online marketing with smartzville » marketing help

What is a…? Internet Marketing Terms

Laura Childs — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 20:06:01 +0000

If you’re in ‘overwhelm’ mode with all the marketing terms flying at you and you need clarification, do not hesitate to drop in on the Marketing Help page and leave your question there.

Marketing Terms and Their Definitions

If you’ve just started your business online no doubt you’ve heard a pile of new words and terms for running an online business or promoting a website.

It gets confusing…

So I’ve put together this list of terms for you – to help make sense of it all and to use as a resource you can return to from time to time.

Marketing Terms – Marketing Definitions

Ad Tracker

Software that records the number of click-throughs or sales per link you’ve set up on your site.

Affiliate

A person who markets, promotes, or advertises someone else’s product or service in return for a commission. Online salesperson. You can become an affiliate for free at ClickBank and start earning right away.

Affiliate Link

When promoting a product or service as an affiliate (see above), you would use a specially coded hyperlink to ‘point’ to a sales page. That hyperlink code would be tied specifically to your account at the vendor’s site. Affiliate links vary across merchants and networks and are generally well explained on the merchant website. Sometimes your affiliate code is numerical, alphabetical or of your own choosing. If you’re in the internet marketing field you should check out this affiliate network – I’ve had great success promoting their products.

Auto Responder

Software or a paid service that sends email to your list of subscribers on a pre-determined schedule. My recommended auto-responder service.

Blog

Short form of Web Log. The trend began as online diaries that, dependent on the blog writer, may have solicited collaboration. Blog software is now widely used as an easy way to run a website. Smartzville’s Web 2.0 Blog is here. Another of my blogs on Web 2.0 Traffic is here.

CAN SPAM

This is a legislative act on email content and delivery meant to minimize spam, but is now a cornerstone of regulations on email marketers.

Classified Ad

A small text ad with a link to the advertiser’s site, used in newsletter marketing online.

CPM

An advertising standard. CPM = cost per thousand readers of an advertisement.

Content

Content is essentially the words on your web page or within your site but may also refer to an RSS Feed’s text. "Content is King" is a buzz-phrase passed around for the last few years when large search engines (such as google) changed their top results listings to the larger, content-rich sites.

Copy Writing

Effective written copy. Used to sell or teach.

Co-Registration

Services offered by some companies to assist you in building a subscriber base. Cost per subscriber varies by market and service provider.

CPA – Cost Per Action

CPA is a model used for advertising online where the rate for every action taken by a user is preset. The advertiser and publisher agree on what actions (a sale, a sign up, a site visit, etc.) will be tallied, registered and a commission rewarded.

CPC – Cost Per Click

CPC is the model used for advertising online where the rate is tallied, registered and rewarded for every actual ‘click through’ that results in a new visitor to the advertiser’s website.

CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impressions

CPM is the model used in advertising online where the rate is set for every thousand impressions. In other words, an advertiser pays a publisher $40 for displaying their advertisement 1000 times.

CTR – Click Through Ratio or Click Through Rate.

The number of people who clicked on an ad vs. the number who viewed the ad.

Database (Relational)

Not to be confused with a datafeed (something I write quite a bit about on this website.)

A database is a file that contains many ‘strings’ of information that is searchable and usable in a variety of software applications.

A phone book is a database of names and phone numbers although I’d never use one for internet marketing because mine, personally, isn’t in computer ready format. In the computer sense, a database I might use would be the names, emails and telephone numbers of my past customers and a list of their purchases over the years.

Lately I’ve worked extensively with MySQL databases (which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy but if you have a geek-ish mind, you’d find them quite powerful for content management and creating and managing online stores.

Directory

A finely tuned category of information. Yahoo for instance serves their search results based on directory headings.

Double Opt-In

Where email subscribers must verify (even after subscribing) and confirm that they did indeed want to be on your list.

Download

Saving files from the internet to your computer.

Ebook

Electronic Book. Ebooks created in PDF format can be read on both MACs and PCs. Where we once used ebook software to create our ebooks to sell, now we pretty much all use PDF since they have low risk of carrying viruses.

Ezine

Electronic Magazine, generally delivered by email.

Follow-Up

A sequence of email messages sent to a subscriber usually by an Auto Responder (see auto responder).

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. The means of getting content on your hard drive to the internet. Also used for downloading entire websites from the internet and onto your hard drive.

Forum

An online meeting place of like minded individuals.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language. The programming code that displays web pages.

Joint Venture

JV – Two marketers team up to present, sell, or share resources for the sale of a product.

Lead Generation

Similarto Co-Registration but also any means necessary to get people to sign up to a marketer’s email subscription. The ‘pre-sell’ part of follow-up.

