If you’ve ever felt like talking marketing feels like speaking an entirely different language, don’t worry – even the most seasoned professionals have felt this way at one point or another!

While the learning curve can be steep, this does not mean the practice should be inaccessible to those who wish to make use of it, particularly when communicating with the marketing professionals they employ.

Whether you’re a business owner working with an agency or freelancer for the first time, have just started a new in-house marketing role, or are taking your first steps as a marketer yourself, there are many occasions where you may be feeling overwhelmed, particularly when it comes to industry-specific acronyms and jargon!

As a full-service marketing agency, we’re used to working with clients across a vast spectrum of experience. From business owners who have had little to no direct experience with marketing practice, to working with in-house teams who may have worked for agencies themselves, the level of knowledge in this area can vary significantly from client to client.

Therefore, it’s our responsibility to communicate our practice in a way that ensures that those we work with feel informed and assured, no matter their depth of knowledge or experience. While we may use acronyms and jargon frequently in our daily practice, this is done in the interests of efficiency, and never from one of gatekeeping.

To minimise any feelings of exclusion, we believe in democratising this information wherever possible. In part one of a two-part series, we’ll look at key marketing acronyms to help you confidently navigate the fascinating marketing world.

B2B – Business to Business

This term isn’t just at the top of the list because it’s alphabetical – B2B is a key term in many marketing scenarios.

Simply put, B2B, or business-to-business, refers to transactional or promotional activity between businesses. Whether it’s a manufacturer, retailer, wholesaler, a consultancy firm, or a marketing agency such as ourselves, there are a truly staggering number of B2B businesses out there.

Figure 1: Unsplash/Annie Spratt

No matter the specific activity, the outcomes generally boil down to increasing the efficiency and profitability of the company they are targeting.

Regarding B2B marketing, the approach is slightly different, as marketers looking to garner business will target key decision makers rather than consumers, typically appealing to the needs of their business rather than their individual emotional needs.

B2C – Business to Consumer

On the flipside of B2B is B2C (business-to-consumer), which affects marketing directly concerned with targeting consumers.

Examples of B2C businesses include high-street banks, hotels, retailers such as supermarkets and clothing shops, and online retailers such as Amazon or ASOS.

Regarding B2C marketing, the approach is generally concerned with meeting the needs of individuals. While B2B might target efficiency and turnover, B2C typically targets individual needs like well-being and social status to generate leads and sales.

CMS – Content Management System

Next on our list comes Content Management Systems (CMS).

Not everyone enters the marketing field with the same knowledge or skill set. With the diversity of skills required to market effectively, not everyone has the time or the people power to be able to complete each task. This is especially true regarding more complex tasks such as coding/programming.

Historically, experience in coding has been necessary when managing digital content. However, to create greater accessibility in this field, content management systems have become a standard part of marketing practice.

CMSs are primarily used to build websites and create, edit, and publish content. They give marketers much greater ownership and agency over their content goals. Some examples of the many CMSs available are Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress.

Of course, with any system, there comes a trade-off.

Although CMSs offer ease of use, for a truly unfettered experience, marketers may still call upon web designers and coding experts for maximum control.

Additionally, while CMSs are far more accessible, their day-to-day management may still require the skills of a dedicated staff member to build and manage.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management

While similar to a Content Management System (CMS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to tools that relate to the customer experience.

From tracking leads to marketing automation techniques to managing the sales pipeline, CRM tools are designed to build upon a high-quality website by ensuring that customers (and potential customers) have the best experience possible.

Doing so, in turn, maximises sales and improves overall satisfaction to encourage repeat custom.

Examples of these tools include Salesforce, Hootsuite, and Hubspot.

Like CMSs, these tools make the CRM experience far more manageable for smaller teams. However, achieving the best possible result may still require time-intensive activity/employment of those with knowledge of using these systems, such as an agency.

CPC – Cost Per Click

If you’re running ads for your business, or are considering doing so, it’s more than likely you’ll have heard the acronym CPC.

CPC stands for Cost Per Click, and is an essential metric for running a paid advertising campaign on search engines or social media.

No matter the media type you use, the cost per click is determined by, unsurprisingly, how many times your ad is clicked on. To determine the cost of each click, you can divide the total cost of your ad by the number of clicks it receives.

While technically speaking, there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ CPC, it’s all dependent on your industry and the type of searches you’re targeting.

If you’re targeting high-ticket searches, such as ‘payday loans’, but your CPC is only £0.10, something will need to be fixed!

With cost per click, it’s worth remembering that the quality of the clicks you receive will largely depend on the quality of your ad, keyword research, and targeting.

For example, if your ad is unintentionally misleading or has sparked attention through a glaring spelling error, these might be reasons for poor-quality clicks.

To improve this, take a closer look at ad copy, assets, or your target demographics to zone in on the people you want to target or those responding best to your ad.

