Digital marketing terms

Digital marketing

Adaptive and technology-enabled process by which firms collaborate with customers and partners to create, communicate, deliver and sustain value for all stakeholders.

Owned media

Stuff you control, like your own website.

Paid media

Stuff you pay for, like online ads.

Earned media

Stuff others say about you (that you didn't pay for), like customer reviews.

Firm-Initiated Communication (FIC)

When the company starts the conversation, like sending ads or emails.

Customer-Initiated Communication (CIC)

When the customer starts the conversation, like searching for you or getting a referral.

Channels

Think of these as the specific two-way streets where you and the company can actually talk back and forth.

Examples:

• Making a phone call to customer service.

• Using a live chat on their website.

• Sending an email expecting a reply.

• Talking to a salesperson in a store.

Touchpoints (moments of truths)

This is every single time you come into contact with the company or its products/services, one-way or two-way.

Examples:

• Seeing one of their ads on TV (one-way).

• Receiving their email newsletter (one-way).

• Visiting their website just to browse (mostly one-way).

• Making a phone call (two-way - also a channel).

• Using their product.

• Reading reviews about them online (customer-to-customer).

The zero moment of truth

The online research and comparison you do before you make a purchase decision or even go to the physical/digital shelf. It's that moment you gather information yourself, often online, shaping your opinion before the store gets a chance.

First moment of truth

Decision Point - Convincing you to buy it when you see it on the shelf in a store for example.

Second moment of truth

Purchase Evaluation - Convincing you that you made the right choice after you use it.

Attribution

Is simply the process of figuring out which of the interactions (or "touchpoints") should get the credit for making the sale happen (attribution problem is the difficulty assigning credit).

Last Touch Attribution (LTA)

Gives 100% of the credit to the very last interaction the customer had before making the purchase (simple way to solve the attribution problem).

Google Ads Attribution Models

These are specific rules or sets of rules within the Google Ads platform that decide how much credit each of your Google Ad clicks gets when a customer eventually completes a desired action (like making a purchase, signing up, etc. - called a "conversion").

Single-Touch Attribution Models

These models give 100% of the credit for the conversion to just ONE specific touchpoint (one ad click) in the customer's journey.

Multi-Touch Attribution Models

These models share the credit for the conversion across MULTIPLE touchpoints (multiple ad clicks) in the customer's journey. They acknowledge that several interactions often play a role.

Omnichannel

Is a strategy to have multiple touchpoints (website/social media/physical store) and track consumers here to make it easier for consumers to shop and increase purchase intention. Creating a unified customer experience across all channels. Integrating channels to match how customers shop naturally.

Showrooming

Store -> Online Example: Shopping in store and then you purchase online because they have a better price/more colours online for example.

Webrooming

Online -> Store Example: When you purchase a car you look at features online and then you go to a showroom to actually test and purchase it.

Omnichannel shopping is driven by two main factors

1. Different Channels for Different Needs: Customers naturally use different channels (online, offline) for different stages of their shopping journey because each channel has unique advantages that cater to specific needs at each stage.

2. Seamless Channel Switching: Customers expect to be able to move easily between these channels. Businesses that create smooth transitions between online and offline experiences are better positioned to succeed in the omnichannel world.

Multichannel

Using many channels that are not connected to reach customers. Making each channel perform well individually.

4 different shopping omnichannel strategies

1. Traditional Retail: See info in the store, buy in the store.

2. Showrooms: See info in the store, but then buy online.

3. Webrooming/ Research online, pick-up in-store: Find info online, but then buy in store.

4. Online retail and pure-players: Everything online! Info and buying.

Brand focus on breadth (Coverage)

The brand offers a wide variety of products or services across many different categories or markets. Think of it as spreading wide.

Brand focus on depth (In-Store)

The brand concentrates deeply within a specific, often narrow, category or niche market. Think of it as digging deep. It looks at:

• Product range: Does the shop sell many different products from the brand?

• Brand visibility: Is the brand featured prominently on the shop's website (like on the homepage or in search results within the site)?

