Definition of Digital Marketing Words That Begin With “C”
Call To Action (CTA)
What is Call to Action (CTA)? Call to action is basically telling people what they should do next. Call to action could be telling people to call you, to read more, to download something, to buy something, or to take any other action you want your audience to take.
Example of call to action would be telling people to subscribe to my YouTube channel at the end of my video, telling people to download free e-book and videos at the end of my blog, telling people to subscribe to my podcast. That is the call to action that I am giving my audience.
CAN-SPAM Act
What is CAN-SPAM Act? The CAN-SPAM Act is law that regulates how marketers communicate to users through email. This law says that marketers that send mass email has to provide an “unsubscribe” button/option so that people can opt out and stop receiving email from somebody.
This law also says that marketers have to provide their address in each email they send. There are many other things spelled out in the CAN-SPAM Act, but these two are the major things. Failure to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act will result in serious penalties for violations.
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Cart abandonment
What is cart abandonment? Cart abandonment is when an online shopper puts something in their cart but does not complete checking out the product. This term usually applies to digital products because it is very rare for people in brick and mortar stores to put something in their cart, then abandon it and walk away. Cart abandonment rate is the percent of people that puts something in their cart but does not complete the purchase.
Channel(s) in terms of Marketing channel
What is a marketing channel? Marketing channels are the ways that you use to reach your customers. Digital marketing channels are usually categorized into four types of channels.
- One-on-one
- Search
- Social
- Broadcast
These categorizations are not set in stone, but rather they are used as a means to help digital marketers organized their thoughts.
Let’s dive deep into each channel.
One-on-One: is a more direct form of marketing such as an email in your inbox or a text message on your phone or a chatbot messaging you online.
Search: people use words to express to search engines the idea of what they want.
Social: this is the equivalent of word of mouth of the internet
Broadcast: these are like digital billboards, signs on the road, flyers.
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Chat bots
What are chat bots? Chat bots are computer programs that mimics human communication through voice or text. Chat bots are also known as artificial intelligence and they communicate with humans and other computer programs.
Churn
What is churn? Churn is how often your customers leave over a period of time. For example, if you have a membership site. Your churn rate is how often your members cancel their membership.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
What is click through rate? Click through rate is the number of people that click on a link vs the number of people that saw the link. For example, if you sent out an email with a link to 5000 people, 4000 people open the email and read it. That means that 4000 people saw your link and let’s say 1000 people clicked on the link.
This is how the math is done. 1000/4000 = 0.25. This means that you have 0.25*100 = 25% click through rate.
Click To Conversation (CTC)
What is click to conversion? Click to conversion is the number of people that click on your link vs the number of people that took the action you intended. For example, in continuation of our previous email sent. Let’s say out of 1000 people that clicked, 120 people made a purchase. This is how you would do the math. 120/1000 = 0.12. that means that your click to conversion rate is 0.12*100 = 12.0%.
Clickbait
What is clickbait? Clickbait is an enticing image or text that is designed to invoke your natural sense of curiosity. Its intended purpose is to get you to click on a link, read a message, or view something. While click baits are effective, if your content does not match the title that got people to click in the first place, it will hurt you and your brand.
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
What is cost of goods sold? Costs of goods sold is how much it cost to produce the products that you sell. This could mean how much money and/or how much time to cost to produce the products and/or services.
Cohort
What is cohort? Cohort refers to characteristics, events, factors, experiences shared by a group of people. In short, it means a group of people who has something in common. This similarity that this group of people share can be used to create market segments. These factors and experiences that they share can be used in ad targeting and re-targeting.
Cohort analysis/testing
What is cohort testing? What is cohort analysis? Cohort analysis or testing is a practice that aids in the determination of behavioral nature of a cohort over time. This can be used to see and understand patterns exhibited during the lifecycle of the customer also known as the customer journey. Cohort testing implies collecting, storing, and segmenting historical data that can then be analyzed to draw conclusions or be used to make marketing decisions.
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Community management
What is community management? Community management involves managing your online community. Managing your online community could involve responding to comments and questions on YouTube, using twitter for customer service, responding to questions on your Facebook group, replying to comments on your Instagram posts. Community management revolves around interacting with your digital community. A community manager or social media managerfor a business could be responsible for interacting and engaging with the online community of that brand.
