A Quick Guide: Common Marketing Terminology (Episode #022)

Conversations with a Digital Strategist

Welcome back to Conversations with a Digital Strategist. I’m your host, Jessica Davis. This is episode 22 and today, I’m going to review some key terms with you. If you’ve been doing research on various marketing, digital, or analytics topics; which I know you have. You’ve more than likely come across some terms that sound foreign to you. How are you supposed to manage your digital presence, if you don’t understand all the buzz words flying around? No worries, I’ve got your back. Let’s get into it!

Cool Tool of the Week

This week’s cool tool is called Crowdfire. Crowdfire is a web and mobile application that allows you to schedule social media posts for Twitter and Instagram. Unfortunately, by saying scheduling posts on Instagram, I mean setting them up and then receiving a reminder to post them at a predetermined date and time. But, so goes the struggle right.

Anyway, Crowdfire is still a great tool. In addition to allowing you to schedule content. It will also showcase who has recently followed you on Twitter and who has unfollowed you. This is great information to ensure you are following the important accounts that follow you, and not wasting time following accounts that don’t follow you. I think I should dedicate a podcast episode to that. Knowing who to follow and who not to follow on social media. Duly noted!

Sorry, I digress. Crowdfire can be used with limitations for free, or you can upgrade to one of three plans, with the least expensive being $4.99 per month. If you’re looking for a good, inexpensive social media scheduling tool check out Crowdfire. And if you didn’t know, now you know.

Importance of Definitions

As I said before, how are you supposed to manage your digital presence, if you don’t understand all the buzz words flying around? You can read all the latest blog posts by the gurus, but if you don’t understand the words coming out of their mouths, you’re defeating the purpose. So, let’s look at some very common buzz words, that are extremely important to the success of your digital strategy.

Funnel

Funnel usually refers to email or sales funnels. Email funnels are a series of emails released to mailing list subscribers based on certain criteria. For example, you can setup an email funnel for new subscribers. This funnel may include an initial email thanking them for signing up for your mailing list and then a series of additional emails to highlight your services and featured products.

A sales funnel is a series of actions potential customers are taken through to influence a sale. A customer may enter the sales funnel through a sign-up for a mailing list, and the next step may be to attend a webinar. The final step in a sales funnel process the sale of a product.

Campaigns

When you hear gurus talking about campaigns, they are referring to marketing campaigns. When you market your company, you’ll want to think of your marketing as a mini-project. You decide to create a marketing action or campaign around a product, service or event. Your marketing campaign should have a start date and an end date. You should plan the campaign out, by identifying what tactics will be used, like email, video, paid ads, etc. Next, you’ll determine your metrics, or those measurements that identify the success or failure of your campaign. And finally, you’ll build out the campaign and run it for the allotted amount of time.

Influencer

An influencer is someone, who posts regularly on social media and has a large following. Those are the two elements necessary to be an influencer. Anyone with a large social media following, who also gets a lot of engagement with their social media posts can be called an influencer. Influencers are often courted by brands and other companies to advertise products and services in exchange for payment. An influencer can be in any industry, by the way.

User Experience

User experience or UX for short is the idea that websites, applications, and mobile apps should be user-friendly and easy for users to engage with. The user experience of a website form may be poor because there are too many fields or because the field labels don’t make sense. The user experience on a mobile app may be poor, because there are constant error messages or because the in-app navigation is confusing. A best practice in the web and IT world is to run everything through user experience testing, to fix any issues and ensure user friendliness. While this is a best practice, I’m sure you have engaged with many websites and apps, you wish would have been better tested. Don’t make your website visitors feel that way, test your site!

Digital Transformation

Digital transformation, sometimes referred to as DX, is the process of applying digital technologies to other aspects of your business. An example of this would be to implement a digital, cloud-based customer relationship management tool, instead of using your old handy-dandy rolodex. Almost all parts of your business can be digitized, for the right amount of money. The question is, do all parts of your business need to be digitized? The answer is normally no. Maybe that’s another podcast episode. But, for now, at least you know what digital transformation means.

Data Science

Last, but never least, is data science. Data science is another term for working with and analyzing sets of data. Most web metrics analysts, like myself are often called Data Scientists. This is different from Data Analysts. Analysts usually run the metrics and compose the reports. Data Scientists on the other hand analyze the data that’s been run and make recommendations for improvement to stakeholders. That would be you.

In Conclusion

There you have it, six widely used buzz words, that often confuse people outside of the industry. I’m probably going to do these types of episodes throughout the year, so if you come across any terms that throw you for a loop, send them over to me and I’ll add them to the list.

Thank You!

Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of Conversations with a Digital Strategist. If you have questions about anything I covered, feel free to email me at [e-mail]. If you’d like more information about me, visit my website at Level360.co. I’m also social, you know. Follow me on Twitter at Level_360. Or on Facebook at Facebook.com/Level360LLC. Until next time, live true, work smart, and in the words of one of the greatest strategists to ever live, think different! Bye!

Intro and outro music by: DJ Quads
DJ Quads Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
DJ Quads YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCusFqutyfTWRqGhC8kHA5uw