Digital Marketing Terms Singapore Marketer Need to Know

Vocabulary SEO Quiz. Define the following words: “SERPs,” “B2B & B2C,” “CTA,” “Above the fold,” “CPM.” If you got all of these words right, then you’re on your way to becoming a fluent digital marketing conversationalist.

To many, digital marketing may seem like a minefield of technical jargon. Marketers, just like lawyers, doctors, teachers, mathematicians, and so on, have their own professional dialect that they use whenever they’re communicating with each other.

The internet itself is filled with glossary-themed posts explaining the core concepts of inbound marketing. Some of these statements are jargon-laden. And while they may be clear as day to some people, some find them totally unintelligible.

Also, what you’d be quick to pass as ‘jargon’ is just a regular speech to the people in this field. All these terms, no matter their level of sophistication, are just part of a regular ‘industry speak’ to a digital marketer.

Some of these terms can be difficult for a newbie or an outsider to follow, but they’re nothing out of the ordinary. They may be a little overwhelming though – ever tried reading something online, and it felt alien?

Well, no need to fret. Once you immerse yourself into the digital culture, this alien language will automatically begin to make sense. Plus, most of these words are self-explanatory and super easy to blend into regular conversations once you get to understand the underlying key concept associated with each.

But until then, let’s fast-track your learning process by helping you learn the digital lingo today, from a single post. Of course, we won’t be covering everything, but what we have is enough to give you a head start and set you up on the right track.

Now without further ado, let’s cut to the chase and get to our gigantic glossary of digital marketing terms any aspiring digital marketer needs to know:

#1 Algorithm

You’ve probably heard someone talk about algorithms and how they’re at the centre of SEO. It’s almost impossible to have a decent conversation about SEO without mentioning algorithms, more specifically, the Google Search Algorithm.

In which case, the algorithm is nothing more than a coded set of rules that search engines use to determine which websites are quality enough to appear in their search results (the pages that appear every time you run an online search), and in what particular order.

Google and other search engines have to rank sites based on consistency and what’s more relevant to the underlying user.

#2 Analytics

Analytics are like the eyes of inbound marketing. It applies to almost every aspect of digital marketing. In the context of web traffic, it refers to the process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting web traffic data.

In most cases, analytics offers crucial information on the number of people visiting your site, what part of the world you are visiting it from, and which pages are enjoying the highest number of visitors.

With this info, you should be able to tell which parts of your website are more effective with regards to attracting more readers and customers, and which parts require major improvements.

There are several analytics tools that you can use in this case; with Google Analytics being the most popular and advanced of these tools.

#3 Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

As the name suggests, KPIs are nothing more than an adopted performance measurement metric that marketers use to evaluate the success level of any marketing activity. Marketers use KPIs to track the progress that they’re making toward their marketing goals.

Successful marketers are thought to be successful because they’re constantly evaluating their performance against industry standards and the goals they’ve set for themselves.

 KPIs come in different forms and shapes, with examples including Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Home Page views, blog traffic sources, and so forth.

 The KPIs you choose will always vary depending on what you hope to achieve as a marketer. So as a marketer, you’re expected to choose KPIs that clearly represent how your business is doing and if you’re making any progress towards your goals.

#4 Keywords

Search engines rank you for ‘keywords’ or ‘keyword phrases’ as some people like to refer to them. It’s one of the most commonly used terms in the digital marketing space, and one that never misses in any conversation that touches on search engine optimisation.

Keywords are the topics or phrases that search engines use to index web pages. It could also mean the phrases that users enter into the search engine bar whenever they’re running an online search query.

Choosing keywords to optimise your site or webpage is a two-part effort. First, make sure the keywords you’ve chosen have a significant volume of searches. Secondly, make sure you’ve analysed everything and established that it’s not too difficult to rank your site or webpage for these keywords.

The next thing is to make sure that it aligns with the audience you’re targeting.

