small-business-marketing

Every business specialty has its own language. I know this all too well, since I come from an information technology background where you can literally drown in a sea of acronyms, abbreviations, and arcane terms.

The world of B2B marketing isn't much better, especially if you're new to it. Online marketing in particular uses a jumble of cryptic abbreviations that can intimidate outsiders. If you own a small business, however, it's essential that you get a working knowledge of these terms.

I can't run down every example here, but I will get you started with a list of 10 essentials. Better yet, you can use these terms to do additional research and learn even more about the field.

ROI: Return on investment. It means exactly what you think it does: The quantifiable return you can expect to get on any business investment.

CPM: Cost per thousand. This usually refers to the cost of purchasing 1,000 online ad impressions; it's related to CPI (cost per impression). Both of these involve the number of online ad impressions actually served, not the number readers click on.

CPC: Cost per click-through. Also referred to as PPC (pay per click), this is another online advertising model where advertisers only pay the publisher when the ad is clicked on - not just served.

CTR: Click-through rate. This is the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of impressions. Publishers that can guarantee higher click-through rates generally command higher prices for their ad space.

PPL: Pay per lead. This takes us one notch higher on the Internet advertising ladder, where advertisers only pay for lead generation, as defined by some specific action like completing a registration form or a survey.

CPA: Cost per acquisition. This is usually defined even more specifically than PPL - when, for example, a customer actually makes a purchase on the advertiser's site.

PR: Page rank. This usually refers to how Google ranks a website's relevance to a particular search term. In Google's case, ranking in the top 10 is the magic number, since that puts you on the first page of search results.

PV: Page view. A metric that shows the number of times visitors view a particular web page. Note that this is not the same as the number of individuals who view the page.

SEM: Search engine marketing. This is a vital (and extremely lucrative) marketing specialty that emphasizes the role search engines like Google play in driving traffic to a website. Search engine optimization (or SEO) is usually considered an important part of SEM.

SMM: Social media marketing. This is SEM's fast-growing kid brother. It covers everything from marketing a business on Facebook and Twitter to using social content such as blogs and online video to drive lead generation efforts.

Like I said, we're barely scratching the surface here. But if you start your B2B marketing research with these terms, I'm confident that you'll find more than enough useful information to keep you busy.