Online Marketing Terms – Explained
In every business, and even hobbies, certain jargon is used by people who’ve been involved with it for a while. When someone new comes along this jargon can be very off-putting. It often makes them feel like an outsider, and even could result in putting someone off completely. You need to be very careful you don’t leave people out with your industry jargon when your business depends on people as customers.
With that said, it’s recently been realized that online marketing has more than its share of industry terms for the newbie to learn. Since marketing in any form is all about getting and keeping new customers, it’s obvious that online marketers have a bit of an image problem. This was pointed out very plainly by a colleague who was interested in working online, and seeking an explanation. He stopped me mid sentence with the words “speak English geek” that was a wakeup call.
Here is a short guide to online marketing terms. These terms will help anyone on the outside of the internet marketing circle get on the inside much quicker.
- Ebook – although very popular this still causes some confusion. A ebook is just an electronic book that you read on your pc. It can be a .pdf file, plain text file or an executable file (one which is actually a self contained program to run on your computer). Ebooks sell really well online because no shipping charges are involved and delivery is instant.
- Joint Venture – a partnership. Simply two or more people work together to increase their sales, or to complete a product or service. Often shortened to JV, joint ventures can be very profitable.
- MLM – the initials of one of the least understood of business models, Multi Level Marketing. Also known as network marketing or referral marketing, MLM is the ideal business model for online marketers. It’s easy to get the message out about a new business, and it’s extremely low cost to advertise online. The problem with MLM is that it’s also easy to mistake a pyramid scheme (also called a ponzi scheme) for an MLM opportunity. There are many unscrupulous people who will sell pyramid schemes as an MLM opportunity. The biggest difference is that a genuine Mutli Level Marketing plan has a worthwhile product to sell, and money is also made by referring other sellers of the product, whose sales in turn generate a commission for you. Pyramid schemes often have a worthless product, or no product at all, and usually pays people mainly from new members joining.
- Niche Marketing –act of selling to a particular group of people. There are many untapped niches, which are small groups of people interested in a specific subject. These people are willing to pay for information. It’s pretty easy to target these niche markets online by monitoring search engine results. You want to find a specific word or phrase which is being searched for, but not near the top of the list of popular searches. An example of a niche market is poodle owners. They’re dog owners, but are specifically searching for information about poodles. These markets can be very profitable because they’re not directly targeted by many other businesses. If you offer products tailored to a niche market, you’ll have little or no competition.
- Online Marketing – selling any product or service on the internet. Marketing is merely the act of selling something. Selling on the world wide web costs less than having a real world, brick and mortar business. The low cost of entry is an attractive reason for starting your own online business.
- Subscriber List – sometimes known as an email list, newsletter list, or an ezine list (ezine is short for electronic magazine). This is a list of people who have given permission for the marketer (you) to send them emails which may contain advertisements. It’s also known as an opt-in list, because subscribers ‘opt in’ to receive the emails. This prevents people from claiming an email is spam because there will be a record of them signing up and agreeing to receive them. In relation to this term, another popular snippet of jargon is double opt-in, which simply means after filling in a form, the potential subscriber then receives an email asking them to verify that they agree to accept future emails. They must agree and confirm before they’re added to the email list they wish to receive.
- Viral Marketing – used to describe a way of increasing your business, or websites reach, by using a “viral technique”. In real life, a virus spreads out by people contacting one another, and computer viruses are spread by contacting other computers. Some clever marketers realized they could use the power of people sending each other information, and watched information about their own business being spread in the same way as a virus. If you give away a free gift, which includes a link to your business, and then you allow others to give it away, it works like a virus spreading the word to others as people send it on to their friends. This technique works extremely well, providing your freebie is something of worth that people would give away in the first place.
I hope if you’re a newbie that these brief explanations of online marketing terms will help you to more clearly understand some of the things the experienced online marketers say and write about. If you’re a seasoned marketer, I hope you’ll try to use less of the jargon we take for granted with your newbie colleagues and friends.
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