It’s after you’ve identified the keywords that you can go ahead and optimise the pages that you wish to propel up the search engine ladder (read: rank high). In which case, you’ll be using both on-page and off-page SEO tactics to achieve this.

#5 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Now that you know what keywords are, the next most logical thing to know is SEO. Essentially, SEO is the process of enhancing your position in the result pages of search engines. It’s the practice of adjusting your web content and everything involved to influence search engines decisions to rank you higher over those you compete with.

Several forces are at play here. To improve your SEO score, which translates to a higher ranking in the search engine’s result pages, you have to begin by churning out calculated web copies and posts that are crafted as per the standards and guidelines set by Google and other search engines.

While ranking websites and determining their position in their result pages, search engines have a series of elements that they’ll be looking at and using to evaluate their ranking order. These elements include image tags, internal link structure, title tags, keywords, and inbound links – to name a few.

Other than that, search engines are also interested in your website structure, the design of your website, and how your visitors are interacting with your site. They also have a long list of off-site factors that they use to assign you a position on their result pages.

#6 Search Engine Result Page (SERP)

SERP is the page that opens up or is displayed every time you run an online query. It’s the Google, Yahoo, or Bing pages that show up with all the relevant links relating to your search query.

There’s no limit as to the number of pages that search engines can display. If anything, they can range from no page found to dozens of pages featuring loads of links.

#7 Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on Investment is a measure of returns relative to your initial cost of investment. It’s calculated as Your Returns/Your Investment Cost x 100. In Marketing, ROI refers to the returns you get on your ad spend. It’s calculated as the number of Returns that you make after Advertising a Product of Service/ The Amount You Invested in The Ad.

Usually, your ROI is shown as a percentage – and the higher your ROI, the more money you’ll be making having spend so little on investment. The same goes for ROI in the context of marketing. The higher the ROI, the more money you’ll be making, having invested so little on investment.

In which case, SEO and social media marketing have the highest ROI compared to other forms of online marketing.

#8 Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is an interesting advertising technique that you can take advantage of today as an online marketer. As an advertiser, you simply place an advert on Google and other major platforms, including Facebook. The ad is then displayed but is only charged when a visitor clicks on them.

In other words, you don’t pay for ad display but clicks only. So should your ad run for whatever duration of time, and it happens there’s no one clicking on it, then you don’t get to pay for it.

The PPC version of Google is Google AdWords. Your Ads get displayed on Google search as one of the results (only that your link will feature the ad symbol) to distinguish it from organic results.

#8 Qualified Lead

Any person who lands on your site is a potential lead. But until you get them to perform an action that conveys interest, they’re all unqualified.

The first thing you want to do whenever a new visitor lands on your site is to qualify them. You have a new contact that just landed on your site. The most common thing to do is make them opt into an email list to start receiving regular communications from you.

By making them opt-in, you stand a chance to educate them more about your products and services and even nurture their interest until they’re able to make the decision to go through with whatever action you have in place for them.

There are two versions of qualified leads – Marketing Qualified Lead and Sales Qualified Lead. Where a lead is being qualified by a marketer they’re referred to as MQLs and where your sales team is qualifying them, they’re referred to as SQLs.

#9 Responsive Website Design

This is a well-publicized concept. You want someone to design you a website, and the first requirement that comes out of your head based on what you were told or read somewhere is that the website should be responsive. This is a common practice among web designers and developers, and it has the capacity to hurt your online progress to a devastating scale should it be ignored.

Whenever someone talks about responsive design, what they’re simply implying is that the site should be designed in such a way that it can adapt to different screen sizes. That way, regardless of the device in use, you can be sure your site will still be loading like it’s supposed to.

You don’t have to design distinct websites for the various devices. Instead, design the site such that it can automatically detect various devices and generate the most fitting webpage for that particular screen.

So, by creating a responsive website, what’s meant is that you’re creating a website that’s optimised for different screen dimensions.