• Purchase support: Does the shop offer help (like chat or stock info) to make it easy to buy the brand's products?

Pipeline Model (Old way)

Company sells products that they own themselves, where they have the full power over the products/price/stock etc. (Nike or Douglas bv)

Platform Model (New way)

Company creates a platform for other brands to sell their products. (Etsy, Vinted, Airbnb bv)

Digital Platforms

Purely creates a platform to connect buyers and sellers online - Platform models.

Hybrid Platforms

These businesses use platform features to connect external sellers and buyers, but they also sell their own products/services directly - Mix of both platform and pipeline models.

Related Businesses

These digital businesses primarily focus on creating and delivering their own digital products or services directly to customers - Pipeline model.

Platforms have 4 important characteristics:

• Mediation Role: They are the middleman connecting sellers and buyers.

• Autonomy of Sellers: Sellers on the platform are mostly independent and run their own businesses on it.

• Network Effects: The more users a platform has (both sellers and buyers), the more valuable it becomes for everyone. Think of social media - it's better when more people are on it.

• Digital Infrastructure: Platforms rely on digital technology (websites, apps, etc.) to work.

If a business is thinking about platforms, they have three main choices:

1. Innovation (Build your own platform): Create your own platform, like Decathlon (sports store) or Douglas (beauty store) might do to sell their own products and maybe products from others.

2. Cooperation (Use other platforms): Sell your products through existing platforms like Amazon or other marketplaces to reach more customers.

3. Confrontation (Compete with platforms):Don't become a platform, but find other ways to compete against platforms. IKEA (furniture) or Chick-fil-A (restaurant) might focus on their own stores and unique experiences instead of relying on platforms.

The 5 sources of value creation enabled by digital technologies/ due to digital technologies these help make things better or more valuable:

• Automation - Making things happen automatically

• Individualization - Making things just for you

• Interaction - Letting people or things connect and communicate easily

• Transparency & control - Making it easy to see what's happening and manage it

• Ambient embeddedness - Having technology woven into the background of our lives, almost invisibly

Pre-purchase reason to search online

Like comparing prices or finding options.

Post-purchase reason to search online

Like finding instructions or customer support.

Organic search results

Without the ad sign

• 95% of the clicks are on organic search results and not ads

• Often based on seasons/trends etc

SEO

Seach engine optimization

• It's all the stuff you do to try and make your website appear higher up in the organic (not paid) search results on Google, Bing, etc

SEA/SEM/Paid search

Search engine advertising

• Companies pay money to have their website show up as an advertisement in search engine results (like the ads you see at the top of Google).

• The goal is to get your website seen more often by using these paid ads.

Keywords

These are the words or short phrases people type into Google when they search for something. Advertisers use these same keywords to make their ads show up for those searches.

Generic keywords

Describing something. These are general words about a product type, like just "running shoes".

Branded keywords

Describing something combined with a brand, like "Nike running shoes". 

Impressions

How many times your ad was shown.

CTR - click through rates

% of people who clicked the ad when they saw it.

CVR

% of people who bought something after clicking.

M

How much profit (margin) you make on each sale.

CPC

How much you paid for each click.

Retargeting (behavioral targeting)

Marketing communication based on a person’s actual browsing behavior e.g. pages visited, clicks made etc. - Bv: Ever looked at a product online and then seen ads for it everywhere? That's retargeting!

Selection effect/selection bias

When you use retargeting as a method, the consumers that you show the ad where already interested in the product, so maybe they would have bought the product anyway. This makes the results look better than they really are (artificially inflated). The ad gets credit for something that might have happened naturally.

Overpersonalization

Means personalized ads become annoying or irrelevant because they're shown too much or for too long.

Measure for experiential browsing

Clicking the ad right away shows it worked for people just looking around online.

Measure for goal-directed browsing

Visiting the store later (without clicking the ad) shows it worked for people searching for something specific.

View-through

When you saw the ad and didn’t click on it, BUT went back to the site later. Data can measure this as well.

Content-integration

The ad blends in with the normal stuff on the website.

