Digital Performance
Sometimes, it seems like the world of marketing is one that has its own language. It’s an industry that moves quickly, with lots of sectors that all look at things differently. There are platforms, acronyms, data and more to get your head around.
Luckily, you’ve got a team of Marketing experts on your side. The Zinc Marketing Team have got together to create a list of useful terms that can help you make sense of how marketing is working for your site. When you’re a client of ours, you’ll hear these terms on our monthly reporting calls and our catch ups with you. Here’s what they all mean:
Overall Website Health
A/B Testing
An integral part of CRO (see below), A/B testing compares two versions of the site, with a minor change, to see which your user base responds to better. You might change the colour of a button, the call to action you use or the location of a form, and then measure the way your users interact with it. It’s an excellent way to refine and improve the conversion of a website once it’s launched.
Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most important tools in a Marketer’s arsenal. It’s a way to measure the activity on a site. Implemented using a piece of code on your site, it tracks how many people have visited you, where they went on your site and how much time they spent there. Here, we can see where they came from and whether they completed a goal when they arrived.
Bounce Rate
Available to us using the Google Analytics platform, Bounce Rate describes the number of people who visited your site and then left immediately, without performing any other actions. It is calculated as a percentage, using the number of users who only viewed one page and spent no time on the page they viewed. In general, we would prefer for your bounce rate to remain low. Benchmarks vary from industry to industry, but we would usually aim for a bounce rate of less than 70%. If you have a one-page website, then it is natural for your bounce rate to be higher, as there is nowhere further for your visitors to go.
Call To Action
You see Calls to Action on every successful website and in each advertising campaign in the world. It’s the ‘Read More’ or ‘Buy Now’ on the buttons your see, or the ‘Get In Touch’ at the end of this blog. A Call to Action is used to catch the eye of a user and to guide them towards taking the action you’re hoping for from your campaign.
CRO
CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation. This is a form of marketing that analyses the effect of small changes on user experience. CRO implements heat/click maps to track the mouse movement of a user and A/B Testing to test and measure different site features. This helps us to gain the best results from a site for our clients.
Conversion Rate
A conversion is essentially any action that you’re hoping for your customers to take on your site. It can be anything from a form fill or case study download to a phone call. Your Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors to your site that take an action. Once again, this can vary hugely from industry to industry, depending on how big the action is. Far more people are willing to fill out a form than spend money on a large item, so each company’s objective conversion rate is different.
Funnels
The Marketing industry uses funnels to break down the customer journey and evaluate what stage a customer is in. This enables us to tailor the best strategy for each kind of customer based on their point in their journey. A traditional funnel would have somebody who is simply aware of your company at the top of the funnel, and somebody who is making a purchase at the bottom. Each stage refines the customer further and guides them towards the final stage.
Goal
A goal is used in Google Analytics to track conversions. We will talk about goals with you when you first start working with Zinc, so that we can measure the right actions on your website. When you see ‘Goal Completions’ on your monthly report, this is how many people have completed one of these actions.
Heat/Click Maps
Part of CRO, a Heat and Click map shows us how a customer has behaved on your site. We’ll be able to see where their mouse has hovered, where they have clicked, and where they haven’t interacted with anything. This allows us to choose the best place for Calls to Action and forms, and to optimise areas of the site that aren’t getting enough attention.
KPI
This stands for Key Performance Indicator. KPIs are one of the most important things we work with as a marketing department; a way to measure how we are working in relation to the way your business defines success. KPIs can vary depending on your business type. In SEO, it’s often keyword placement and in PPC it is often ROI (see below). In addition to this, we’ll often include purchases, conversions, clicks and more to measure how we’re getting on.
ROI
This is Return On Investment, arguably one of the most important things from the point of view of a customer. As your marketing team, the primary objective is to make your business profitable. When you spend money on SEO or PPC services, we want you to make that money back, and more. This is a ROI.
Organic Marketing
Algorithm
Although Algorithms have a place in many areas of maths and computer science, in SEO, we’re interested in just one kind – the Google Algorithm. This is the set of rules that Google has put in place to evaluate and place each site on a Google search. At times, the algorithm changes and most people experience significant changes in ranking. For some more information on Google’s most impactful algorithm changes, take a look at our blog here.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is another Google tool designed to help Marketers manage their site. Here we can check on the keywords you’re ranking for, the way Google sees your site on both desktop and mobile, and whether there are any Google penalties on the site.
Mobile First
One of the biggest changes in SEO was the introduction of the Mobile First index. This was announced in 2018, and alerted the world that Google was turning the tide. It now looks at sites as if it is on a mobile phone first, which has huge implications for sites that aren’t optimised for mobile. You’ll probably hear us discussing this when you’re getting a new site with us, to make sure it has the best chance of ranking well.
Paid Marketing
CPL
CPL, or Cost Per Lead, is a way to keep track of how much you are spending per lead to your business. This is used across marketing, but is most commonly used in PPC. This is because when you’re paying money to push leads towards your business, it’s vital to monitor the profitability of the strategy you’re using. A good PPC professional will be working hard to keep your CPL as low as possible.
Google Ads
Previously known as Google AdWords, Google Ads is the main platform that we use to promote your business using paid search.
ROAS
This stands for Return On Ad Spend. Similar to Cost Per Lead, we want to make sure that you’re getting enough revenue in from the sales we help you make.
We know marketing is a minefield of insider knowledge and acronyms! That’s why it’s vital to have the support of a qualified team of Marketers, such as the Zinc team, on your side. We’ll be able to answer any of your questions and make sure that you know exactly how your site is performing.
