30 Inbound Marketing Acronyms Demystified

Vee Tardrew | 12 June 2014

Have you ever listened in on a conversation or sat in on a meeting where the participants may as well be speaking Greek to each other based on the number of terms that go over your head? Inbound Marketing was like that for me in the beginning - before I got to learn all the acronyms that are commonly used in the field.

And there are many!

To spare you hours of Googling and hopefully save a bit of your sanity too, I've compiled a list of the acronyms I consider to be the most important to understand when entering - or interacting with anyone involved with - the digital marketing world. 

Right, let's get going then!

Acronyms Commonly Used In Online Marketing

API

An Application Programme Interface seamlessly connects otherwise disparate web applications. In other words an API enables data sharing between the two.  From a marketing perspective a good example is the Twitter or Facebook API that allows us to post to our social media platform from elsewhere, not necessarily having to log in on the actual platform itself.

B2B

Short for Business To Business and used to describe an organisation that offers products or services to another business.

B2C

Stands for Business To Consumer and is used to classify a company that markets or sells its products or services to individual consumers.

BoFu

Means Bottom Of The Funnel. In inbound marketing, this is used to describe the part of the ‘funnel’ (buying cycle) where a lead is exhibiting buying intent and could be closed as a customer.

CLV

Short for Customer Lifetime Value meaning the average total value (revenue) gained over the lifetime of a customer. This value is used in calculating your total return on investment and other important performance metrics.

CMS

A Content Management System is a website’s platform that allows non-developers to easily create, modify or edit the content, typically using a WYSIWYG editor.

CPA

Can mean either Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action depending on the context. This describes the cost incurred to acquire a single lead or customer (i.e. total spend divided by number of completed conversions) but can also be used to describe the cost to deliver a certain result, such as an eBook download or an email subscription sign-up.

CPC

Stands for Cost Per Click This is a term often used when talking about PPC (pay-per-click) advertising and means the amount spent to result in a click on your ad. For example, if you have spent £100 on Google Ads and you received 10 clicks through to your site then your CPC is £10 (total spend divided by number of clicks).

CPM

Cost per mille. Another term associated with online advertising and means Cost Per Thousand (as mille is Latin for 1000). Most advertising platforms will work on either a CPC or CPM model, meaning that instead of paying per click, you pay per 1000 impressions delivered.

CRM

Short for Customer Relationship Management and generally used to describe a platform or system used to house contact and interaction details of leads and customers.

CRO 

Means Conversion Rate Optimisation and is the process or action of running A/B tests with the explicit intention of uncovering the layout, copy, colouring or any other aspect that will result in a higher conversion rate.

CSS

Is Cascading Style Sheets and is used by web developers to instruct Internet browsers what formatting, font, colours and layout to use when rendering their markup language.

CTA

Stands for Call To Action and is a button or link that encourages a specific action to be taken. For example, at the end of this blog post you will find a call to action to download an eBook. This is typically your first step in a conversion path.

CTR

Short for Click Through Rate and is usually expressed as a percentage. It gives an indication of the number of people who click on your link, image or advert as a percentage of total views.

HTML

Means Hypertext Markup Language and is the standard language used to create a webpage or email. While predominantly used by web developers, it is beneficial for marketers to learn the basics of HTML to be most effective in their role.

KPI

Stands for Key Performance Indicator. This is a metric used to keep track of performance and can be used across many departments, channels, projects, campaigns or tasks.

MoFu

Means Middle Of The Funnel. In inbound marketing, this is used to describe the part of the ‘funnel’ (buying cycle) where a lead is moving forward from basic awareness to a deeper research and consideration stage. Content such as case studies, white papers or videos are typically consumed during this stage.

MT

Means Modified Tweet and can be used instead of the more commonly known RT when retweeting someone else’s tweet but adding additional commentary or changes words of the original.

MQL

Is a Marketing Qualified Lead. This term is used to describe a lead that has the same characteristics of your typical customer and has performed a certain action on your website that indicates interest in your business.

PPC

Stands for Pay Per Click and is used in online advertising meaning you pay for clicks through to your website.

ROI

The all important Return On Investment metric is the percentage a particular investment has returned. This is generally calculated as follows: ROI = 100*(Lifetime Sales Revenue Generated - Marketing Investment Cost) / Marketing Investment Cost.

RT

Is a Retweet. This is when someone shares one of your Twitter tweets with their followers, preserving your wording.

SaaS

Simply means Software As A Service and is used to describe software that you purchase on a recurring basis, rather than as a once off fee. So, for example, HubSpot is a SaaS company, as you pay for their software on a recurring annual basis.

SEM

Short for Search Engine Marketing and encompasses marketing activities that are applied to generate website traffic from search engines. This typically includes SEO and PPC tactics

SEO

Means Search Engine Optimisation and covers a range of tactics applied to improve where your webpages rank in search engine results pages. 

SERP

A Search Engine Results Page will show a list of results for a particular search phrase. These results are ranked according to how relevant the search engine considers the page for the query in question.

SQL

Is a Sales Qualified Lead and is one that has shown buying signals indicating they are ready to engage with your sales team.

ToFu

Not to be confused with the vegetarian protein source, Top Of The Funnel describes the stage of the buying process where a lead starts his/her interaction with your company by converting for the first time on your website.

UX

Means User Experience and describes how your website visitor interacts with your site. From a design perspective UX design is used to map out the most seamless journey for them to uncover the information they seek. 

WYSIWYG

A heck of a acronym for What You See Is What You Get and refers to an editor within a content management / optimisation system that allows users to create or edit content in a pane that operates much like a word processor does. You are able to adjust content using input buttons as opposed to raw HTMLcode.

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