Get all the terms you need in one place! We made this dictionary especially for you, the digital marketer who is looking to speak fluently in demand generation. You can even request a downloadable PDF copy here* to keep at your disposal.
A
A/B Testing – when you make a variation between two elements of the ad campaign and test the versions against each other to see which one is more effective.
ABM – Account Based Marketing. Treat individual accounts as a market in their own right. Includes:
- Focusing sales on top prospects and then building relationships with a very specific and very targeted set of accounts
- Providing a more customer-centric experience
- Having marketing and sales take a close look at key business issues facing the target
- Mapping tactics to individuals and tailoring campaigns to address those issues
Action – An element of an Event hit in GTM. Typically you will use the action parameter to name the type of event or interaction you want to track for a particular web object. A unique action is determined by a unique action name.
Ad – An ad is an individual online advertisement. Ads are often shown on search networks, websites that are part of third-party ad networks, social media sites, and mobile apps.
Ad Copy – The text that can be shown on an individual ad. Often includes a title, body/description, call to action, and URL.
Ad Disapprovals – when an ad has been kept from running on an ad network due to being disapproved by the ad network. Reviewing ad disapprovals is a part of daily emergency monitoring on behalf of all PPC clients.
Ad Extensions – Ad extensions provide the opportunity to expand the real estate of your ad. This will typically increase clickthrough rate. Some extensions are review extensions, sitelink extensions, callout extensions, social extensions, and previous visit extensions. These are often used to create more reason to click on the ad, and can have positive effects such as improved visibility, improved CTR, improved ad rank, and a lower than average CPC.
Ad Group – A collective of one or more ads sharing a targeted set of keywords and theme, there can be multiple ad groups in one campaign.
Ad Rank – The ranking of the ad that equals the maximum CPC bid times the quality score of the ad. If your account has a high CPC but low Quality Score, your ad will likely be shown in a poor position or you will overpay for clicks.
Ad rotation – the rate at which different ads are shown for a specific ad group. The Obility way is to rotate ads evenly for 90 days and then optimize afterward for clicks.
Ad saturation – when the marketing for a product or service is flooded with a specific ad or type of ad. Saturating a marketplace with ads can cause ad fatigue and hurt the client’s chances of growing their customer base.
Ad Scheduling – Ad scheduling allows advertisers to increase or decrease budgets during different times of the day and throughout the week.
Ad Testing – Ad testing is a fundamental part of improving performance over time. Even the slightest differences in messaging or ad appearance can have an affect on how well an ad does. These changes can be as simple as a headline change, description line change or even a display URL. The main strategy to keep in mind is to not over test ads where it makes it more difficult to know what element won the test.
AdRoll – AdRoll is an online advertising platform with a focus on display advertising, remarketing and retargeting.
AdWords – Also known as Google AdWords, AdWords is Google’s advertising system where advertisers bid on certain keywords so that their ads can appear in Google’s Search results or on placements in Google’s Display Network.
AdWords Editor – AdWords Editor is a downloadable software for managing AdWords advertising campaigns. You can make changes in bulk offline in AdWords Editor and push them all live at the same time when you’re ready for them to go live.
AQL – Automation Qualified Lead. A lead becomes an AQL when a marketing or sales automation platform determines it to be qualified by comparing it to other leads that have been qualified.
Attribution – informs sales and marketing what channels contributed to a sale.
Attribution modeling – determining what touch points leading to sale were most and least influential. Examples of this are First Touch attribution, Last Touch attribution, U-Shaped attribution, W-shaped attribution, and Full-Path attribution.
Audience – The group of people you are targeting with your campaign. Can be narrowed or broadened by demographic, language, location, interests, retargeting, and other specifications depending on the ad network.
B
Back-end – marketing automation and CRMs that clients use. We often pull from these sources when completing reporting and reviewing the return and results of a campaign.
Back-end Integration – integrating a client’s backend platforms for marketing automation, CRM, and/or attribution platforms to their front-end data such as analytics and advertising platforms. When back-end integration is complete, we should be able to track the success of campaigns, keywords, landing pages, leads and more as a result of the front-end efforts.
B2B – Business to business. B2B companies tend to have a long sales cycle (typically 3-9 months) and a multi-step buying process. Unlike B2C sales cycles, B2B sales are relationship driven, with education and offers as key component of success. B2B clients have a smaller target market, have more people involved in the decision making process, have a high risk for decision makers, and have a rational buying decision based on business value.
B2B Buyer Profile – a B2B buyer will be considered a prospect, and have a high lifetime value for the client. A B2B buyer is productivity/profitability motivated and relationship driven, is a niche market for the client, and often has 6-12 decision makers involved in the purchasing process.