#10 On-page Optimisation (also referred to as On-page SEO)

On-page optimisation refers to the practice of optimising individual web pages, so they can rank up higher and drive more traffic from search engines. It focuses entirely on the content of that webpage and all the corresponding HTML elements without looking elsewhere, unlike off-page SEO.

It includes all the measures that must be taken within a webpage to make it rank better. Examples of these measures include title tags, the quality of the content itself, URL, image tags, and meta tags.

The key pieces of that particular webpage must also feature the desired keyword for it to appeal to search engines more and rank higher.

#11 Off-page Optimisation

Unlike on-page SEO, this one has a more wandering eye. It refers to outside factors and incoming links that impact how search engines rank a webpage.

Factors that play right into off-page optimisation include social media and linking domains. And make no mistake; on-page optimisation is one of the most powerful ranking elements, which falls out of your control as an inbound marketer.

Besides networking and befriending other business owners and bloggers, all you have to do to grow your off-page SEO is focused on creating useful and remarkable content that people will have an easy time sharing around or linking back to.

#12 Newsfeed

You’ve probably heard about social media newsfeed, more specifically, Facebook.

Well, that’s nothing more than a platform homepage filled with news sources from users that you’re connected to or those on your friend list. It’s the page with the latest news from your friends that you’re connected to on social media.

The Twitter version of Newsfeed is what’s commonly referred to as the Timeline. For a blog or news site, a newsfeed is the equivalent of a homepage.

#13 A No-Follow

Web owners use no-follow links when they want to link another site without necessarily rewarding it with any SEO value. It allows you to link to other sites or other sites to post their links on your site without gaining any search engine authority.

These links are meant to inform search engine crawlers that you don’t want them to pass any SEO credit to a site you’re linked to. It’s also meant to safeguard you from spammy links or sites that you suspect have been violating search engine guidelines.

All search engines can recognise a no-follow link to varying degrees, though. Read this keeping in mind that not all links are created equal, and a no-follow link is what you use to circumvent any form of foul-play other sites may try to play on you.

#14 Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

CPA is a commonly used metric that helps you determine the cost of acquiring one customer. It lets you come up with estimates on the amount of money that you have to spend to acquire one client or customer.

Calculating your CPA is pretty easy. Just get the total cost of running your campaign and divide it by the total number of conversions that you’re getting.

CPA = The Total Cost of Running a Campaign/the total number of conversions.

You can use this metric to determine the amount of money that you should be willing to spend on your campaign to hit your target number of customers. It’s what you use to determine the amount of money to allocate to your campaign, and even estimate the returns or the number of sales that you’re likely to get at the end of it all.

#15 Lookalike Audiences

A lookalike audience is a Facebook campaign feature that allows you to build your audience from a list of audiences you already have. It uses your current audience to glean similar prospects for you to target.

It builds the audience using your current email list. All you have to do is upload these emails on your Facebook Ad campaign and let Facebook work the magic and get you a similar audience.

Where you do not wish to advertise to current customers, you can even exclude these emails and channel all your marketing effort to the new audience.

You can start by acquiring quality emails from your current list of customers and use them to expand your list by finding new customers that are very similar to your current ones.

#16 Cost Per Impression (CPI)

CPI is a metric measuring the number of times your ads appear on a website, without banking much on whether your target users are interacting with it.

It’s the marketing equivalent of “reach,” except that while ‘reach’ is all about the number of eyeballs your content is enjoying, CPI is more concerned about the number of times your ads or content is displayed.

Impressions are meant to build brand recognition. They’re meant to extend your brand and grow some awareness around it.

#17 A/B Split Testing in Digital Marketing

A/B Split Testing, as the name suggests, allows you to run two or more different ads at the same time and find out which one among them has a better performance.

You can use the same image and play around with the colour or the ad copy. With A/B Split Testing, you’re simply experimenting with different types of ads so you can choose between them and post the best performing of them all.

