Jargon busting: The ten worst phrases in digital marketing
Digital marketing has become synonymous with TLAs (three letter acronyms), buzzwords and obfuscation. Here Harriet Geoghegan lists the ten worst pieces of jargon.
Have you ever found yourself using the term “We need to educate the client”? Have you ever sent a report accompanied by a glossary? Do the titles on your lengthy PowerPoint presentations contain more than one acronym?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you need to cut the bullshit right away.
The digital marketing industry has developed a terrible habit, and it needs to go. Every discussion, process, report and presentation seems to be positively dripping in acronyms, labels, made up names and over the top technical minutiae. This is a trend that’s been around since digital marketing was in its infancy, and has grown wildly out of control.
In the past, digital marketing was a cash-cow shrouded in mystery – god forbid your client figure out how you’re getting them to number one in the search engine, lest they start doing it themselves.
Where we are all letting ourselves down is assuming that clients want to be talked about in technical terms. We’ve got so excited by all the data we have, that we’ve ended up swamping clients and superiors with answers to questions that they aren’t actually asking. Your client doesn’t want to know about your click-through-rate, they want to know if the campaign is making them money. They don’t want to know the page-views and time-on-site, they want to know how the improvements you’re suggesting are going to improve the bottom line.
So in the interest of cutting through the jargon I’ve compiled a list of the worst offenders, what they really mean and why they need to go.
1. Remarketing
Remarketing is quite possibly my favourite piece of digital jargon. It’s almost beautiful in its outrageous level of abstraction. Remarketing is generally translated by agency folk as “You know when you’re browsing the web, and an ad for a site is basically stalking you wherever you go? Yeah, that’s us remarketing to you.”
Given almost every time one uses the term, it needs a lengthy explanation, remarketing is at the top of the list. Instead, try the plain English description of exactly what you’re planning to do and why:
“We’d like to run an online advertising campaign that targets only people that have been to your site before. This type of campaign generally has really great results because we know the audience is already interested. Because the audience is so relevant, the overall cost is a lot less.”
2. Attribution Modelling
Attribution Modelling is a simple concept dressed up as something far more technical than it really is. Attribution modelling is the process of working out which of your marketing activities resulted in sales, and which proportion. Given your customers will often be marketed to in a range of different ways before they make a purchase (see a TV ad, search in Google, like your Facebook page, go to your website three more times whilst comparing to your competitors, then finally go into your store and purchase…), there are many ways to cut that cake.
Whilst digital marketers get super excited when they get more data, they are also at high risk of ending up chasing their own tails creating complicated models to apportion percentages that in reality are pulled completely out of thin air.
If you can’t completely track every customer interaction end-to-end, keep it simple and focus on what’s relevant and what the real question is. If the client wants to know whether it is worth focussing on Facebook, all you need to tell them is that 30 per cent of their sales come from customers who saw the Facebook page first, and searched for their website after. No need to overdo it.
3. Growth Hacking
If you are using the term “Growth Hacking” you need to stop what you’re doing immediately, go home and have a big long think about your actions.
If you are a client and your agency uses the term “Growth Hacking” the most appropriate response is to stand up immediately, thank the person as politely as possible given the circumstances, leave the room and never, ever respond to their calls or emails.
4. Big Data
‘Big Data’ seems more like something a US politician would invent to try and stir up a conspiracy theory. That’s also why it’s not surprising at all that most searches for ‘Big Data’ in Australia come from Canberra.
Big data is basically just a brand name that’s been given to the sudden onslaught of data available now that everyone lives their lives in a happy online ecosystem of misunderstood privacy settings.
By putting a name like ‘Big Data’ on it, companies can sell data analysis as a sexy, new product that everyone needs.
5. Click Through Rate
Click through rate is one of the most reported but least useful metrics in the digital world. Click through rate is the percentage of people that click on your ads. As a standalone metric it is entirely useless – no-one cares about a great click through, they care about sales. If that’s what your agency is reporting on, there is a big mismatch between their goals and yours, and it needs a serious, urgent conversation.
However, click through rate in the wider context of the customer interaction can be a useful way to identify where problems lie – if everyone’s clicking but no-ones buying, ask yourself some key questions: does your website suck? Are the ads misleading? Again though, the conversation should be around the stage in the process that is falling down and what you’re going to do about it, not the metric.
6. UX
UX is a slightly abstracted abbreviation for User Experience that helps web designers to bond with their programmer colleagues by sounding more technical. When people are talking about UX/User Experience, they are talking about reviewing a website or process to make sure that users are able to easily understand the site, and complete the action they are supposed to, and do it as easily as possible – buy a product, call a sales rep, download an eBook or even simply getting directions and opening hours to a retail store.