• Example: The ads you see on Pinterest for example, that blends in with your usual feed but you do not see it is an ad.

Content-separation

 The ad is clearly separate from the normal stuff on the website.

• Example: You're reading a news article, and a banner ad for shoes (that you looked at earlier) appears on the side. The ad isn't part of the news article itself.

Advertising elasticity

If I spend 1% more money on ads, how much extra sales (%) will I get? It measures how much your sales change when you change your ad budget slightly.

Customer Engagement

The feeling or mindset a customer develops from actively participating and co-creating experiences with a brand. It’s about how much a customer thinks, feels, and acts towards a specific brand.

• Customer engagement has three main parts:

1. Cognitive engagement: How much do you think about the brand? Is it often on your mind?

2. Emotional engagement: How do you feel about the brand? Do you like them? Trust them? Feel happy when you use their products?

3. Behavioral engagement: What actions do you take related to the brand? How much time and energy do you spend buying from them, using their products, or talking about them online?

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)

Doing good through business actions.

Socio-Political Activism

Taking a stand on social issues.

Expectancy Violation Theory

When things don't happen the way we expect, it makes us pay more attention and think about it, whether the surprise is good or bad.

2 different types of content strategies

• Functional: Informational - Deals - This is content focused on being useful and giving facts. Bv 10% discount related posts.

• Hedonic: Emotional - Social - This content is focused on creating feelings and pleasure. Bv Valentines day’s related posts.

Univariate

Looking at ONE variable (one column) at a time.

Bivariate

Looking at TWO variables (two columns) together to see if they are related.

Standard deviations

How spread out the numbers are around the average (are costs usually very similar, or do they vary a lot?).

Measuring Clickthrough rate (CTR)

Clicks/Impressions

Measuring Cost-per-thousand (CPM)

Cost / Impressions * 1000

Measuring Cost-per-click (CPC)

Cost / Clicks

Measuring Conversion rate (CVR)

Bookings / Clicks

Measuring Cost per conversion (Booking)

Cost / Bookings

Measuring Profit (given a margin of €50)

Bookings * Average Profit Margin per Booking

Measuring Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)

(Profit - Cost) / Cost 

Measuring Conversion rate (for leads)

Leads / Clicks

Measuring Cost-per-lead

Cost / Leads

Measuring Conversion rate (for sale)

Sales / Leads

Measuring Cost-per-sale

Cost / Sales

Paid Search

Like when you search on Google, and the first few results are ads.

• Are best for getting people who are ready to buy right now and tracking results easily.

Display Ads

Banner ads or video ads you see on websites (not search results).

• Are a bit of a middle ground, okay for branding and getting clicks, and good for targeting specific online groups.

Offline Ads

Things like TV commercials, radio ads, billboards, or ads in magazines.

• Are best for getting your brand name out there widely.

Synergy (complementarity)

Ads working together. Sometimes, using different types of ads together makes them extra powerful. It's like 1 + 1 = 3.

Cannibalization (substitution)

Sometimes, using different ads together means they end up competing or being overlapping.

Wear-in

This is the "warming up" period. It's the time it takes for your ad to start having its biggest effect.

Wear-out

This is when the ad starts getting old. People have seen it too many times, and they get bored, annoyed, or just start ignoring it. Because of this "ad fatigue," the ad becomes less effective over time.

Spurios correlations

Misleading relationships that appear connected, but are actually caused by coincidence or other factors.

• Bv: Do murders lead to more ice creams being sold?

3 key features of experimental designs:

• Manipulate the independent variable

• Randomly assign into groups

• Measure effects on dependent variable (Common metrics in digital marketing: Sales, CTR, conversion rate, page views, comments, shares etc.

Null hypothesis

Generally the opposite of what you might expect just by looking at the difference shown in the diagram.

• You conduct the statistical test (like a T-test or ANOVA) to see if the difference you observed in your diagram (your sample data) is strong enough evidence to make you reject that initial null hypothesis (the idea of "no difference").

P value

Statistical test where if the P value is lower than 0.05 (also called alpha level), this means the difference is significant.