38 Content Marketing Terms You Need to Know
The marketing world is full of jargon. So, it's no wonder that even seasoned marketers can get frustrated with new content marketing terms. While it may be easy enough to ignore these words (or just ask questions as you go), content and digital marketing lingo are here to stay, so why not spend a little time getting acquainted with the language that's such a big part of your professional life?
A/B Testing
This process compares two variations of specific communication elements while holding everything else constant to determine which variant creates a better long-term result.
Assets
The term describes all text, images, and programming used to create your digital or content marketing.
Backlink
This is an incoming link to your site, originating from a different website. They’re also called external links.
Blog
This online publishing platform allows marketers and individuals to publish and distribute content intended to educate, entertain, or persuade.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of website visitors who navigate away from, or leave, a website after viewing a single page is the bounce rate.
Business Page
Social media pages are usually formatted for individuals or businesses. Most social media platforms require promotional information or ads to originate from a business page or business account. Business accounts also offer more detailed insights and analytics.
Call to Action (CTA)
As the name implies, a call to action is a prompt designed to motivate users to take a specific action such as clicking a link, completing a form, or a purchase.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This is the percentage or number of people who clicked on a link compared to the total that viewed the content or ad.
Content
Any information developed for digital use, including blogs, social media posts, website text, white papers, emails, videos, and images is content.
Content Management System (CMS)
This is a type of software application designed to simplify the creation and modification of digital content and usually does not require programming knowledge to manage. Most CMS systems are designed for users with intermediate digital skills but are usually easy to learn. WordPress, Joomla, Squarespace, and Magento are CMS.
Content Marketing
This approach to marketing is focused on creating and distributing content in ways that attract, engage, and convert audiences.
Content Metrics
These measurements are used to determine the success of any type of marketing content, including web traffic, social media activity, clicks, sales, lead generation, and quality of leads and actions.
Conversion Rate
This is the percentage of web or social users who complete a designated action or make a sale.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
As the name implies, this is a customer management tool. These systems manage and integrate a company's interactions with a range of current and potential customers and can organize, prioritize, and automate interactions, usually offering ways to combine web, social, and email activity.
Editorial Calendar
These calendars create and schedule content development and approvals for the coming weeks or months. Batched editorial content calendars enable clients and agencies to manage approvals and revisions while also ensuring regular content development and posting.
Email Marketing
When businesses create sales, awareness, or promotional messages and send them to a group of contacts via email, that's email marketing. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to deliver content to people at the right time. It also allows businesses to time messages and send sequential emails based on a pre-programmed, conditional logic sequence. (Ex: If they click on the button, send them email "A" next. If not, send email "B" next.) When done right, email marketing is a smart way to educate, engage, or persuade prospects and customers to take a specific action.
Engagement
When a user interacts with content, it's considered engagement. Examples include liking, sharing, and commenting on content. Views are generally not considered engagement.
Gated Content
Gated content requires access and is not open to all viewers. Most frequently, it is high-value information that requires a request or form for access. Successful gated content is a smart way to drive qualified lead generation or build an email list.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free service that can be added to almost any website by adding code to a website header. Its use is so common that many CMSs offer one-click access.
Infographics
This is a common term that describes complex or compelling visual images, such as charts, images, or diagrams, used to explain information or data in new or exciting ways.
Internal Link
Since search engine ranking systems must move from page to page to evaluate all pages, adding links to other pages within the text is a smart way to help search engine ranking code move from page to page. These links are called internal links.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Effective content marketing programs are built on KPIs, which are quantifiable metrics used to evaluate a program's performance against goals.
Keyword
A keyword is a specific word or phrase that an online user types into a search engine to find information. Researching keywords and populating a website with relevant keywords is one of the most effective ways to increase a site's search engine ranking.
Landing Page
Often a promotion drives users to take a particular action. Creating a website page designed to help users take action on a specific product, service, or offer quickly can increase conversions. These "landing pages" are usually created as part of a lead generation funnel, live on a website, but are not visible to users or part of the navigation. Landing pages are also an effective way to gather emails or information and present limited-time offers or gated assets, such as a whitepaper.
Lead Nurturing
The process of educating or building credibility with leads through the planned delivery of valuable, relevant content. Lead nurturing can be part of emails, social media, or ad campaigns.
Latent Syntax Indexing (LSI)
Latent Syntax Indexing, or LSI, refers to the process of surrounding keywords with relevant content. Because search engines will penalize your website if any keywords show up in more than 3-5 percent of the content, LSI is a smart way to build overall content volume.
Marketing Automation
Many software platforms and technologies allow marketers to program some or all of the marketing funnel in ways that ensure regular delivery of messages at desired times.
Opens
This refers to the number of people who opened an email.
Privacy Policy
Many platforms, including Facebook and Google, require websites to have a privacy policy in place before they run ads. In fact, the Google Analytics Terms of Service agreement requires a site to provide Privacy Policy agreements that disclose how analytics are used, how data is collected and processed, and the use of cookies.
Return on Investment (ROI)
This standard ratio evaluates profitability and efficiency by measuring benefits or increases in comparison with resources expended.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
This term is used to describe Internet marketing focused on increasing website visibility and ranking in search engine results pages, usually through optimization (SEO) and advertising.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This term refers to tasks completed to increase a website's visibility or ranking in a search engine's organic, unpaid search results. SEO tasks may include the use of keywords, publishing content, creating links, tagging content, and other techniques.
Social Media
Social media is any digital platform offering private and business accounts with the intent of creating networks (followers or connections) and sharing information with those networks (posts, links, images, or videos.) Popular platforms include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.
Unique Visitors
This measurement refers to the number of individual or unique people who visit a website in one month.
URL
This is an abbreviation for "Uniform Resource Locator." It's the address of a webpage or file on the Internet. While all website URLs begin with "HTTP," several other prefixes exist. "HTTPS" can be used for secured sites and is recommended for any site with opt-ins or forms of any kind.
UTM
This type of duplicate URL can be created to track website traffic from a single campaign element, such as an ad, a visual, a source, or a campaign.
Website Traffic
This is the standard measurement for website visitors or users in a given time period.
Whitepaper
Although this term is commonly used for almost any time of content, it should be limited to content featuring in-depth educational materials from recognized experts.
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