You’ve probably seen a lot of acronyms, abbreviations and random words that might be going over your head. I’m here to take away the mystery from a few.

Boost

If you are using Facebook for your social media marketing, then you will come across this one frequently. The kind people at Facebook are regularly asking if we would like to boost our posts so that for a small fee, so many more people in the local area will see our content. Boosting your post means actively promoting it and not just wishing and hoping that your fans and followers will magically see it

A/B Testing

To know what works best with your target audience, it’s important to conduct A/B Testing. In other words, have two options that are sent out to two halves of your followers, compare two variants. Whichever generates more clicks or interest, that’s the campaign you should run with. It’s important to only change one aspect when testing this way, otherwise you’ll not know what it is that really works best with your audience.

Funnel

The funnel is where your audience/prospects/clients are on the grand scheme of things. They enter through the top, but as the funnel gets smaller and smaller, it’s natural that there will be less and less going through the different stages. Depending on your business, is the type of funnel you will have. Most talk about sales funnels and how to go from prospecting to follow-up all the way to closing the sale and delivering the product/service.

Bounce Rate

This can be for your website or your emails. When people land on your website, the bounce rate is how many of them leave immediately, without clicking on anything else. When it comes to your emails, it’s about how many emails were not delivered.

CTA – Call to Action

A call to action is a button or tab that you want people to click on to generate more interest for you. These buttons could say “Subscribe now”, “Buy now”, “Download now” etc. A good call to action will generate more leads, and in turn more sales, signups etc.

USP – Unique Selling Point

What makes your product or service different from the thousands of others that are out there? This is your USP.

KPI – Key Performance Indicators

Used to measure the effectiveness of staff or goals, KPIs are useful for marketers to track progress towards marketing goals.

CMS – Content Management System

On your website, it’s important to be updating the information, photographs, blog posts etc. The easiest way to update it is with a personalised CMS. This is where you have access to all aspects of your page that you will need to update at any given time. Access is granted through a username and password, which you should never share with anyone else.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management

A set of software that allows you to keep track of everything you do with your existing and potential customers. The most basic ones track contact information, but a more complete one can also track email, phone calls, appointment setting, etc. It’s a great way to see where your customers are in terms of satisfaction, what part of the funnel they are at etc.

PPC – Pay Per Click

This is an advertising technique used to target the correct audience by using Google Adwords and Facebook. As the name suggests, the business with the advert pays every time someone clicks on the banner/ad.

ROI – Return on Investment

What you get out from what you put in. If it’s money you’ve invested, make sure you get more back than what you paid out. If it’s time you’ve invested, you’ll need to define what you perceive to be the best return for it to improve your business.

Hashtag

A hashtag (#) is a very useful way to interact with people you are following as well as those with similar interests to you. Popular chats on Twitter use hashtags to track the conversation between different people and businesses. On other social media platforms it shows how popular a topic is, and allows people to search for a word or phrase more conveniently.

Automation

This is the word given to the scheduling of items to be published on your social media. Automation tools include Buffer, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck etc. They can be useful for things other than scheduling, as many of them also have the ability to provide analytics and follow hashtags.

FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out

This one is especially present with all businesses. There’s a new platform, a new way of doing something, a new event to attend. You’re torn because it means more time, more money, more learning, but on the other hand, you’re afraid of missing the boat on the next big thing.