Small Business Marketing Acronyms You Should Know

You’ve probably come across acronyms like SEO, SMM, PPC, and more when studying small business marketing. There are many acronyms in the marketing world and they can be confusing to the new community of small business owners. What do they mean? How can your small business use them for your success?

In this blog post, we’ll cover popular marketing acronyms that small business owners should know, and how to use these acronyms for your success.  We’ll break them down into general marketing acronyms, phrases that are essential to social media, all things SEO (search engine optimization), and digital advertising terms.

General Marketing Acronyms

There are some acronyms and terms that are general to any type of marketing and typically apply to all small businesses. You can think of them as the basics that will help you understand your overall marketing strategy. If you are a new business owner and ready to get started with some marketing strategies, this is a good place to start.

B2B: Business to Business

B2B stands for Business to Business. This term refers to businesses that sell products or services primarily to other businesses. If your industry exists solely to support other businesses, you fall into the B2B category.

Examples of B2B organizations include:

• Office supply companies
• Advertising or marketing agencies
• Automobile manufacturers
• Credit card processing companies
• Payroll and bookkeeping service providers

B2C: Business to Consumer

B2C, on the other hand, means Business to Consumer. B2C companies target consumers, as opposed to B2B which targets other companies. Most of the content that the average person sees is B2C advertising, including social media posts and email campaigns for products or services. You probably see B2C ads from your favorite brand show up in your inbox or newsfeed on a regular basis.

Examples of B2C companies include:

• Grocery stores
• Clothing stores
• Housekeepers
• Homebuilders
• Auto repair shops
• Daycares

KPIs: Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators are quantifiable measures of performance over time. Every business should know what its KPIs are and how to track them. This will help you measure your marketing efforts and overall performance so that you can determine the ROI of different campaigns or marketing techniques.

A few common marketing KPIs include:

• website bounce rate
• website page views per session
• advertising campaign conversion rates
• newsletter signups

In addition to marketing KPIs, there are other types of KPIs that business owners may want to track: sales, financial, operational, and growth. You may want to measure the number of new customers you gain in a year, the growth in revenue from quarter to quarter, or your employee satisfaction rating. Understanding your KPIs is necessary to see what is working for your company and what is not.

ROI: Return On Investment

Knowing your return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts will go a long way towards optimizing your marketing budget. ROI refers to the amount of time or money spent on marketing efforts such as social media ads, SEO campaigns, or PPC ads—and the return you receive on those efforts. Understanding Return on Investment (ROI) can save you time and money by eliminating activities that aren’t helping you achieve your desired outcomes.

ROI can be calculated using a simple formula: net profit divided by your total investment amount; multiplied by 100. This will give you an ROI percentage.

For example, if you spend $10,000 on a PPC advertising campaign and you get 2 new customers from that campaign, you can calculate your ROI by figuring out how much a new customer is “worth”. Let’s say you are a real estate agent and you sell two houses from the campaign. If you receive a 3% commission on the sale of two $300,000, your profit on those two customers is $9,000 each, or $18,000 total. Your formula would look like this:

($18,000 – $10,000) / $10,000 = 0.8, or 80%

Your ROI is 80% because you profited $8,000 on a $10,000 campaign. 80% ROI is incredibly good. According to The Marketing Square, a decent industry-standard ROI is somewhere between 25-50%.

CTA: Call to Action

CTA stands for Call to Action. It’s a small business marketing strategy that involves telling consumers what you want them to do—click a link to a page on your website, buy something right away, or subscribe to your email list. Having a click-worthy, yet simple CTA makes it easier to convert your audience to customers.

Here are some good examples of easy CTAs to include at the end of a blog article on your website:

• prompt your audience to visit a page that details a service that you provide
• sign up for a free e-book or other lead-generation tools
• watch a video that gives more details on your business

Here are some examples of a CTA for a social post:

• tag your product or business in an image
• leave a review in a local directory
• write a recommendation on your Facebook page

Whatever CTA you choose should be highly visible to your potential customer so they are more likely to click on it and take an action.

Social Media Acronyms

Social media is a go-to resource for marketing to customers online. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram (great for B2C), Twitter, and LinkedIn (great for B2B) are all places that allow you to take actions such as share informational videos, link to your website, offer free resources, create engaging content and generally promote your brand to a large audience.

SMM: Social Media Management OR Social Media Marketing

SMM stands for Social Media Management or Social Media Marketing.

Small businesses that use social media to create online visibility through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter often choose to outsource this task to a marketing agency or social media manager.

Social media managers often have the necessary tools and expertise to create strong and engaging content that will help increase brand visibility on these online platforms. This may include creating written content, videos, and graphics; scheduling content, monitoring and replying to comments, and interacting with followers. Social media managers also typically gather data on social media engagement to help you get a good idea of what strategies are working best.

SMM can also refer to social media marketing, which small businesses can leverage to promote themselves online and gain new leads or attract new customers. Social media marketing can include both organic and paid strategies.

Organic social media marketing is free, meaning you can create content that is engaging for social media users without paying for advertising or paying for clicks. Here are some great ways to utilize this strategy:

• Create a live video going “behind the scenes” in your business.
• Do a giveaway or contest for a free item or a discount on a purchase.
• Write blogs and share the links in your feed.
• Provide free downloadable resources.
• Tag other businesses for cross-promotion opportunities.

Check out this post for more creative ideas for using social media to build your brand awareness and connect with your ideal customer.

