Top 10 Marketing and Advertising Terms for 2018

As a business owner or marketer, you probably have a good handle on the language of marketing. But maybe you’re not fluent in digital advertising jargon or radio speak, or you’ve run into the occasional acronym that requires a Google search. We’ve all been there, especially as new digital platforms are taking off or search engines change the rules.

That’s why we’ve listed ten marketing and advertising terms below, to help ensure you’re on top of relevant trends and checking the right boxes into next year with your campaigns.

And if you want to dig even deeper, we cover more marketing, radio, and digital advertising definitions in our ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Marketing & Advertising Terms.

10 (of 40) Marketing & Advertising Terms

1. Contextual Targeting

This type of targeting uses keywords or topics you’ve chosen to match your ads to relevant sites and web pages. Google analyzes the content of each webpage to determine its “theme,” which is then matched to your ad based on a variety of factors including your keywords and topic selections, language and location targeting, visitors’ recent browsing history, and more.

For example, if you were to put together a Google AdWords campaign for your dealership’s new lineup and include keywords like “Chicago dealerships” and “2018 electric cars,” Google applies contextual targeting to identify and place your ad on pages that match those keywords.

2. Endorsement

In the radio world, an endorsement is the spoken approval and recommendation by a radio station personality (e.g., a DJ or show host) for a brand, product, or service. This can take place during their normal program live on the air and/or during commercial breaks.

70% of listeners think of their favorite radio host or personality like a friend whose opinion they value, while another 52% say that radio hosts influence their opinion. Can you think of a local radio personality with a large following that would be great to tie to your brand?

3. Frequency

Either the number of times an individual is actually exposed to an ad or marketing message within a particular period of time, or the number of times exposed required to influence an individual to take action.

Marketers agree that repetition serves to keep your brand top of mind, but there’s no exact formula to achieve the perfect frequency for maximum impact. How many radio spots you produce and place will ultimately depend on how many stations you utilize, which dayparts your ads will air on, current awareness of your brand, plus listening habits of your target audience.

In other words, you may need five spots per station per week—or you may need 15! It’s a delicate balancing act, so be sure to work with your media partner to zero in on the right frequency for your needs and goals.

4. Marketing Automation / Drip Marketing

There is probably a long list of marketing tasks that get done (or should get done) on a routine basis. These include scheduling social media posts, sending emails to nurture prospective customers and check in with current ones, and more.

Marketing automation is exactly what it sounds like—the process of automating marketing tasks through software platforms and technologies to streamline and automate repetitive tasks. Drip marketing is another term sometimes used for this process, especially with email marketing automation, as it reflects the steps (or “drips”) that are setup to automatically trigger upon an event.

For example, if a prospect subscribes to your blog, it might make sense to add them to an automated workflow with email content and offers relevant to the information they checked out. Marketing automation can help keep your content strategy consistent, while saving you and your team precious time.

5. Mobile Optimization / Responsive Design

A recent report argues that U.S. mobile search is roughly 58 percent of overall search query volume. Today, people just expect to be able to use their mobile devices for any search, just as they would a desktop or laptop. You might think that your website is mobile-friendly because it can be visited from a smartphone, but does it look the same as the desktop experience?

A website built with responsive design will load, appear, and function properly on any screen, automatically resizing in response to the device in use. All content should adjust seamlessly.

6. Native Advertising

A type of paid advertising that utilizes content (including video) that blends in with the content of the channel. The idea is to provide a seamless user experience, which translates into improved trust and engagement (i.e., clicks). A study by Business Insider showed that native ads have higher click-through rates than traditional digital ads.

Native advertising’s key differentiator is that some people don’t see it as advertising at all. The content aligns with the publication or website’s style and tone, and provides the kind of information that the audience expects to find there.

Types of native advertising include in-feed sponsored content, promoted listings, and contextually relevant ads. It’s critical that native advertising is clearly labeled as such, even though many readers look over these labels or cues.

7. Omni Channel

A marketing strategy that uses more than one media outlet (e.g., radio, TV, social media, SEM, etc.) to ensure a brand message reaches customers throughout the buyer’s journey, across devices, in a variety of places. Omni-channel campaigns present and build a cohesive brand image and can improve your overall marketing results.

Research shows that incremental ROI can be expected when adding platforms—what’s sometimes called the “Kicker Effect.” ROI increases with each added platform up to five, at which point ROI is increased 35% over just one platform.

8. Reputation Management

The active process of managing brand perception. In the not so distant past, that included word-of-mouth, plus mentions and coverage in the newspaper, broadcast TV, and radio. Today, a critical part of any brand’s reputation management is monitoring online reviews and conducting social listening, then taking action to mitigate or improve negative situations and build positive perception.

Proactive online reputation management is important—and so is thoughtfully responding to any negative online reviews. Follow these tips to develop a game plan for replying to online reviews.

9. Retargeting

Another type of targeting, this one serving ads to users who have been to your website to browse or make a purchase. Through retargeting, you can serve ads pertaining to what they browsed or to supplement what they’ve already purchased.

For example, if a person visited your furniture store’s website and spent time browsing sectionals, you can retarget them later with ads featuring best-sellers in that category—giving them a nudge to return to your site, or visit you in-store.

10. SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Search Engine Marketing once encompassed both SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search, but over time the acronym has been adopted to refer solely to paid search. This is a type of paid advertising that serves ads (display or text) on search engine results pages directly related to the keywords the user includes in their search query. Google AdWords is the most popular paid search platform used by search marketers.

For our complete list of marketing and advertising terms to know heading into 2018, check out The Ultimate Guide to Marketing & Advertising Terms. Skim, study, or save it for later reference! Click below to download.