19 must-know digital marketing terms and what they mean

When it comes to digital marketing, there are hundreds of terms and acronyms used by specialists and industry experts, and it can be difficult to stay on track.

Understanding these terms keeps you in the loop and enables you to fully acknowledge your online performance. We’ve summarised 19 key digital marketing terms that we think you should know and their definitions.

Return on Ad Spend simply relates to the amount of money or value that a business will get back from the money they put into advertising.

This stand for Cost of Sale which is a percentage value showing what proportion of the revenue earned was spent. For example, if you spend £1 and get £2 back – that’s a 50% COS.

Cost Per Acquisition, also known as cost per conversion, is the amount an advertiser will spend on one conversion from an advert. This can be calculated by dividing the number of conversions by how much they have spent.

This stands for Average Order Value which is an eCommerce metric that measures the average total of every order placed with a consumer over a defined period of time. This metric is determined using sales per order, not sales per customer.

In the same category as ROAS, Return on Investment is a measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment (benefits, leads, sales) compared to the cost. This is an important metric to performance marketers, as they can gauge an idea of an investment’s profitability.

This is the portion of a market controlled by a particular company or product and represents how aggressive the market is for your specific product/service set.

This is when a user on-site completes the desired action from an advertisement. For example, downloading a guide, completing a form, making a purchase etc. This term helps performance teams understand how their advertising is doing, and whether users are interacting with their ads.

Site speed refers to how quickly a browser can load fully functional webpages. Sites that load quickly will typically rank better, receive more traffic and have better engagement and conversion rates.

Used commonly with SEO, this is an incoming hyperlink from one web resource to another. This helps with website optimisation as a large number of backlinks can improve your performance and searchability from a search engine e.g. Google or Bing.

This stands for Search Engine Results Page. SERP is the page that is returned to a user with links to sites when they enter a query into a search engine.

Remarketing is a method of targeting your users with ads or emails at a later date, based on their activity on your website. You know the user has already been on your site so remarketing to them has a much higher chance of increasing conversion rate or ROI than targeting a new user.

This stands for artificial intelligence and is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Unlike the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals.

Otherwise known as Key Performance Indicator, is a measured value that is used to evaluate the success/progress of a business objective. For example, sales revenue or website traffic.

This simply refers to a marketing channel that is not currently used by a digital marketer or organisation. For example, most businesses use Google for their ads but may not use TikTok in their strategy.

When it comes to digital marketing a click refers to a user clicking on an ad. Clicks can help you understand how engaging your ad is to people who see it. Relevant, highly targeted ads are more likely to receive more clicks.

This is analysis on the improvement for search rankings by comparing current rankings to Google’s estimated search traffic volume and competitor ratings. BOSCO™ can pinpoint your existing keyword selection and the cost per click (CPC) on these keywords and estimates the opportunities for sales and revenue within organic search if you improve on the position of the keywords.

Competitor analysis (or competitor research) is a field of strategic research that specialises in the collection and review of information about rival companies. It’s an essential tactic for finding out what your competitors are doing, read our guide on how to do it here.

This stands for Cost Per Click and refers to the actual price you pay for each click in your paid media marketing campaigns. Your cost per click is determined by several factors, including maximum bid and the ad rank of other advertisers bidding for the same keyword.

Click Through Rate is a metric that measures the ratio of total impressions to clicks in search and display advertising, as well as email marketing. CTR is the calculated by number of clicks that your ad receives, divided by the number of times your ad is shown – clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. For example, if you had 5 clicks and 100 impressions, then your CTR would be 5%.

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