Consistency
What is consistency? Consistency is being regular with whatever you are doing. So, in the online community, consistently in terms of YouTube could mean regularly uploading content on YouTube instead of uploading whenever.
Consistency on podcast could mean regularly uploading new podcasts weekly or monthly or whatever frequency you choose instead of once in 6 months. Consistency with blogging could mean regularly pushing out blog content on the time schedules you have set for yourself instead of blogging once in a blue moon.
You always hear things like consistency is key. This is so true because if you continue to do something over time, it will have a compounding effect and everything will continue to grow on top of each other over time. If you do something one time, there is no compounding effect and there will be no growth.
That is why in the beginning, when you first start doing anything like blogging, YouTubing, podcasting, you have to keep at it for a long time to see any real results. If you are a small youtuber, blogger, podcaster, have patience and continue until your results speak for themselves.
Consumer
What is a consumer? The consumer is the entity using the product or service you are offering. The consumer can also be referred to as the user. The consumer includes your online community on social media platforms that consume your content, it includes your ideal customer, it includes other businesses that use your product if you are a B2B business.
Consumer can be the intended person for your product, services, or business. It can also be the person who exchanges value with you and your business through finances, time or other means of value exchange.
Content and Content marketing
What is content? What is content marketing? Content and content marketing can be described as the art of communicating with your prospect, customers, existing audience, target audience by creating something your audience and customers can both enjoy and learn from.
Content can take the shape of video, blog post, an ad copy to engage with customers, or a social media post. You have to adapt your content to the format of the platform you are posting your content on.
For example, you wouldn’t post a blog post on YouTube, even though you can post a video on your blog. You wouldn’t put a 2500 word blog post on twitter although that is possible on Facebook.
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Marketing Conversion
What is marketing conversion? Conversion can be thought of as turning a stranger into a lead for your business and then turning that lead into a paying customer. You could consider a stranger a lead when they take certain actions such as take a quiz or survey, give their email address in exchange for value, fill out an application form. You can consider a lead a customer when that lead becomes a paying customer.
Conversion path
What is conversion path? Conversion path is the trail, the roadmap that a visitor takes to become a customer. This conversion path is determined from the marketer’s point of view. The marketer or website owner gets to decide and create the strategy that a potential visitor will or might go through to become a convert.
Conversion pixel
What is conversion pixel, Facebook pixel, google tracking ID? Conversion pixel is a piece of programming code that you install on your website that tracks all visitors to your website and store information on which visitors become customers or leads.
For example, a conversion pixel might tell you how many unique visitors you got each day, how many repeat visitors you got each day, how many people fill out a form, how many people bought each product on your site, how long people spend on your site.
This piece of code can and will track anything you tell it to track and report it back to you in the form of analytics. This piece of code is not visible to your visitors on the website or webpage, but there are tools out there that can let you know if a website has a pixel code installed or not. You can also opt out of being tracked by pixel codes.
Examples of such pieces of code called a conversion pixel is Facebook pixel and google analytics ID.
The information collected using a pixel code can be used in re-targeting ads or for creating custom audiences for ad campaign. These are just a few of the things it can be used for among other things.
Copy
What is copy? Copy is just written text. Any written text can be considered copy. Copywriters make a living writing quality content for other people and other businesses. What you are reading now is copy. You have things such as sales copy which means using written words to make digital sales. You have ad copy which means the words that you use for persuasion in your ads. Everything that is a written word is copy.
Cost margin or gross margin
What is cost margin or gross margin? To really understand cost margin, you just have to do the math.
Cost margin is total revenue minus cost of production divided by total revenue. The final number is multiplied by 100 to get the cost of margin percentage.
Here is the math. How to calculate cost of margin. Or gross margin.
- Revenue from product = $8
- Cost of production = $2
- Cost margin = $8 — $2 = $6.00;
- $6.00/$8.00 = $0.75 ;
- 0.75*100% = 75.0%
This means your gross margin or cost of margin is 75%. If the cost of production was $4, then your gross margin would be 50%.
