30 Marketing Acronyms You Should Know

30 Marketing Acronyms

When it comes to marketing, acronyms are as common as any other form of communication. Here is a quick primer on the most common acronyms you’ll hear when conversing with other marketing professionals.

1. B2B: Business to Business
   B2B describes the task of marketing or selling to another business. Many retail stores and services cater to other businesses and most B2B transactions happen behind the scenes, before a product reaches consumers.
2. B2C – Business to Consumer
   B2C is the traditional business model of businesses marketing directly to the consumer. B2C marketing services include, online banking, auctions and travel, not just retail.
3. BR: Bounce Rate
   A bounce rate refers to the action a user takes when on your website. If they land on a page, and leave to go to another site, they’ve bounced off of your page. It can also refer to email which refers to emails that don’t reach an inbox. It is a KPI of the performance of your content and a high bounce rate can signify ineffective marketing content among other issues.
4. CAN-SPAM: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing
   This is the US law passed in 2003 that prohibits businesses from emailing without permission. You need to include an unsubscribe option is all emails and you should not add names to it without expressed permission.
5. CMS: Content Management System
   This refers to an application that consolidates and facilitates the creation, editing, management and distribution of content. Generally used to refer to a website, examples of CMS are Hubspot and WordPress.
6. CPC: Cost Per Click
   This is a method publishers use to charge for ad space on a website. Advertisers only pay for the ad when it is clicked, not for exposures. It can show up on hundreds of sites or pages, but unless it is acted upon, there is no charge.
7. CPL: Cost Per Lead
   CPL considers all of the costs that go into generating a lead. Including advertising dollars spent, collateral creation, web hosting fees and various other costs, for example.
8. CPM: Cost Per Thousand
   CPM is another method publishers use to charge for advertising. This method charges per 1000 impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1000). Advertisers are charged for every time their ad is seen, not how many times it’s clicked.
9. CRM: Customer Relationship Management
   CRM is a type of software that allows companies to manage and analyze customer interactions throughout their relationship and lifecycle in order to enhance those relationships. CRM software can help you to convert leads, nurture sales and assist in retaining customers.
10. CTA: Call to Action
    The aim of content marketing is to inform, educate or entertain readers, but ultimately the goal of any content is to get readers to take action on the content they’ve read. A CTA can be a link, button, image, or web-link that drives the reader to act by downloading, calling, registering or attending an event.
11. CTR: Click Through Rate
    CTR is a KPI related to the CTA… how’s that for a little alphabet soup! A web page, or email click through rate measures the percentage of readers who take the next action. For example, in the case of a landing page the CTR would be the total number of people who visit the page divided by the number who take action and move onto the next step.
12. CR: Conversion Rate
    The number of people who act, divided by the number that could have. For example, if your email campaign reaches 100 prospects and 25 reply, your conversion rate is 25%
13. CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization
    This acronym is shorthand for taking an objective look at at marketing strategy including websites, landing pages, social media and CTAs to improve the number of prospects that are converted into customers.

14. CX/UX: Customer Experience/User Experience
    Every interaction a customers has with your brand throughout the buying process. Customer experience influences the buyers perception of your brand. A positive experience converts potential buyers into customers, and keeps current customer’s loyal.

15. GA: Google Analytics
    This is the Google tool that helps marketers better understand their audience, reach, activity and metrics.

16. GDD: Growth Driven Design
    This is a redesign or development of a website in intentional increments making continuous data driven adjustments.

17. HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
    HTML is a set of rules programmers use to create web pages. It describes the content, structure, text, images and objects used on a webpage. Today, most web construction software runs HTML in the background.

18. KPI: Key Performance Indicators
    KPIs are used across all industries to gauge and evaluate the success of various marketing efforts and strategies. Marketers have a variety of KPIs they use to track and measure progress in campaign goals like lead generation, bounce rate, brand awareness or sales conversions.

19. MAP: Marketing Automation Platform
    A technology that assists marketers to convert prospects into customers by removing high-touch, manually repetitive processes with automated solutions. MailChimp, and Marketo are examples of MAPs.

20. PPC: Pay Per Click
    A publisher who charges advertisers for each action take (click) on their ad. See also CPC.

21. PR: Page Rank
    Page rank is determined by an algorithm used by Google that gives each website a numerical weight based on a number of different, confidential criteria. The scale used is 0 – 10 and this number is determined by a number of factors including inbound links, and the page rank of the linked sites. The higher your page rank, to more relevant and important your site is considered by Google.

22. PR: Public Relations
    PR’s goal is to gain free attention for your business. It strategically presents your business in a way that is newsworthy and interesting and is not a direct sales tactic.

23. RFP: Request for Proposal
    When a company is seeking marketing representation they will issue an RFP. Marketing companies then prepare a proposal based on the guidelines set in the RFP and present it to the potential client.

24. RSS: Really Simple Syndication
    RSS gives marketers and publishers a way to automatically deliver and syndicate their content. Subscribers receive automatic updates whenever new content is published.

25. SaaS: Software as a Service
    SaaS is software hosted on the cloud by a third party company. Marketing firms will often use SaaS to allow for easier collaboration. It stores information on the cloud and examples include Google Apps, Salesforce and Dropbox.

26. SEO: Search Engine Optimization
    The purpose of SEO is to help a website or piece of content “get found” on the internet. Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo scan online content for relevance. Using relevant keywords and long-tail keywords can help them to properly index a site so when a user conducts a search, it is more easily found. There are many factors that influence SEO and the actual algorithmic variables are closely guarded proprietary information.

27. SM: Social Media
    Examples are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. SM sites are platforms which allow users to post content including video and audio. Platforms can be used for business or personal content and allow organic traffic as well as sponsored or paid posts.

28. SMB: Small and Medium Sized Businesses
    Acronym that describes businesses with between 5 and 200M in revenues.Also refers to customers with 100 or fewer employees (small) up to 100 – 999 employees (medium sized)

29. SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound
    Acronym used to define the goal setting process. It helps you clearly define and set goals by outlining the active steps required to achieve them.
30. SMM: Social Media Marketing
    Using the social media platforms as a way to promote businesses. You can use them to network, prospect for new business, post ads, spread the word about new content, testimonials, etc.