SMO: Social Media Optimization

SMO stands for Social Media Optimization. You can think of it as the SEO of the social media world. This is the process of implementing best practices and strategies to make sure your social media pages are being found when people search within the platforms. Having a strong SMO will increase exposure, traffic, likes, and followers and could go a long way towards helping you reach local customers in your community.

SMO tactics include sharing engaging content and links, using current and trending hashtags, providing interesting and useful tools or videos, or following people on various platforms who might be interested in your products or service.

One of the most important parts of a good SMO strategy is to ensure that you have the right information on each platform. Make sure the text in your Instagram bio includes keywords that your audience may be looking for. Research what your ideal customers are looking for on their chosen social media site, then create a user experience that tailors to that customer. There are plenty of SMO tactics that are free, so be sure to take advantage of this easy opportunity to get in front of your ideal audience.

Acronyms Related to Search Engines

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is used to help improve a website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPS) like Google, allowing sites to be found more easily by users who type in relevant search queries. This includes making small changes on your website, editing, and regularly updating content for web pages so Google’s algorithm recognizes a site as being relevant and worth ranking highly at the top of its searches. In the world of online marketing, good SEO is one of the most important things you can do to help your business be seen.

There are a lot of things that go into a good SEO strategy, and the Google algorithm seems to be constantly changing, making it confusing for some business owners to know how to help their site rank well. Here are some things that help sites rank well with Google and other search engines:

• mobile optimization or mobile-friendly layout, meaning your site looks good on a mobile web browser
• SEO optimized text that includes keywords that you want your site to rank for
• strong site speed, meaning that your site loads within a timely manner (one way to do this is to make sure your photo and video files aren’t too large)
• internal links to other pages on your site
• external links to other websites that Google finds relevant
• backlinks, meaning other websites link your products or services on their website
• a URL that is easy to read and relevant to your site

A good SEO strategy will improve your online presence and visibility. You can optimize your content by building an ongoing SEO plan, because you need to be continuously updating your website in order to stay relevant. You can utilize an online tool to help with things like keyword research and content optimization, or you can outsource these tasks to an agency. The goal is that when users type in keywords that are relevant to your product or services, your URL will be one of the first links in the search engine results. Having quality keyword content will help bring traffic to your website and more visitors means more sales!

SEM: Search Engine Marketing

SEM refers to search engine marketing. Unlike search engine optimization, which mostly relies on unpaid traffic to increase rankings in search results, SEM is a type of paid marketing where you pay for your content to show up in search engines. By paying for ads through a platform like Google Adwords, you are essentially reducing the time it takes in order to show up in SERPs. This strategy requires businesses to do some research on what keywords they should be targeting in order to find the most relevant user and then writing ads that will lure these users into clicking through to their website.

Advertising Acronyms

When it comes to advertising online, things are constantly changing as technology evolves, and there are a lot of metrics and data points that a company can look at to measure success. We’ll go through some of the most common acronyms and what they mean so you can get a good idea of how to calculate ROI for your advertising and find the most cost-efficient tool for generating new leads.

PPC: Pay Per Click

PPC is a type of marketing where businesses pay only when someone clicks on their ad or link in. PPC advertising can be used almost anywhere that people spend time online, and can consist of video, graphic, or text ads. Some places you might find PPC ads online are:

• Facebook, Twitter, and other social media newsfeeds
• Google Ads, which show up in the first few Google search results
• In desktop or mobile browsers when you are reading the news or browsing your favorite local sports page
• In mobile apps while you’re checking the weather or playing a game
• In “commercial breaks” on a YouTube video or other social media video

It’s important to know how to target your ideal consumer before creating a PPC campaign. There are several different tactics that you could use to create a strong PPC campaign:

• keyword search targeting, such as the keywords that people type into Google or other search engines to find something they’re actively looking for
• behavior targeting, where you use a person’s online and offline data to target your ideal audience
• geofencing, where you use online tools to serve ads in a specific geographic location
• site retargeting, where you serve ads to people who have visited a certain web page

Some advertising and marketing agencies use only Google ads when creating PPC campaigns. However, if you want a more robust campaign with a higher likelihood of reaching a more targeted audience (and increasing your click-through rate), look for an agency that provides a robust targeted digital advertising program with multiple tactics.

CPC: Cost Per Click

CPC, or cost per click, is how much you pay for each click on your advertisement. CPC helps business owners measure the performance of their ad. A lower CPC usually means a higher ROI. When building an ad campaign, marketers should aim for a CPC that falls within their industry standards. It is important to note that the average CPC varies widely by industry and by the competitiveness of the keywords. For example, you may pay a higher CPC for a keyword that many people or searching or that many companies are trying to rank for, than you would for a very specialized, low-competition keyword.

To calculate CPC, take the total spend amount divided by the number of clicks. This number may vary throughout the duration of your ad campaign.

CTR: Click-Through Rate

CTR is the percentage of total clicks that an online advertisement receives within a given time frame. CTR is measured as a percentage and can be calculated by dividing the number of impressions served by the number of clicks received. CTR is typically a strong metric when measuring how successful an ad campaign has been.

Wrapping It All Up

Whether you’re focusing on your social media presence, trying to up your SEO game, or diving into the word of paid advertising, these are some of the most used marketing acronyms that you should know if you want to increase your knowledge of how to market your small business on the internet. Having a strong overall strategy can help you reach more potential customers and grow your sales.

New marketing acronyms are popping up every day, and it can be hard to keep track of what they all mean, as well as to keep up with the changes in trends and best practices. If you are ready to dive into any of these digital strategies, contact Rise Marketing Solutions today!