Comparing and contrasting these factors is known as A/B testing, and is a common practice for those running ads.

CPL – Cost Per Lead

Staying on acronyms relating to paid activity, knowing the Cost Per Lead (CPL) is essential to learn more about how many leads you generated against ad spend.

To determine the cost of the leads you have garnered, divide your total ad budget by the number of leads you have acquired. The lower the number, the better the value for money of your ad.

Once known, you can work towards lowering it further by improving ad copy or re-jigging your demographics to more accurately target your ideal customer base.

CTA – Call To Action

One of the more straightforward acronyms on this list, a Call-to-Action (CTA) is ultimately what you want the customer to do based on the provided information.

Examples of call to actions could be asking customers to:

• Sign up for a service
• Share their opinion
• Purchase a product
• Sign a petition
• Book a consultation
• Download an e-book or whitepaper
• Learn more about a service your business provides

CTAs are a vital part of your digital marketing strategy, as they can help to drive conversions and increase engagement.

To write a high-quality CTA, it’s essential to:

• Be brief and unambiguous in the language you use
• Instil a sense of urgency and excitement in what you’re encouraging the consumer to do
• Wherever possible, spell out the advantages of following through on the CTA for them as customers rather than how it will benefit your business.

CTR – Click-Through Rate

Moving back to paid media, we now come to Click-Through-Rate, which determines how often people see your ad and how frequently the ad is clicked on.

In situations similar to CPC, the Click-Through-Rate is distinct in that it takes the total number of clicks and divides them by the total number of impressions.

This number is then multiplied by 100 to determine a percentage.

Figure 2: Unsplash/Stephen Dawson

Unlike the other paid media metrics mentioned in this blog, the higher the click-through rate, the better the performance.

However, using CPC and CTR in tandem is ideal, as while CPC can measure the general efficiency of your ad, CTR can be used to calculate the actual appeal of your ad to its intended audience.

KPI – Key Performance Indicator

Another common acronym in marketing is KPI – or Key Performance Indicator – used to express milestones in reaching strategic objectives.

While this may sound like a fancy way of saying ‘performance metrics,’ KPIs are specific metrics that represent broader goals – examples include targets to meet specific engagement rate or conversion rate percentages.

On the other hand, while many metrics may help you realise these KPIs, not every metric will be a KPI, e.g. the number of likes on a post or impressions.

ROI – Return On Investment

Return on investment (ROI) is an example of a financial metric that indicates what benefits a business venture has garnered in relation to the money spent on it, i.e. how profitable it has been.

ROI is calculated by dividing the net profit by the total investment.

Like KPIs, ROI is ultimately a success metric; however, the key difference lies in the fact that ROI relates specifically to financial investment, while a KPI relates more broadly to business goals.

While these business goals may influence ROI, KPIs are broader and often represent non-financial goals such as improved customer satisfaction or increased conversion rate.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

SEO relates to search engine optimisation – but what is search engine optimisation?

While we’ve covered this in much more detail here, SEO best practice is the art of putting a site or page as close to the top of a search engine results page as possible.

More of a slow-burn strategy, SEO improves search engine ‘ranking’ without the expense of paying search engines for ad space at the top of the page.

This is achieved in several ways, including the optimisation of the following:

• Keywords in the site text
• Page titles
• Images
• URLs
• Links between related pages

By optimising all of the above towards your audience, as well as creating content that is of genuine use, it’s more likely that search engine users will visit your page more often and for longer.

This, in turn, builds ‘authority’ by indicating to the search engine that your page is valuable and should therefore be a priority for search engine user consumption.

While basic SEO housekeeping can be carried out by those with a cursory understanding of marketing language, ensuring that each factor is considered and improved to the necessary degree will generally require an SEO specialist or agency with similar experience to better understand what’s possible for your business and how to get there.

UX – User Experience

For the final entry on this list, we’re looking at UX, or user experience.
Namedropped in our SEO section above, UX relates to the developer’s understanding of those visiting your website and how comfortable that experience feels. A combination of the following can often define a quality user experience:

• Easy to navigate
• Accessible for those with sensory impairments
• Filled with valuable information
• Pleasing to the eye
• Reasonable loading times
• Functioning and functional links
• Consistency from page to page

As with SEO, there will undoubtedly be those who can manage aspects of this themselves. For best results, however, employing a UX specialist or marketing agency will help to get the best UX experience possible.

Conclusion

Whether you’re brand new to the world of marketing or in need of a bit of a refresher, we hope this blog has helped you to feel more confident in discussing key aspects of your business needs.

While this list has covered many of the key acronyms within marketing practice, many more terms to be found in the marketing glossary. Keep an eye out for part two of this blog, where we’ll move our focus from acronyms to jargon to help you keep on top of communications around your marketing strategy.

In the meantime, should you have any burning marketing questions or require support for your business, feel free to check out some of our other blogs or get in touch with our team directly to learn how we can support you.