik Tok, Teamwork, Title Tags
U. UTM: Attach this simple code to your website URL to get Google Analytics data for your digital campaign. Bonus: Did you know it stands for Urchin Tracking Module?
Honorable Mentions: Upload, User Experience
V. Video: Video content is golden! Whether it is a product-explainer video or something more social to introduce the company or the team, video almost always equals an increase in engagement!
Honorable Mentions: VPN, Virtual Reality,
W. WordPress VIP*: A customizable, open-source content management platform with the ability to create and optimize content quickly.
Honorable Mention: Website
X. XML Feed: A simple file with a complex job, this feed contains all data related to your products, descriptions, SKUs, price, and category. You’ll use this for uploads to Google, Facebook, and other comparison-shopping platforms.
Y. Yoast: An SEO plugin used on WordPress sites to optimize content and keywords.
Honorable Mentions: Yotpo, YouTube
Z. Zero Party Data: Anything your customer provides freely to you! This is great info you can use in your digital strategy to customize your marketing efforts.
Honorable Mentions: Zapier, Zip Files
Your Digital Marketing Partner
Do these terms make it to your campaigns? Do you want to learn more? We aced marketing terms, so let us work with you to create the best digital strategy, from A to Z. Contact us to start working with our team of experts.
