You know how every industry has its own language? Terms and acronyms that they use every day in daily conversation with colleagues? I wanted to discuss the terms and lingo used in social media marketing because not everybody is familiar with what “CPC” is, or what an “impression” is on social media. Many people just getting started with social media and promoting their business using platforms like Facebook or Instagram aren’t sure what “metrics” are, and what they mean towards your data collection.
The goal of this article is to give you an inside scoop on the terms you should know and become familiar with! So let’s jump right in! Because we have so much to learn ahead of us!
The words, terms, and acronyms you NEED to know.
Let’s start with the basics: Common terms:
Impressions: ad or digital media shown on the viewer’s screen. We talk a little more about the term “impressions” later on in this article. This term is quite broad and varies depending on the level you are using it.
Reach: People who have seen the ad (some can see it more than once if they are targeted) I also want to talk about ad fatigue, but let’s save that topic for another article! Moving along!
Frequency: The number of 
times people have seen the ad (again, we should mention ad fatigue in frequency). Frequency is important with marketing as you are hoping to acquire new clients/customers. Remember the rule of 80/20.
Conversion: Conversions is when someone purchases something from your site. A social conversion means they visited via a social media channel and then purchased something in that same visit.
Brand Brand Brand Brand Brand Brand You have accomplished your goal!! A conversation can vary between businesses as well. For example purchases, subscribers, etc. Conversions are THE GOAL for any business! And this term is highly used among many entrepreneurs.
Sales Funnels: The collection of stages you ideally want potential customers to move through towards the company’s key objective. We mention more about the sales funnel further down. This would be another topic for discussion all by itself, and we WILL write about it in the future in more detail. But for now, keep reading my darlings, there is so much more!
Remarketing: Showing ads to people who have seen/visited already.
Let’s say you gain a client through an Instagram post who then takes the liberty of shopping your online store. They proceed through your sales funnel and have completed the desired action (conversion). Once they have made a purchase, be sure to follow up with them and gain that client loyalty. If a person goes to your online store, and they do not convert, you can retarget them and try again for the desired conversion! Show them a new advertisement and try again to gain their business!
Metric: A measurable value to show the effectiveness! Here are some examples of metrics that are important to follow:
Engagement: Likes, comments, shares and clicks – Engagement essentially boils down to how much audience accounts are interacting with your account and how often. Every network will have some sort of engagement metric that is a total sum of smaller engagement opportunities such as likes, comments, and shares.
Awareness: Impressions & Reach – Frequently used but often confused, impressions and reach are each an important metric to track, especially if your goals for social are focused around brand awareness and perception. We mentioned impressions above, and as mentioned previously, this term is a big umbrella category to track. If you’re using these metrics as benchmarks for your brand, it’s important to understand the difference between reach and impressions:
At the post level:
- Impressions are how many times a post shows up in someone’s timeline
- Reach is the potential unique viewers a post could have (usually your follower count plus accounts that shared the post’s follower counts).
If you have multiple goals of both increasing awareness but also of educating your audience, you’ll likely want to look for a combination of both impressions and engagement. For a post that has a high impressions count but a low engagement number (and therefore a low engagement rate), it likely means that your post wasn’t interesting enough for audiences to take action after seeing it in their feed. For a post with a high reach count and high engagement rate, it’ll likely mean that the content went viral via Retweets and Shares.
Share of voice: Volume and sentiment – Share of voice is a metric often used in public relations, or as part of competitive analysis or paid advertising campaign. It indicates how much of the online world your brand is taking part in. For example, if you’re a florist in Toronto, it would look like how many people are talking about your brand online as compared to your competitors.
Segmentation: Grouping audience together (ex: girly ad for women & masculine ad for men). Grouping your audience together is ideal for targeting your perfect viewer. If you are a brand that offers gender specific items, creating a separate ad campaign for your product is a good option for you. Create multiple campaigns using segmentation specific targeting, and then compare the results of how your campaign went! (This is called A/B split testing)
Campaign: Typically, a marketing campaign is a planned sequence of activities and processes which promote an individual product, service, brand, or resources. A multitude of channels (social media, websites, and search engines) are used and coordinated to deliver effective results.
Alright, I know this is a lot of new information but bear with me a little longer. I do have a few acronyms for you that will (hopefully) be useful to you in the future! These acronyms are geared towards social media marketing, and they are quite advanced for people who are just starting their marketing efforts online. If you are not sure how these work for you, send me a message! I would love to walk you through where and when you would see these terms being used and what they mean for your strategy!
Acronyms: The quick glance.
CPC – Cost per Click: Cost Per Click refers to the actual price you pay for each click in your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns. We will touch more on PPC momentarily
CPM – Cost per Thousand: Cost per thousand, also called cost per mille, is a marketing term used to denote the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions (remember this term?) on one web page. For example, if a website publisher charges $2.00 CPM, that means an advertiser must pay $2.00 for every 1,000 impressions of its ad. (quick refresh, impressions are how many times an ad shows up in someone’s feed)
CPV – Cost per View: Cost-Per-View, or CPV, is a method of charging for video advertisements based on the number of views or interactions an ad receives.
CPL – Cost per Lead: (THIS TERM IS IMPORTANT) Cost-Per-Lead, or CPL, is a digital marketing pricing model where the advertiser pays a pre-established price for each lead generated. So let’s put this to action: When a user clicks on the advertisement, he/she is sent to the business’ website. Here, the customer is directed to opt-in to the marketing campaign in question, be it a discount, a mailing list with coupons or a sale that is available for a limited time only. If he/she decides to sign up for the offer, the lead has been created and the publisher will then be compensated according to the previously established “cost per lead.” Make sense?
Okay, let’s slow our roll a bit and end this discussion with some easy terms for daily use:
SEM: Seach Engine Marketing
SMM: Social Media Marketing