Moderator

King (or queen) of a particular forum or forum topic. A moderator ensures that posts to the forum are appropriate and follow the forum’s guidelines.

MP3

Audio file format for computers or MP3 players.

Name Squeeze

A hot new way to tease a reader into subscribing to your follow-up messages. Used for lead generation and invented and tested for efficiency by marketing guru Jonathan Mizel.

Niche Marketing

Categorizing your potential customers by their likes, age, similarities. Finding out what they want to buy and how to reach them, then selling your product or service to them. Frank Kern was one of the big marketers who talked and trained extensively on niche marketing.

PPC

Pay Per Click. An advertising charge system where the advertiser pays for every click from the ad to his/her website. Perry Marshal is the expert on Google Adwords PPC opportunity and he has a free course here.

PDF

Portable Document Format. The file format most often used for ebooks.

RSS

Really Simple Syndication. A way of using varying programming code to syndicate content. See my RSS success story here.

Sales Letter

Text written using copy-writing skills to entice buyers.

Solo Ad

A one time, focused advertisement sent to a list of subscribers.

Split Test

A way of testing the effectiveness of copy. 1/2 potential customers are sent to one version of a sales letter, the other 1/2 to a different version. Each action is recorded and copy is tweaked as a result.

Syndication

Displaying content of one site on another site. See RSS.

Target URL

The landing page for a click through.

Target Marketing

aka Niche Marketing

Teleseminar

A conference call where learning is achieved.

Thank You Page

A special page (usually with download information) where the customer is directed after ordering.

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get. Used to describe a type of web page creation software.

What is a…? Internet Marketing Terms is a post from: online marketing with smartzville

Online Marketing Help

Laura Childs — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 01:23:07 +0000

Are you looking for some quality marketing help? Someone who’s not trying to take you to the cleaners, just get you going with your website or products? I won’t hold your hand or do the work for you, but I will help you in any way I can if you’re earnest and willing to work.

On this site I only recommend products and people who have made a difference in my personal income – and I try to find the best free or cheapest resources available for you – but I will not recommend just anything because it’s free or cheap – it has to be information that works, information that is easy to follow…

Have you just started marketing a business, product or opportunity online and find that you’ve absolutely overwhelmed by:

the website tools,
the marketing techniques,
the online gurus,
the free selling reports,
the webcasts,
the marketing forums,
and more?

Help for New Internet Marketers and Your Websites

You aren’t the first person who has ended yet another day with their head swimming in possibilities and questions.

Which ‘guru’ to listen to?
Which Search Engine Optimization program to buy?
Which program or product to promote?
Should you be a niche marketer? Or an affiliate marketer?
Should you focus first on building a website or performing keyword research?
What’s most important? Getting traffic or subscribers?
How important is sales copy anyway?

Let me see if I can help with your marketing…

First step is to focus. Focus your energy, your talents, your desires. Finely hone your interests in online business down into a small target market.

Next, you’ll want to do some research. You’ll want to find the phrases that people actually use to find information, product or services like yours.

Then, you’ll want to register a website (domain) name and secure a hosting contract for your website.

After this you’ll have to get down to some hard decisions about your marketing.

If you are going to create an info-product, you’ll probably just need a one page sales letter and an order link.
If you’re planning on blogging and linking to affiliate products you’ll want to learn (or hire someone) to install a blog on your site.
If you’re planning on creating a huge and traditional content site you’ll want to purchase some page creation software and learn how to use it.

Of course this can all be as difficult or as easy as you choose for it to be. You can start really small with an info-product sales site and learn other marketing techniques as you go.

Marketing Help for Existing Sites

Once you’ve chosen your market and your product, the next two biggest challenges in marketing are sales copy and getting potential customers to your website.

If you require marketing assistance in either of these areas don’t take the cheap route of trial and error. Sign up for some of the free resources on this site.

See which marketer best fits your learning style during the free training, then buy their product and follow their systems to a T. It is important that you take advice from one who has gone before you that you can easily relate to/learn from. I’m not saying this to make a buck off you, I’m saying this because this lesson took me far too long to learn! (A) Spend the money. (B) From a marketer who ‘speaks’ your language.

I’ve paid up to $1100 for some products (and believe me paying those prices hurt us at the time), BUT I’ve seen more than that initial investment come back as a result of applying the techniques taught!

Years later if I know I need to learn a new technique or beef up my marketing skills I don’t question the price tag. I know it adds up to more revenue for me further down the road.

Looking for some One-on-One Help with your Marketing?

Head over to my Marketing Help blog and drop me a line or leave a question you need answered. I’ll do my best to assist you!

Online Marketing Help is a post from: online marketing with smartzville