B2C – Business to consumer. B2C sales cycles are normally shorter than those of a B2B sales cycle. B2C sales cycles often have a single-step buying process and are product focused. B2C clients have a large target market, a low risk for consumers, fewer people involved in decision making, and have an emotional buying decision based on price, desire, and other factors.
Benefit Statement – Obility’s best practice is to have the benefit statement be the first line in the description of a text ad. The benefit statement should address the prospect pain point: what’s in it for them?
Bid – The maximum CPC that you’re willing to pay to show your ad for a certain search term or placement.
Bid adjustments – You can adjust the bids for your campaigns by location, schedule, device and automated rules.
Bid Management – Bid management is the process of updating keyword bids based on average positioning the ads are showing on the search results. Review ad positioning across keywords and adjust to above position 3 for good performers, and 3-5 for mediocre or poor performers during weekly management for PPC clients.
Bidding Options – There are multiple options for updating keyword bids:
- Raise to first page estimate
- Raise to top of page estimate
- Increase or decrease bid by
- A percentage
- A specific amount
- Manual bid adjustment
BOFU – Bottom of Funnel. Its purpose is to accelerate leads and generate SQLs, and offers include demos, trials, and contact pages. See also: MOFU, TOFU
Broad Match – A type of keyword match type that will show ads for the target keyword as well as synonyms, plurals, and “closely” related terms to the keyword being targeted. Uses a + sign before each word.
Budget – Budgets are a crucial aspect of weekly optimization and monitoring. Letting budgets run without some intervention can cause an account to spend either over or under without notice. Clients have specific budgets that are expected to be met without much opportunity to go over or under (unless specified.)
Budget Allocation Strategy – a strategy that allows for major shifts based on data and company strategy by categorizing campaigns into three key buckets: Core-Almost-Test.
Budget Management – a weekly monitoring process for all PPC clients. Includes updating the Budget Pacing Doc, staying within the client budget, and saturating top performers.
C
Call to Action (CTA) – Should use a strong verb and describe what you are asking of the user.
Campaign – Used to organize ad groups in Google AdWords.
Campaign Launch Checklist – A spreadsheet with items to check off, monitor, and manage when launching a new PPC campaign.
Case Studies – A process or record of research in which detailed consideration is given to the development of a particular person, group, or situation over a period of time. a particular instance of something used or analyzed in order to illustrate a thesis or principle. Often used as a moderate barrier offer in a campaign.
Category – An element of an Event hit in GTM. A category is a name that you supply as a way to group objects that you want to track. Typically, you will use the same category name multiple times over related UI elements that you want to group under a given category.
Click – Anytime someone clicks on any part of your ad or engages with your ad.
Conversion – An action a user takes where they become a lead, such as filling out a form to download a white paper or request to be contacted by a salesperson.
Conversion Tracking – Provides input on what source, campaign, keyword, and ad text led to a conversion. Most
CPA – Cost per conversion. The CPA = the cost divided by the number of conversions.
CPA Targets and Backend Management – Given back-end performance for MQL, opportunities, etc, re-set CPA targets for client and re-adjust budgets or focus based on back-end performance.
CPC – The Cost Per Click (CPC) is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay per click. Cost per Click = Cost / number of clicks
CPL – Cost per Lead. The target CPL is equal to the target CPO times the CVR Lead to opportunity.
CPO – Cost per Opportunity. The total cost per every sales opportunity based on what sales and marketing have determined to be qualifying factors.
CRM – Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers/potential customers.
CTR – The rate of clicks compared to the total number of impressions on your campaign, ad group, ads, and keywords. Clickthrough Rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
CVR – The rate of conversion compared to the total clicks on your campaign, ad group, ads, and keywords. Conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the number of clicks.
D
Daily Budget Pacing – The objective of daily budget pacing is to make sure your accounts are spending at the right pace during the week to hit their monthly budget goals. By monitoring and adjusting daily you can prevent having to make drastic changes to your campaigns (pauses, huge spends) toward the end of the month, and you can more evenly distribute spend. Also, by viewing your accounts at this level daily or every other day, depending on spend, you can also use it to make daily optimizations to your accounts at the same time.
Delivery – The pace at which you want ads to be shown throughout the day.
Demand Generation – The focus of targeted marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in a company’s products and/or services
Description – The copy under the headline in text ads. Obility’s best practices are to have the first description line be the benefit statement and the description be the call-to-action.