A/B Testing allows you to test your ads better by displaying the ads that your audience likes the most. Meaning, after you’re done with testing your ad, you’ll be left with the ad that’s likely to generate better results and capture more of your potential buyers.

#18 Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR is the metric that you use to find out how many of the users that you’re targeting clicked through your ads. It’s popular with social media advertising, where you can view the number of people that viewed your ad and those that took it a step further by clicking on it.

Calculating CTR is pretty simple, as well. All you have to do is take the number of people that clicked through your ad and divide it by the number of impressions or eyeballs the ad got. Once done, multiply it by a hundred to convert it to a percentage, and you’ll have gotten your CTR.

CTR = (Number of Clicks your ad has received/ the number of people who saw the ad)*100

#19 Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

The conversion rate focuses on how many of your users or site’s visitors are taking action. It uses design techniques, tests, and key optimisation principles to get you even more customers.

As a marketer, your goal should be to create an online experience that entices your site visitors to take action.

A higher conversion rate means better quality of leads and a better conversion strategy, which in the end translates to more sales (or higher ROI).

#20 B2B and B2C

B2B stands for Business to Business, while B2C stands for Business to Customers. They are two marketing terms describing your target customers.

Who are you trying to market to? If you’re marketing to other businesses, then you’re running a B2B campaign, or you’re a B2B business.

Where you’re targeting ordinary customers and not other businesses, then you’re running a B2C campaign, which makes you a B2C business person.

You need to define whether you’re marketing to customers or other businesses to figure out the most appropriate marketing strategy to target your audience.

#21 Call to Action (CTA)

A Call to Action (CTA) is a hyperlinked, attention-grabbing button that you use to spell out the course of action that you wish to see your users undertake. It’s meant to tell them what to do most convincingly and clearly.

It tells them whether to click, give their emails, make a purchase, or take any other action.

It’s a general rule of thumb that your CTA is big, bold, and attention-grabbing. It should be among the first things that people see upon landing on your site. The CTA copy you come up with should be sweet, short, and straight to the point.

Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends of 2022

The world of eCommerce is always on the move, and strategies that worked well in 2022 may be ineffective today.

Even though it’s impossible to predict the future, we have noticed a number of digital marketing trends that have considerable potential to impact businesses positively. Let’s dive in and look at these trends and tips on how to start preparing your online business for them.

• More Focus on Video Marketing

Video marketing took centre stage in 2020 and 2021. Digital marketers invested heavily in this form of content compared to text and other formats. During this period, 87% of marketers noticed an increase in traffic and sales after incorporating video in their marketing strategies.

With the launch of 5G, users will be able to stream videos easier and faster on tablets and smartphones. TikTok, a video-sharing social networking platform, clocked 1 billion monthly active users in 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, the platform grew by 45%.

That’s enough proof that the market is ready and wants more video content. Video marketing will be one of the most influential digital marketing trends this year. If you are still relying on text and infographics, now is the time to start creating more videos and distributing them on your social media platforms. 

Expand your digital marketing strategy and consider repurposing the high-performing blogs into videos. Post them on social media platforms and YouTube to increase your brand awareness efforts. 

• Metaverse Will Redefine Digital Marketing

Recently, Facebook rebranded to Meta, and experts believe that the company decided to do so to position itself for success once Metaverse is fully embraced and adopted. 

What is Metaverse? Metaverse is a virtual world of augmented reality, 3D holographic avatars, virtual reality, and videos. Unlike the gaming ecosystem, it’s an advanced environment where people can play, work, and socialise.

According to Patrick Casey of Felix Health, Metaverse will create a buzz in this year’s digital marketing industry. Already, some brands have started embracing VR and AR in their marketing strategies to offer memorable experiences and engage with their customers better.

Metaverse will offer additional insights about the target audience that will enable you to reimagine and monitor your campaigns better. Experts such as Kent Lewis, who runs Anvil Media, believe that even consumers are not yet fully ready for Metaverse, brands can still benefit from a first-mover advantage.