Cost per click (CPC)
What is cost per click (CPC)? Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money it cost you for each visitor that clicks a link in your ad campaign to your website or webpage. This term is usually used in advertisement. For example, if you run a google AdWords campaign and it cost you $6 every time somebody click on your ad, then your CPC is $6. if you run an Instagram ad campaign and it cost you $1.5 every time somebody clicks on your ad, then your CPC is $1.5.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
What is cost per lead (CPL)? Cost per lead is how much it cost you for each lead you generate for your business. Lets do the math involved so that you will better understand what cost per lead is. If it cost you $6 per click, that is it cost $6 per person that visits your webpage. Lets assume you get 1000 visitors. This means that it cost you $6000 to get 1000 people on your website.
Now lets assume you are advertising a free digital marketing membership site. Out of the 1000 visitors that come to your website, 500 people actually sign up to be a member. That means that you have generated 500 leads. So the math goes that your cost per lead is number of leads divided by the number of visitors times your cost per click. So, 500/1000 = 0.5. 0.5*$6 = $3.00
Here is the math again. How to calculate cost per lead.
- Cost per click = $6
- # of visitors = 1000
- # of leads = 500
- Cost per Lead = 500/1000 = 0.5; 0.5*$6 = $3.00
- Cost per lead = (# of leads) / (# of visitors) * cost per click.
Cost Per Mille (CPM)
What is cost per mille? Cost per mille impression is how much money you spend per 1000 people that see your ad. For example, when you run a Facebook ad, you get to choose the marketing objective for your ad such as traffic, conversion, engagement, etc. Depending on which objective you choose, you may have to pay based on how many people see your ad and not based on how many clicks you actually get.
Instead of being charged every time somebody clicks on your ad like CPC, you will be charged every time somebody sees your ad regardless of whether they click on it or not. So, cost per mille is cost per 1000 impression which could be $5 for every 1000 people that sees your ad. Mille and 1000 are interchangeable because mille is Italian word for a thousand.
Conversion Rate
What is conversion rate? Conversion rate can be considered the percentage of visitors you get that converts into leads or customers depending on your conversion marketing objective. In continuation of our previous example of cost per lead. If we assume everything above holds true, then there is not much difference between the calculation of cost per lead and conversion rate. In this situation, our conversion is 50%. Here is why. Let’s say we get 1000 visitors to our free digital marketing membership site, 500 of those visitors sign up and become leads. Then our conversion rate will be number of leads divided by number of visitors time 100. 500/1000 = 0.5; 0.5*100 = 50%
Here is the math again. How to calculate conversion rate.
- # of visitors = 1000
- # of leads = 500
- Conversion rate = 500/1000 = 0.5; 0.5*100 = 50%
- Conversion rate = (# of leads) / (# of visitors) * 100.
Crawlers or spiders
What is web crawlers? what is indexing? what are web spiders? Crawlers or Spiders are web search engine bots that move through your website to read what is on your website. Search engine bots can’t read words like the one you are reading now, but rather they read the code of your website and that is how they know what information is on your website.
This is also why having alt-tag description for your images are important. Because search engines spiders can’t see pictures and they rely on the information on the alt-tag of your images to know there is an image on your website and what the image is there for.
The web crawlers take the information on your website and store it in a database. This process of a search engine bot crawling your website and then storing the information in a database to be retrieved later is called indexing.
Whenever somebody goes on search engines such as google and type in something, the database is searched and the information the person is looking for is retrieved from the indexed webpages. In order for your site to be indexed, it needs to have links so that the web crawler can move from page to page. Without hyperlinks, the search engine bot will get stuck.
As a result, that webpage will not be indexed, and it will never be found through google search. This means that particular webpage without links will never rank in google. Any webpage that is not indexed will not benefit from search engine optimization. The lesson here is to make sure all webpages on your website has a link that leads somewhere.
In my Digital Marketing Academy, I dive deep into search engines and how to make sure your sites are indexed, and how to check how many webpages on your website can benefit from Search engine optimization. Click here to learn more about search engine indexing.