Device targeting – Adjust bids by device type and decide which devices to target. It’s extremely important that your website and landing pages are all optimized to correctly display on devices with smaller screens, or mobile campaigns are more likely to be poor performing.
Display Placements Management – Part of the weekly monitoring for PPC clients. Exclude placements that don’t make sense, look for high-performing placements to segment into their own managed groups, and review impressions and positioning to determine if higher bids are necessary on good performing display campaigns.
Display Strategy – One of Obility’s deliverables. Obility will create strategy for driving leads and reaching prospects as they spend time on social media and for remarketing. This includes the ID of multiple campaigns with full demographic, behavioral, audience targeting, and budget recommendations.
Display URL – Your client’s domain name sans the www. Include the Display URL in text ads to show which website is connected to your client.
Duplicate keywords – When you have the same keyword and match type used more than once in a campaign. Having duplicate keywords can negatively impact the results of your campaigns.
E
eBooks – An electronic version of a printed book that can be read on a computer or handheld device designed specifically for this purpose. Often used as a moderate barrier offer in a campaign.
Event – Events are user interactions with the content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen load. Downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays are all examples of actions you might want to track as Events.
Event Hit – When a user interacts with your content, an Event hit includes a value for each component that is part of the Event. These Event hits could include the following:
- Category
- Action
- Label (optional, but recommended)
- Value (optional)
Event Tracking – Monitoring actions taken after an event has been triggered.
Exact Match – A type of keyword match type that will only show ads if the keyword typed in exactly matches the keyword being bid on without showing for any close variations or additional keywords. Put the [keyword phrase] in brackets to use exact match keywords.
F
Facebook – A third-party social media network with an advertising platform built in for sponsored posts, display ads, and other forms of advertising.
Free Trial – An offer commonly used at the high barrier part of the sales funnel.
G
Geo-targeting – Allows client to target its search engine ads by country, state, city or zip code. Bid adjustments may be made by location.
Gmail Sponsored Promotions (GSP) – An ad unit that shows in personal Gmail inboxes within the promotional tab.
Google Analytics – Free and enterprise website analytics services to track and report on your website traffic and activity.
Google Display Network (GDN) – An advertising network consisting of millions of websites, news pages, blogs, and Google websites like Gmail and YouTube that reaches 90% of internet users worldwide.
Google Search Network – A group of search-related websites and apps including google.com where your ads can appear when someone searches with terms related to one of your keywords.
Google Tag Manager (GTM) – Google Tag Manager is a free tool that eliminates tedious code-editing tasks that formerly required a developer. GTM allows the marketing team to add and update their own website tags– including javascript code snippets for site analytics, conversion tracking, and remarketing — while the development team focuses on larger projects.
I
Image ad – A type of ad that uses a graphic to draw attention.
Impressions – Each instance of when your ad is shown.
Impression Share (IS) – The percentage of impressions your ads receive compared to the total number of impressions your ads could get.
K
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – An important measurement used to evaluate the success of an organization or particular initiative.
Keyword Analysis – One of Obility’s deliverables. With the purpose of identifying and prioritizing keywords for targeting, Obility will review search volume, keyword ranking difficulty, CPC, and ad saturation as well as a client’s top three competitors to develop a keyword list for a client’s approval.
Keyword Analysis and Opportunities Management – Part of the weekly management for all PPC clients. Review Search Query Reports to mine for both keywords to run as well as keywords to add as negative keywords. Spend time identifying keywords that are significantly under-performing and pause them. Estimate whether or not they may perform well with a better offer or ad and include this recommendation in the AIR.
Keyword Planner – A keyword research tool integrated into Google AdWords used to search for keywords and their effective reach for online advertising campaigns.
L
Label – With labels, you can provide additional information for events that you want to track. Labels are used in Google AdWords campaigns to differentiate between Core, Almost, Test, Awareness, Pipeline and Volume campaigns. Labels are also an element of an Event hit in GTM.
Landing Page (LP) – A landing page is where an SEM, SEO, or Social campaign will lead when a person clicks on an ad or a direct link. Landing pages are important to optimize to get visitors to signup or become leads for the client.
Landing Page Testing – Landing page testing is another fundamental part of improving performance over time. Even the slightest differences in messaging or ad appearance can have an affect on how well an ad does. Just like ad copy testing, these changes can be as simple as a headline change, content changes to include keywords, adding trust elements like client logos, and testimonials. The main idea to keep in mind is to not over test pages, just like ads, to where it makes it more difficult to know what new elements actually drove the performance differences.
Lead – A lead is someone who has shown some type of interest in a business or organization but has not become a client or customer.