• Increase in Use of Cryptocurrencies to Pay for Goods and Services

For the last three years, cryptocurrencies have gained massive traction across the globe. Brick-and-mortar stores now accept payment via cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. There are also Bitcoin ATMs that allow customers to exchange their digital currency for fiat currencies.

The growth of this industry is expected to spill over to the digital marketing space. Decentralized finance will change how customers purchase products from online stores.

Savvy online customers are naturally attracted to brands that embrace new technologies. Allowing customers to shop and pay for products using one of the many popular cryptocurrencies will definitely give you an upper hand in the market. 

Big companies in the finance industry such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal are aware of this shift in the market. They are putting in place measures to allow their users to use cryptocurrencies in their existing infrastructure. There are also plans to switch to blockchain technology. 

In a recent interview, the vice president of CoinMarketCap, Shaun Heng, said that cryptocurrencies and NFTs would influence how customers engage with products and services. Marketers should devise ways of aligning themselves to the potential increase in demographic reach. The products or services will be more accessible even in countries that previously restricted them but now embrace blockchain technology.

• Supply Chain Buffering

The negative impact of supply chain bottlenecks on the online shopping experience is still eminent even though the holidays are over. Ensure that your marketing goals align with your brand’s stock capacity this year to avoid compromising your brand’s reputation and credibility.

Create and maintain a 30-day buffer stock strategy to ensure that you always have products to sell to customers. As Chelsea Cohen, the Co-Founder of SoStocked recently stated, there is a need to make sure that your marketing campaigns complement your brand’s inventory levels to increase year-round sales. 

One of the mistakes digital marketers have made is focusing mainly on products that offer fast turnovers. That should change moving forward to provide better customer experiences. If you don’t, the customers will leave your site for the competitors, and if the shopping experience is good, the chances of them retracting their footsteps to you are low.

• Gender Neutrality

Yes, it’s OK to have products for a specific gender, but that could be the sole reason why your sales numbers are low. Old Navy and Pacific Sunwear launched a new product line that is gender-neutral in 2021. 

Since then, the inclusivity trend has been gaining popularity online. Experts such as Damien Buxton of Midas Creative predict that more brands will switch from the traditional gender roles in their marketing campaigns to avoid locking out any customers.

Freedom Mobiles director Stewart McGrenary agrees with Damien that it’s vital for brands to create authentic marketing messages that resonate with the diversity of their target audience. As the target audience diversifies, so should the marketing campaigns.

Using photos of people whose lifestyle matches the customers’ will spur engagement and sales. The images will make them feel connected to the brand, drawing them in and encouraging them to shop.

• Use of Simple Content

Content marketing is the pillar of your digital marketing strategies. It isn’t easy to convince customers to buy without quality content that resonates with the audience’s needs. 

4.4 million new blog posts are published on various websites daily. Blogs powered by WordPress get 70 million new posts every month. 

Clearly, the internet is flooded, and customers are overwhelmed by the colossal amount of content available online on virtually any topic. Knowing which form of content is genuine and accurate is also a daunting task. 

In 2022, you need to devise new ways of making your content stand out and drive traffic and sales. Unknown to most brands is that customers don’t like fancy and flowery prose content. 

Your content doesn’t need to be complicated to stand out. Making sure that it’s straightforward is enough to take your business up the ladder of success. The audience should quickly understand the intended message without reading the entire content.

As you improve your content marketing campaign, strive to offer the audience meaningful and memorable experiences. One way to achieve this goal is by publishing more simple content and using visuals. 

Algorithms will drive everything, and one of the factors that will determine your content’s visibility is the quality of user experience. Understand the searchers’ intent before embarking on writing the content. Otherwise, you may end up with a ton of content that does not match your customers’ needs. 

• More Accessibility

For many years, brands have neglected the needs of the disabled people that are part of the target customers. JCPenney, a reputable online clothing store, recently launched a new line of children’s clothing dedicated to kids with disabilities.

