Digital Marketing Glossary

We found these terms can be confusing for those just getting started with digital marketing, so we put them here for reference.

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Attribution Model

The method used to identify which channels led to specific outcomes like website traffic, leads or sales. The two most common attribution models in digital marketing are data driven (some credit is given to each touch point in a user’s journey to completing an action) and last click (all credit is given to the last channel a user interacted with before completing the action).

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Bounce Rate

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a website who leave the site after viewing only one page. It’s a key metric for understanding user engagement and identifying potential issues with website usability or content relevance.

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CAC (COST TO ACQUIRE A CUSTOMER)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) tells you the average cost of acquiring a customer. You can calculate CAC using this formula: sales and marketing expenses ÷ total number of customers = CAC

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CLV (CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE)

Customer lifetime value (CLV) tells you the amount of revenue a customer generates for your business. CLV is sometimes referred to as lifetime customer value (LVC). There are a number of different ways to calculate CLV, but here’s one of the simplest: average purchase amount × frequency of purchases × customer lifespan = CLV

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CONVERSION

The “specific action” can be anything from opening an email, to signing up for a demo, to making a purchase.

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CONVERSION RATE

Conversion rates are calculated by simply taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of total ad interactions that can be tracked to a conversion during the same time period. For example, if you had 50 conversions from 1,000 interactions, your conversion rate would be 5%, since 50 ÷ 1,000 = 5%.

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COST/CONVERSION (COST PER LEAD)

The formula for cost for conversion is simple: It is the total cost for generating the traffic divided by the number of conversions. For example, suppose that an ad campaign costs $100 for 100 views and at the end of the campaign, it yielded five conversions. In that case, the formula is CPC = $100/5 which results in $20 per conversion.

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CPC (COST PER CLICK)

The cost per click on an ad.

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CPM (COST PER THOUSAND IMPRESSIONS)

This is the cost per thousand impressions served.

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ENGAGEMENT RATE

The percentage of viewers who engage with your content (website, social post, digital ad, etc.) in any way.

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Enhanced Conversions for Leads

A newer method of offline conversion tracking that uses hashed user information (like name and email) to better match offline conversions to ad performance.

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FREQUENCY

The number of times a user is exposed to an ad during a marketing campaign.

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Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google’s free platform for tracking traffic and engagement on websites and apps. The tool is events-based, meaning that metrics and dimensions tie back to actions taken on the site/app (page views, clicks, scrolls, etc.).

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Google Tag

A piece of code installed on websites and/or apps that tracks traffic and engagement. The Google Tag is required to use Google Analytics.

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Google Tag Manager

A free tool used to add, edit, and remove tags without needing to edit website code directly.

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IMPRESSIONS

Impressions are the number of times your ad is served on any given platform. They are commonly used to measure awareness for paid digital ads, social media posts, webpages, and traditional media channels like radio and TV.

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Key Event

Google’s term for conversions, or desirable actions, tracked in Google Analytics. Key events are usually set up and marked as key events (vs. regular events) manually.

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Offline Conversions

Conversions that happen somewhere other than your website. Examples include in-store purchases, signing a contract, booking an appointment via phone call, etc. This data can be tracked and imported into advertising platforms like Google Ads to match ad clicks with offline conversions.

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REACH

Total number of unique people who see your content. (Different than impressions as impression count can include
the same people seeing your content multiple times.)

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ROAS

A key metric in digital marketing that measures how much revenue is generated for every dollar spent on advertising. It essentially indicates how effectively your ad campaigns are converting customers and driving sales. Formula: Revenue ÷ Ad Spend.

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SEARCH IMPRESSION SHARE

Search impression share is your ad’s impression share on a search network. According to Google, a search network is “a group of search-related websites where your ads can appear,” including Google search results, Google apps such as Maps and Shopping, and on Google search partners’ websites. If you’re not looking to spend more on your campaign, another way to improve search impression share is to focus on the quality score, target, bid, and conversion rate of your ads. These metrics gauge the effectiveness of your ad and improving them will lead to more engagement.

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SEM (SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING)

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process of increasing the amount and quality of traffic to your website using SEO and paid advertisements. In simple terms, SEO + paid search results = SEM.

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SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION)

The process of increasing the amount and quality of traffic to your website from unpaid web search results. The “unpaid” part is important; SEO excludes paid search.

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SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Search engine results pages are web pages served to users when they search for something online using a search engine, such as Google. The user enters their search query (often using specific terms and phrases known as keywords), upon which the search engine presents them with a SERP.

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VIEWABLE IMPRESSIONS

While impressions consider all instances an ad is served (or loaded), viewable impressions only measure impressions that were truly “viewable” to a person.

Viewable impression tracking can identify user behaviors that prevent ad viewing, including:

  • Ad-blocking software
  • Screen resolutions are too small for the ad to appear onscreen.
  • Users scroll down before the requested ad has loaded.
  • Broken plug-ins prevent content display.
  • Mobile incompatibilities such as desktop-only websites.
  • Minimized browser windows.
  • User movement between different applications.
  • Pages loaded in background tabs then never accessed.
  • Non-user interference, like malware cloaking ads
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CTR (CLICK-THROUGH-RATE)

This is the number of clicks divided by the amount of impressions. This number is the “average”.