Lead Gen – Lead generation is catching the information of a potential customer or client when they’ve shown interest in your business.
LinkedIn – A third-party social media network for professional networking and business relationships.
Long tail keywords – More specific keyword phrases made up of three or more words. These are strategic to bid on because they are lesser-known and often less competitive and expensive than other shorter keywords and phrases.
M
Marketing Automation – Software platforms designed for automating marketing tasks using multiple channels to improve marketing and sales outcomes. Our marketing automation process is to attract visitors and convert them into leads through content and promotions. Once they have filled out forms and converted on specific calls to action, they become prospects that the client is trying to close into customers. In the marketing automation process, Obility focuses on lead generation, lead management, landing pages, and CRM integration.
**Marketo – A digital marketing automation platform. Also one of Obility’s clients.
Marketo Ad Bridge – Marketo Ad Bridge connects Marketo’s rich behavioral data with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and other advertising platforms, so marketers can target the right potential customers with meaningful, relevant ads.
Match type – Match type dictates which ad is shown for a specific query. Match type is fundamental to keywords and all keywords have a match type.
MCC – Now known as Google AdWords Manager Accounts, but also referred to as My Client Center or Google MCC. A place to manage multiple AdWords accounts from one interface.
Mendoza Line – The Mendoza Line came from the Mario Mendoza who had a career batting average of .200 and is now used to reference the lowest line of success. In PPC campaigns, anything below the Mendoza line of set goals would refer to Almost campaigns, and anything above it would refer to Core campaigns.
Messaging Alignment – Making sure that the ad text messaging aligns with the keywords/audience, and that those both align with the landing page. Messaging alignment improves conversion rates, results in better AdWords Quality Scores, and promotes a positive user experience.
Modified Broad Match – A type of keyword match type that will show ads for the target keyword as well as synonyms, plurals, and “closely” related terms to the keyword being targeted but provides more control over broad match. Add a plus sign to each keyword to modify a broad match keyword.
MOFU – Middle of Funnel. Its purpose is to generate prospects, and offers include vendor reports, product sheets, and case studies. See also: BOFU, TOFU
Monthly Campaign Management – The monthly activities as part of managing PPC campaigns. Includes monthly report, proactive initiative, action item report, new campaign builds, ad testing, landing page testing, settings check, and CPA targets and back-end management. Estimated time for each client is 7 hours a month.
Monthly Report – Pull the previous month’s data to make sure AC data is correct (or review if pulled automatically.) Write analysis on PowerPoint slides, highlighting areas to focus both good and bad, and next steps. Add customer slides to highlight specific wins, interesting news, and more to keep client from getting bored month after month and to showcase your great work.
MQLs – Marketing Qualified Leads are leads that are more likely to become customers based on specific conditions as determined by the marketing department.
MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue. MRR, or all of a business’s recurring revenue that they can expect to receive each month, is one of the most important metrics for monthly subscription services and businesses.
N
Negative Keywords – Non-relevant searches that could significantly impact PPC performance. Not potential negative keywords in the keyword research process. Negative keywords help filter out poor quality traffic and reduces the likelihood that budget will be exhausted by poorly targeted keywords.
Network – The places ads can run (ie Google Display Network, Google Search Network, LinkedIn Audience Network, etc)
New Campaign Builds – Builds can be new opportunities based on trends or keywords that deserve a dedicated campaign test. This can also be based off of search terms reports, keyword research, and new initiatives.
O
**Obility – An online marketing company focused on helping B2B companies generate demand and increase revenue. Obility manages and tracks online efforts such as pay-per-click, paid social, and search engine optimization in order to drive revenue.
Obility Values – The behaviors, skills and policies that Obility particularly values are Accountability, Autonomy, Fun, Innovation, and Respect.
Obility Way, The – An established, agreed upon process ensuring all clients receive the same excellent service for multiple reasons: to insulate us from client/competitor audit; to provide clarity to all SMEs, managers, and coordinators;to allow for universal reporting templates; and to encourage consensus on process evolution. The Obility Way is the default setting and is constantly evolving. Managers are free to diverge from it if divergence improves client performance and/or managers can justify their reasoning.
Offer – Something you’re providing to an audience to entice them to click an ad and fill out a form. Some examples of offers are whitepapers, product sheets, and demos, and vary depending on where they are in the sales funnel.
Opportunity – A potential sale with revenue assigned with the sale.
Optimization – Techniques used to improve ad campaigns and more effectively meet goals in demand generation strategies. Also can refer to search engine optimization and changes made to website content to improve keyword and landing page rankings.