Launching these new products will increase the store’s sales. Svetlana Kuznetsova, a renowned consultant who focuses on helping businesses revamp their accessibility strategies, stated that the total number of people with disabilities globally is more than two billion. Their disposable income is estimated to be approximately $1.9 trillion. 

As a business focused on continuously growing and adapting to changes in the eCommerce industry, you cannot afford to ignore this group of customers. Redesigning your website and offering products that meet the customers’ special needs will crank up your sales and business growth rate in a way that you have never envisioned before.

Concisely, more product accessibility will expand your audience and allow people who wouldn’t usually pay attention to your product to try them out. 

• Rise of Voice Search

In 2019, many digital marketers predicted that voice search would redefine how brands market their products, but that didn’t happen. 

However, the slow adoption of this new way of looking up information on search engines is slowly gaining momentum. More people are using Google voice search more than ever before. Therefore, its recommendable to consider re-optimising your website content to be visible in voice-based search results. 

Currently, we focus more on creating content that matches the searchers’ intent and conforms to the best SEO practices to rank highly in SERPs. Optimising content for voice search isn’t much different because the search engines such as Google still display text content results for verbal queries.

One way of optimising the content is by using long-tail keywords such as questions as opposed to 2-3 branded keywords. Analysing traffic from voice search results is difficult since the existing tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics don’t generate such reports yet. However, you can bet developers are working behind the scenes, and soon we will have an advanced tool for monitoring voice search results.

• Leverage Micro-Moments

Smartphones redefined how customers look up information online and shop. The convenience came at a cost – reduced attention span. People now make instant decisions on what product to buy, which service to use, and what to eat. 

Keep that in mind when creating your digital marketing strategy for 2022. Google, the largest search engine on the planet, is aware of these micro-moments and categorises them into four distinct groups, namely:

• • I want to go moments
  • I want to know moments
  • I want to buy moments
  • I want to do moments

The four have a significant impact on marketing. Customers make decisions in seconds, and so you should strive to capture their attention within the first one or two seconds of them coming across your content.

A recent report by Microsoft revealed that attention span has reduced from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds.

Take full advantage of the micro-moments despite the low attention span by investing in targeting advertising. That means the ad should be presented to the right audience and at the right time. The marketing content, including ads, need to be highly personalised to convince the customers to take the desired action.

You cannot also win with dull marketing content. Spice it up to intrigue the audience fast. Otherwise, nobody will bother clicking the CTA button if the ad is bland and vague. Every day, we come across discount ads posted on social media with generic text such as “-30% discount”. At least include a photo of the product, don’t make them guess what the discount is all about.

• Prepare for Zero-Click Searches

The bitter truth is that featured snippets dominate most search queries. That is a problem for digital marketers whose focus is ranked number 1 for the target keywords. The search engine bots may decide to pick a piece of content from the website page or article and display it in SERPs as a featured snippet.

While that is fine, the users will most likely read the text if it resonates with their information need and leave without visiting your website. Unfortunately, there is no solution to that problem. You have to restructure your content and focus on topics that need more detailed explanations, such as industry trends.

Check the search query results for your target keywords to decide if it’s worth re-optimising your content for featured snippets. Analytics tools will come in handy to help you identify keywords that you use in the content to increase your website visibility. Be ready to change from short-tail to long-tail keywords as more people embrace voice search. 

Final Thoughts

There’s one caveat for all this though – learn to use this jargon sparingly, only when you’re interacting with your fellow marketer. For customers learn to keep everything simple, and steer clear of any urge to impress them with buzzword-laden jargon that they’ll have a hard time comprehending.

Not only will the jargon and some of the clichés harm your credibility, but they also have a way of sapping your prospects’ patience and making your message less clear and effective.

If you have more questions concerning these terms or there’s a term that you feel like we should include on the list, talk to the professionals at MediaOne. Talk to them about your digital marketing strategy as well, and let them help you manage your campaign or help you set up a new website.