Whether you like it or not, marketing is all around us, it’s everywhere. Fortunately most of the terms are in English, so if you are reading this right now you might not have that much of a  problem understanding the vocabulary. However, what about acronyms? Those are tougher. That’s why we are here to give you a hand with it. We bring you the first part of a small glossary of acronyms so that you don’t get lost in meetings and reports and look like the smartest one in the class.

SEO- Search Engine Optimization

What do you mean by SEO?

In other words, search engine optimisation. By the way, the biggest search engine is Google, with 91.4% of the market. It is followed by Bing, Baidu and Yahoo! SEO is a set of strategies and techniques to bring more visitors to your website. By using them, you will improve your chances of appearing at the top of the Google search list.

How do I put it into practice?

Let’s imagine you have a restaurant very close to a monument that attracts hundreds and hundreds of tourists a day. It would be great if searching for the name of the monument would bring up your restaurant associated with it. The name of the monument would be a keyword and it should appear in your web content, always in an attractive and meaningful way, don’t just put it there for the sake of it. You see, a website without good SEO is a great book with a bad title and an ugly cover. Nobody will open it.

SERP – Search Engine Results Page

What does this have to do with me?

It has a lot to do with you. The SERP is the search engine results page. That coveted first page that every business would kill to be on. Depending on the search engine, the number of results per page varies but there are usually ten. Here we can make a distinction between organic and paid SERP. While the former shows the results that have been positioned for free, i.e. using good SEO, the latter gives us the results of the companies which have paid to be there. This brings us to a new term. Welcome to the world of SEM.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing

What do you mean by SEM?

It is the paid search engine marketing. It brings you a high number of users in a short time and with a more or less tight budget, as long as you play your SEO cards right. On the other hand, it can drop as fast as it has risen as soon as you stop paying and no longer appear at the top on your own merits. A good way to control this expense is to use a PPC ad. Intrigued? Read on.

How do I put it into practice?

You are going to start very strong in the world of SEM with your restaurant. So you have decided to bid on Google AdWords for such strong keywords as the name of the monument next to your business, the name of your business and the name of the street where you are. You’re going for it. This is going to drive people to your ad in droves. Then, according to the quality of the content of your web, the users will turn into clients or just will run away from that place that promises a lot and offers nothing.

PPC Ad – Pay Per Click Advert

What do you mean by PPC Ad?

It is an ad for which the advertiser pays depending on the number of times users click on it. In other words, you pay for the visits that the ad receives.

How do I put it into practice?

If you have already spent a fortune on buying keywords but you don’t want to mortgage yourself, it would be better to use this type of ad in your restaurant. Thus, you control your budget and pay what you want by setting a daily limit. So you’d better make sure that what’s on the other side of the ad is attractive so you have low BR levels. Hang on, don’t you know what BR is? Read on.

BR – BOUNCE RATE

What do you mean by BR?

People can come to your ad or your website and enjoy the content, browse through it and find what they are looking for. Or they can run away because what they have found is not what they expected. A high bounce rate means that people are coming in but will leave quickly. This is a clear sign that you are doing something wrong.

How do I put it into practice?

You need your BR to be low, otherwise you’re getting a lot of traffic but not converting. You attract them but they don’t become customers. BR is an excellent KPI to have in mind. Yes, a KPI. Doesn’t it ring a bell? Well, don’t stop reading then.

KPIs – Key Performance Indicators

What do you mean by KPI?

Just so we understand each other, it is a metric. Nothing more, nothing less. We use it to see if the strategy we are using is going as well as we expect.

How do I put it into practice?

Let’s go back to your restaurant, the one that is so well placed. You have decided to invest part of your budget in a social media ad. KPIs are all those factors that we can measure to see if it is working. For example, the number of people who have clicked on the ad, those who have rated you through that ad or your profits on special offers for web customers only.

CTA – Call To Action

And what do you mean by CTA?

Believe it or not, we all fall for CTAs, without exception. It is a call to a specific action, it urges us to do something. The temptation of a box that tells us to download that PDF document we want for free. Or that other one that reminds you that the cute hotel in Rome you are looking at only has two rooms available and you should book it now. NOW.

How do I put it into practice?

Your new social media ad should have a CTA. A button that makes customers feel the irrepressible temptation to book at your restaurant. Book now. Try it today. Book and get 15% discount. These would be just a few examples. This is a great trick to keep your CTR high.

CTR – Click Through Rate

What do you mean by CTR?

It is the percentage of clicks that the ad or campaign you have published receives and it is used  to measure its performance. Everything goes hand in hand, and if you have understood the above terms and put them into practice, you will appear higher on the search page and that will mean a higher CTA rate.

How do I put it into practice?

To calculate it we will have to divide the number of clicks your advert receives by the number of times it has appeared on the website or social network.

And for today Marketing class is over. Remember that this is not a fad, it is not a piercing. These terms and concepts are vital for you to understand marketing perfectly. So don’t leave them aside, get up to date with them and you will see that if you learn them and, more important, if you apply them, you will be rewarded in no time. Come on, go for it!!