P
Phrase Match – A type of keyword match type that will only show ads for the exact phrase of the keyword or close variations of the exact phrase with additional words before or after the keyword phrase. Put the “keyword phrase” in quotes to create a phrase match keyword.
Pipeline – One of type of campaign specifically used to manage sales velocity metrics and drive existing leads further down the funnel.
Pipeline generated leads – The most important metric for B2B advertisers.
Placements – In Google Adwords Display Network and social platforms’ audience networks, the websites and apps where ads could appear. These can be bidded on individually or removed from display/audience ad campaigns on certain networks.
Poor Performers – Campaigns that are have high cost per click with low conversion rates and/or low qualified leads generated. These should be paused until they can be restructured.
PPC – Pay per click. PPC marketing is a form of marketing where payment is accrued whenever a user clicks on one of their ads.
Press Releases – A written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something ostensibly newsworthy. Often used as an offer in a campaign.
Product Demo – A promotion where a product is demonstrated to potential customers. The goal of such a demonstration is to introduce customers to the product in hopes of getting them to purchase that item. Often used as an offer in a campaign.
Q
Qualified Lead – A lead that has in some way been qualified by the client as a potential buyer. See also MQL and SQL.
Quality of Leads vs Quantity of Leads – When searching for leads, it’s the Obility way to narrow search parameters to focus on the quality of leads.
Quality Score (QS) – Google’s metric for rating the relevance of an ad and landing page to the target keyword.
R
Relevance – Check that the keywords are profitable to your client and relevant to what your client’s prospects are searching.
ROAS – Return on Ad Spend. Formula: revenue / cost
ROI – Return on Investment. Formula: ROI = (revenue – cost) / cost
ROI Tracking – an essential aspect in managing PPC campaigns and allocating spend, particularly for companies with long sales cycles. Each keywordd, campaign, and source should have an attributable ROI so that clients can better identfy where to distribute marketing budget.
RSP – Richard Sherman Principle: We become the best in the game through the fundamentals.
S
SaaS – Software as a Service, a model where software is licensed on a subscription basis where a third-party hosts an application and provides it to customers online.
SAL – A Sales Accepted Lead is a MQL that has been approved and accepted by the sales team.
Sales Funnel – The process from awareness to purchase for a new customer deciding to choose a product or service from a client. Obility primarily focuses on generating leads, prospects, and customers through the sales funnel.
Salesforce Automation (SFA) – A technique of using software to automate the business tasks of sales.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing. Advertising campaigns where ads appear on search engines based on keywords that are searched.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization. The process of increasing the number of site visitors by increasing the search ranking of a site for specific relevant keywords. Usually broken up into efforts by content creation, technical SEO, off-site SEO
SLA – Service-level agreement. An agreement between team members to ensure that the proper elements and commitments are in place to provide consistent service support and delivery to the Obility clients by Obility Service Providers.
SMB – Small and Mid-Sized Businesses.
SME – Subject Matter Expert. Often refers to Obility tacticians who are working on specific campaigns for clients.
Sponsored InMail – A LinkedIn advertising option that allows advertisers to send targeted messages directly to people in their LinkedIn inboxes.
SpyFu – A third-party technology to search and download keywords from competitors.
SQL – Sales Qualified Lead. Leads that the sales team has determined to meet their qualifications to be moved further down the sales funnel.
STR – Search Terms Report. Determine top performing keywords and add to paid search and identify common terms in poor performing search queries to pause.
T
Tactician – Synonymous with SME and technician.
Tag – Tags are snippets of website code that measure traffic and visitor behavior. In addition to offering insight into the impact of online advertising and social changes, tags make it easy to target your audience, leverage remarketing, and test and improve your site.
Technician – Synonymous with SME and technician.
Terminus – A third-party platform for account-based advertising and reporting.
Text Ad – Text ads are used in paid search, display, and social advertising. Text ads should focus on three areas: relevancy, benefit to the end user, and a descriptive call to action.
Title – The most prominent part of a text ad on Google AdWords.
TOFU – Top of Funnel. Its purpose is to generate leads, and offers include whitepapers, guides, and checklists. See also: MOFU, BOFU
Touchpoint – A moment of connection between a client and a potential customer in their leads funnel. May be through a remarketed ad, an email, or a phone call.
Twitter – A social media network known for its shortform content
U
URL Parameters – Tracking parameters that are attached to the end of the URL that are added to hidden form fields when those are completed. Used to track the success of ads, ad groups and campaigns.
W
Whitepaper – An authoritative report or guide helping readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. Often used as a lower barrier offer in a campaign.