A digital marketing glossary without the jargon

Marketing has a language of its own, and it can make a simple conversation feel complicated. This glossary explains the terms you are most likely to hear, in plain words. Keep it handy for your next meeting with any agency, including ours.

Brand and strategy

• Brand: what people think and feel about your business. The logo is only one part of it.
• Brand guide: a document with the rules for using your logo, colours, typography and tone, so everything looks and sounds consistent.
• Positioning: the place you want your brand to occupy in your customers’ minds, compared with the alternatives.
• Value proposition: the clear reason why someone should choose you.
• Target audience: the specific group of people your marketing is meant to reach.
• Brand voice: the personality of your words. Formal or close, serious or playful.

Content and social media

• Organic content: what you publish without paying to promote it.
• Engagement: the interactions your content receives: likes, comments, shares, saves.
• Reach: how many different people saw your content.
• Impressions: how many times your content was shown, even to the same person.
• Editorial calendar: the plan of what will be published, where and when.
• User-generated content: photos, videos or reviews created by your customers about your brand.

Advertising

• Paid media: advertising you pay for on platforms such as Meta or Google.
• Ad spend: the money paid directly to the platforms, separate from the fees for planning and managing the ads.
• Segmentation: choosing who sees an ad, by location, interests or behaviour.
• Retargeting: showing ads to people who already visited your site or interacted with you.

Results

• KPI (key performance indicator): a number chosen in advance to measure whether a goal is being reached.
• Conversion: the action you want someone to take: buying, booking, writing to you, subscribing.
• Conversion rate: the share of people who took that action out of everyone who could have.
• ROI (return on investment): what you got back compared with what you invested.
• Vanity metrics: numbers that look good but say little about your business, like followers with no engagement.

Web and search

• SEO (search engine optimization): everything that helps your site appear in search results without paying for ads.
• Landing page: a page designed for one specific action, often linked from a campaign.
• Call to action: the invitation to do something concrete, such as «Book a consultation».

Is there a term you keep hearing and would like explained? Write to us through our contact page and we may add it to this glossary.