What is Online Marketing?
The Internet is unlike any other advertising medium in reach, return on investment, measurement capacity, and sheer availability of marketing avenues. The Internet is without question the most effective media in today’s world for producing high return on investment dollars.
A major key to successful online marketing is first understanding the numerous ways that consumers use the Internet, providing various market groups with the specific tools they need, and utilizing appropriate methods and tools to drive traffic to the “call to action” areas of the website.
Online Advertising & Internet Marketing Terms
The glossary below includes online advertising and Internet marketing terms you are likely to hear or read about as you consult with Aristotle and evaluate your online marketing options. This glossary is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all online advertising and Internet marketing terms, but it will familiarize you with some of the key phrases related to online marketing.
Strategy Building: The research and planning process involved in evaluating and/or designing a website or marketing campaign in order to launch a comprehensive and strategic online marketing plan.
Keyword Phrases: On the Web, “keyword phrases” refer to the terms or phrases submitted by a user of a search engine to find information online. For Web publishers, a “keyword phrase” relates to the terms selected for search engine optimization based on the number of people searching for the term and the number of competing website pages attempting to show up for the term.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): A set of methods aimed at improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. SEO considers how search engines work and what phrases people use in search. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keyword phrases and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
Optimized Press Release: A press release provided to online media outlets containing keyword phrases selected to entice readers to click through to a website.
Lead Generation (commonly abbreviated lead-gen): Refers to the creation or generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business’ products or services. Leads can be generated for a variety of purposes - list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for winning customers. A lead is a sign-up for an advertiser offer that includes contact information and, in some cases, demographic information. For marketers that are looking to pay only for specific actions, there are two options: CPL advertising (or online lead generation) and CPA advertising (also referred to as affiliate marketing).
Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) Advertising: In CPL campaigns, advertisers pay for an interested lead - i.e. the contact information of a person interested in the advertiser's product or service. CPL campaigns are suitable for brand marketers and direct response marketers looking to engage consumers at multiple touch-points - by building a newsletter list, community site, reward program or member acquisition program.
Cost-Per-Action (CPA) Advertising: In CPA campaigns, the advertiser typically pays for a completed sale involving a credit card transaction. CPA is all about 'now' -- it focuses on driving consumers to buy at that exact moment. If a visitor to the website doesn't buy anything, there's no easy way to remarket to them.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites, such as blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertisers' website. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. When a user types a keyword query matching an advertiser's keyword list, or views a webpage with relevant content, the advertisements may be displayed. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above the "natural" or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster or blogger chooses on a content page. Content websites commonly charge a fixed price for a click rather than use a bidding mechanism.
- Evaluation of Keyword Performance: Assessment of PPC campaign performance by looking at each keyword and keyword phrase to determine if changes should be made to the campaign to improve results
Bid Management: Process of managing the campaign expenditures to control spending and maximize results
Content Targeting: Option to display ads in online articles related to keyword topic
Budget: The amount of money to be spent for PPC ads
Ad Optimization: Recommendations for edits to PPC ads to improve performance
Statistics & Reporting: PPC reporting to show ad performance, largely based on click-through rate, average cost-per-click and conversions
Conversion Factor: The goal page for a PPC conversion, used to measure success of the campaign. This could be a “Thank You” page on a “Contact Us” or “E-newsletter Sign-up” form.
Banner Advertising: Banner advertising appears on the Internet, as a form of Internet marketing. Display advertising appears on web pages in many forms, including Web banners. These banners can consist of static or animated images, as well as interactive media that may include audio and video elements. Adobe Flash is the preferred presentation format for such interactive advertisements. The Internet Advertising Bureau, an industry trade group, sets some standards for online display advertisement sizes and shapes.
Landing Page: A webpage that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link and is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.