Custom audiences
What is customer audiences? Custom audiences is a method of targeting people with your ads based on the people who has previously visited your website or bought something from you before. For example, you can install a Facebook pixel and google analytics code on your website to track and record users that come to your website.
Then, when you go to run ads, you can create a custom audience and tell Facebook or google to target people who has already been to your website or already bought something from you. You can also create a custom audience by uploading the email addresses from your email list. If the user’s email address on Facebook matches the email address you uploaded, they will see your ad. You can also use custom audience to build a look a like audience.
To learn more about how to build a custom audience, be sure to join my Digital Marketing Academy where I dive deep into how to run ads on facebook, google, bing, and yahoo.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
What is customer acquisition cost? Customer acquisition cost is how much it cost a business to acquire one new client or customer. Customer acquisition cost is usually measured by how much money is spent, but it can also be measured by how much time is spent acquiring one new customer.
It could be that it costs you 15 hours of work every week to acquire one new client or it cost you $1,000 to acquire one new client. Time wise, to calculate your customer acquisition cost, just add up how much time you spend over a certain period of time like one week or one month to acquire new clients.
Financially, you calculate how much time it costs you to acquire one new client by dividing your cost of advertisement by your number of acquisitions for that amount of money spent.
Here, lets do the math. How to calculate cost of acquisition
- Cost of ad spent = $10,000 per month
- # of new clients = 20 per month
- Cost of acquisition = $10,000/20 = $500.00 per month.
Customer journey
What is customer journey? Customer Journey also known as Customer Experience is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship. The complete sum of experiences the customer goes through when interacting with your company or brand. Customer journey is usually categorized into 5 stages
- Awareness stage
- Interest stage
- Consideration stage
- Decision stage
- Post-action stage
To learn more about customer journey, be sure to join my Digital Marketing Academy where I dive deeper into all aspects of the customer journey.
Customer lifetime value
What is customer lifetime value? Customer lifetime value is how much money a business generates from each customer throughout the time period that a person remains a customer of that business. For example. Let’s say a customer spends $197 a month with you and the average customer stays with your business for 5 years, then your customer lifetime value is $197 * 60 = $11,820.00 per 5 years. Or $11,820 / 5 = $2,364.00 per year.
Here is the math again. How to calculate customer lifetime value
- Average amount of money customer spends per month or year * how long your customer stays with you.
- With the example above:
- Customer value = $197 per month
- Customer duration. = 5 yrs. = 12 months * 5 = 60 months
- Customer lifetime value = 60 months * $197 = $11,820.00 per 5 years.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
What is customer relationship management (CRM)? Customer relationship management (CRM) is usually a software used for managing the relationship between the business and the customer. It is used to map out the customer journey, figure out what stage of the customer journey somebody is on, keep track of customers, sales, phone calls, text messages, emails, and many other customer-business interactions.
Customer segmentation.
What is customer segmentation? Customer segmentation is dividing and grouping your customers on the basis of demographics, lifestyle, income level, job titles, geography, psychographics, behaviors, gender, interests, age, marital status, family size, workplace, and many more factors. Customer segmentation is important because customers respond differently to different ads based on which group they fit into.
If you know which market segments your audience belongs to, then you can develop different marketing material to suit different market segments. For example, somebody who is married for 20yrs, newly married who is pregnant or expecting dad, and somebody who is single will not respond to the same set of ads. Therefore, you have to develop ads that would be appealing to people that has been married for 20 years. Ads that would be appealing to baby expecting parents, and different ad that would be appealing to a single person.
Crowd sourcing
What is crowd sourcing? Crowd sourcing is when the general public supports a business. Instead of bootstrapping a business which means using your own funds, crowd sourcing companies goes out and pitch their ideas to the public. Through this format, many different people can contribute finances, resources, and supplies to help the company come to life.
Customer co-creation
What is customer co-creation? Customer co-creation is when the customer helps to create content for a brand. Creating content for a brand could mean tutorial videos about the company’s software, review videos or blog about the company products, written reviews of the products and/or services. Co-creation ensures that the company alone is not responsible for creating the content necessary to promote their brand and attract new customers. Their customers help them generate content which might partially alleviate the need to constantly produce content in house.
