Resources
Marketing glossary
Plain-language explanations to help you read agency proposals and compare agencies. Each term says what it is, how it works, where it goes wrong and what to ask an agency that offers it.
- A/B testing
- Showing two versions of a page, ad or email to similar audiences to see which performs better.
- Attribution
- The method for deciding which marketing activity gets credit for a sale or a lead.
- Backlinks (link building)
- Links from other websites to yours. Links from relevant, trusted sites help a site rank; bought or spammy links can harm it.
- Branding
- The name, identity and visual and verbal style that make a business recognisable and trusted.
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
- The total cost of winning one new customer, across marketing and sales.
- Content marketing
- Creating useful articles, videos, guides and other material to attract and keep an audience, rather than advertising directly.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's measures of how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds to a tap and how steady it stays while loading.
- CPC (Cost Per Click)
- The amount you pay, on average, each time someone clicks your ad.
- CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)
- The price paid for every thousand times an ad is shown, whether or not anyone clicks.
- CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation)
- Improving a website or page so a larger share of visitors take the action you want.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate)
- The share of people who saw an ad or a search result and clicked it.
- Digital PR
- Earning coverage and links from news sites and blogs through stories, data and expert comment.
- Email deliverability
- Whether marketing emails reach the inbox instead of the spam folder.
- Engagement rate
- The share of an audience that interacts with a post, through likes, comments, shares or saves.
- Google Business Profile
- The free listing that shows a business on Google Search and Maps, with its address, hours, photos and reviews.
- Influencer marketing
- Paying or partnering with people who have an audience online to promote a product or brand.
- Keyword research
- Finding the words and phrases people type into search engines, and choosing which ones a site should target.
- Landing page
- The page a visitor arrives on after clicking an ad or a link, built to encourage one action, such as filling a form or buying.
- Lead generation
- Marketing aimed at collecting the contact details of people who may become customers.
- Local SEO
- SEO for businesses that serve a place, focused on appearing in map results and "near me" searches through a well-kept Google Business Profile, reviews and consistent local details.
- Marketing automation
- Software that sends messages and updates records automatically, based on what people do, such as a welcome email after signing up.
- PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
- A way of buying online visits where you pay each time someone clicks your advertisement, as in Google Ads and social media ads.
- Remarketing (retargeting)
- Showing ads to people who have already visited your site or interacted with your brand.
- ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
- The revenue earned for each rupee spent on advertising, usually written as a ratio.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- The work of making a website easier for search engines to find, understand and rank, so it earns free (organic) visits from people searching.
- Sitemap
- A file listing a site's pages so search engines can find them.
- Social media marketing
- Using social platforms to build an audience and promote a business, through posts, community management and paid advertising.
- Technical SEO
- The part of SEO that makes sure search engines can reach, read and index a site: speed, mobile friendliness, site structure, redirects and errors.
- UTM parameters
- Short tags added to a web address so analytics can tell which campaign, source and ad a visit came from.