Mobile-Ready Content: Developing and designing interactive mobile-ready content that delivers your website or marketing message to Blackberry’s, PDAs or cell phones straight into the hands of busy buyers
Email Marketing: A form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
- sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
- sending emails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
- adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
- sending emails over the Internet, as email did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).
- Viral Email : An email containing such compelling content that recipients forward it to friends who forward it to their friends in a self-replicating viral process, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.
List Developmen: : Collecting a group of email recipients who have actively subscribed, asking to receive information on a particular topic, from a particular organization on a regular basis.- Segmentation: The act of channeling e-newsletter subscribers into categories of their interest.
- Open Rate: percentage of an email message’s intended recipients who opened or viewed their email message.
- Click-through Rate: When an email is sent to a list, the click-through rate is the percentage of intended recipients who click on a link in the email.
- Delivery Rate: percentage of emails sent that were delivered to the intended recipients
- CAN-SPAM Compliance: Compliance to CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which establishes the United States’ first national standards for the sending of commercial email and requires the FTC to enforce its provisions. CAN-SPAM stands for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing.”
Social Networking: Online places where users can create a profile for themselves, and then socialize with others using a range of social media tools including blogs, video, images, tagging, lists of friends, forums and messaging
- Social Media: The tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online. The tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, and sites to share photos and bookmarks.
My Space: A popular social networking Website where people can create a page about themselves for free. MySpace.com offers an interactive network of blogs, user profiles, groups, photos and an internal e-mail system. See www.myspace.com.
Video And Photo Sharing: Typically, users will also have the ability to categorize, organize, tag, share and comment on the images as well. YouTube and Google Video are video-sharing websites, while Flickr is a common photo-sharing website.
Viral Marketing Campaign: A coordinated marketing strategy that seeks to exploit pre-existing social networks through processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online, the idea being that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content.
Blog (Web Log) - Blogs are a growing medium with which to communicate details about new projects, expert opinions, daily personalized news stories, industry advice, recent success stories, etc. Also known as personal online diaries or journals, these online publications are just web pages that contain entries in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry on top.
Community Building
The process of recruiting potential community or network participants, helping them to find shared interests and goals, to use the technology, and to develop useful conversations
Groups of people communicating mainly through the Internet - Online communities may use email lists or forums, where content is centralized. Communities may also emerge from conversations around or between bloggers
Web 2.0
Coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web 1.0). It is associated with the idea of the Internet as platform.
Link Building: SEO tactic of attempting to improve natural search results for a website by increasing the number of quality external links going to the site by requesting one-way links, requesting reciprocal links, cross-linking, and submitting to directories.
- Internal Links: links from pages of a site to other pages the same site
- External Links: links to your site from other websites
- One-Way Links: external links from sites to which you are not linking
- Reciprocal Links: external links from websites to which you are also linking
- Cross-Linking: links among the pages of a single site or among sites owned by the same company or organization
- Directories: A search tool that focuses on listing web sites by specific categories
Web Analytics: The measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web site usage.
- Ad Server Tracking
- Enhanced Reports
- Ad Server Tracking: Tracking of online marketing campaigns using an ad management software program that provides in depth reporting on geographical targeting, revenue generation, statistics, and more.
Enhanced Reports: Aristotle’s proprietary reporting, which includes information about the website and its traffic as well as various campaigns directed to the site, such as email marketing, PPC, banner ads, optimized press releases, etc.
Search Referrer: An internal or external referrer for which the URL has been generated by a search function.
Visit, Session or Visitor Session: A defined quantity of visitor interaction with a website. A visit is an interaction, by an individual, with a website consisting of one or more requests for an analyst-definable unit of content (i.e. “page view”). If an individual has not taken another action (typically additional page views) on the site within a specified time period, the visit session will terminate.
Visit Duration: The length of time in a session. Calculation is typically the timestamp of the last activity in the session minus the timestamp of the first activity of the session.
Page View: A page view session is defined as the period of time during which visitors are interacting with your site and there has been inactivity for a set period of time.