In this second part of the marketing jargon buster we take a look at marketing terms commonly used when describing an advice firm's digital presence.
The topic of websites is naturally heavy with tech jargon, and much of it crosses over into marketing.
To help you understand the ins and outs of your digital presence, I have listed the main terms you might encounter when talking about your firm's website and its content.
Your online presence
Hosting
This is a service that stores your website’s files and makes them available online so people can visit your site.
Content
You will know what the words content means. In marketing terms, content is any material such as blogs, guides, videos, social media posts or emails, that is created to engage, inform, or attract an audience to build brand awareness and drive enquiries.
Navigation
This is the menu on a website which helps visitors find what they’re looking for and the pages you want them to visit.
Adviser/planner websites tend to use two options: traditional navigation, where all options are visible immediately after someone visits the site, or a more subtle ‘burger menu’, which visitors have to click to reveal the pages they can visit.
A ‘burger menu’ is so called because it is visually represented by three lines (two slices of bread and a burger) stacked on each other.
Who says marketers don’t have a sense of humour?
Above the fold
Borrowed from a term originally used to describe a broadsheet newspaper fold, this represents the portion of a webpage that’s immediately visible when the page loads.
It can be seen without the visitor scrolling down.
Landing page
This is a standalone web page created specifically for marketing or advertising campaigns.
These are often used with Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns on Google and social media.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click):
This is an online advertising model in which advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked.
The most common example is the adverts shown at the top and bottom of Google search results pages or on social media platforms.
Organic traffic
These are website visitors who arrive through unpaid search results rather than ads.
The most important types of organic traffic are brand searches (people looking specifically for you or your business) and service searches (people looking for a specific service).
SEO (Search engine optimisation)
There are techniques to increase a website’s visibility in search engine results. The focus here is Google, which accounts for 93 per cent of all online searches in the UK.
It’s important not to confuse website development with SEO. They are two different things.
Your website is an online shop window, and SEO is a technique for increasing footfall to it.
CTA (Call to action)
CTAs are prompts such as 'Download Now' or 'Contact Us' on a website, in a newsletter, or in an advert urging the audience to take a specific action.
These actions help convert suspects into prospects, two words we explained in part 1 of this series.