User Experience in itself is not the worst digital jargon offender, but there should absolutely be a moratorium on using the acronym in any external contexts.
7. Link Building
No, it’s not a cool new environmentally friendly construction technique, it’s a digital marketing tactic. Link building is the process of getting other sites to publish content that has links (as in hyperlinks that people can click) to your site. This is was important as Google used to think that the amount of links a site had were a direct indicator of how popular the site was and therefore meant it should be in a higher position on a search engine. It is entirely unsurprising that an entire industry then developed around manufacturing links to sites, typically run by guys with spare rooms full of servers making up a whole bunch of fake websites.
Thankfully, Google woke up and saw the light on that glaringly obvious mistake. It is important to note that links are still (and will be for the foreseeable future) part of the equation, but Google is far more savvy about working out whether links occur naturally (someone posting a product recommendation) vs unnaturally (on a directory site that is entirely designed to create links back to websites to game the system).
“Link building” shouldn’t ever be valid part of the conversation. Instead, consider it PR for the online world and remember: people talking about you = good; robots creating links to your site = bad.
8. Paid Search
There’s a deeply held secret in the digital marketing world, and I’m probably going to get into trouble for letting the cat out of the bag. No-one actually knows what to call online advertising.
It started with banner ads, where you had to contact the site owner and arrange for you banner to be placed on site, much like you would take out an ad in the newspaper. From there, search engine advertising evolved. For the most part, agencies were operating on a few platforms, so were doing “AdWords”, “social media advertising”, or “Yahoo ads”. Soon the differentiation became search engine ads that you were paying for (“paid search”) versus that from attempts to show up without paying (SEO, or organic search).
Digital marketers quickly cottoned on to the fact that a good strategy will likely require more than one platform, and started giving it umbrella terms like ‘Real- Time-Bidding’ as platforms became auction based. Now, you’re starting to hear all about ‘Programmatic’ as the catch all that covers online advertising that is generally achieved with some kind of bidding/placement program – be it the AdWords interface, or an in-house trading desk at the agency.
When they’ve settled on a name, I’ll let you know.
9. PPC
PPC refers to pay-per-click. Whilst in most scenarios, no-one cares how they’re being charged for a product or service, it can be useful to differentiate between paying per click on an ad, versus paying every time someone sees an ad, and paying for an ad only when it results in a sale (pay-per-acquisition). But be sure to take a step back and think about why this differentiation is important – paying per impression works when your goal is brand awareness, paying per click works if your goal is website traffic, paying per acquisition works when your goal is sales (and the advertiser is willing to have that pricing model).
The important trend is the focus on matching the strategy with the goal. Make sure you’re continually talking about the end goal of your client, rather than using an unnecessary acronym for a payment model with no context.
Note that PPC/Pay-Per-Click and CPC/Cost-Per-Click are often used interchangeably.
10. Above the Fold
Above the fold refers to the part of a website that is visible without having to scroll, with any website content that you have to scroll to see being “below the fold.” It’s a key idea in web design because of the fundamental principle that humans are lazy and you should avoid making them do extra stuff at all costs.
It was probably coined around a boardroom table where someone printed off a website, folded a piece of paper and said “everything above the fold is visible without the user having to scroll down the page” and all the executives nodded and went “Oooohhhh interesting” and for some ridiculous reason it just stuck.
So in the context of jargon busting, that first use of it was probably a perfect use – describing it within context and in plain English. Unfortunately it has become jargonised and now sounds pretty absurd.
- Harriet Geoghegan is an account manager at Switched On Media
Harriet, your speculation about the origins of the term “above the fold” makes me feel inexpressibly ancient. It’s a term that dates back to broadsheet newspapers, like the Australian is, and the SMH and Age used to be, and it was either heaven or hell – depending on the story – to see your client/story front page, above the fold.
I’ll just pop my teeth back out and shuffle me and my zimmer frame back into the cupboard.
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Wow, what a silly article, trivialising some very important concepts in marketing today.
You might want to chat to companies like Twitter, Airbnb and Uber about whether Growth Hacking is a worthwhile thing to do.
Sometimes novel ideas and approaches require a new name.
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“Attribution Modelling is a simple concept dressed up as something far more technical than it really is”.
Can’t the whole digital marketing world be pretty much summed up by this?
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@Father Time – thanks for letting me know! I think a fair bit of digital jargon comes from more traditional industries, though if wee young’ns like me have to dig around for the origin it’s probably a good indicator we need to use a plain English explanation!
@Umm – agree these are some important concepts, but the point is to think about the language we use to describe them to clients and those external to the organisation that may not know/recognise them. That and to never be afraid to have a laugh at ourselves.
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Bravo Harriet. Thanks for calling time on sales jargon.
People prefer plain English or simple words to jargon and buzzwords.
Mmmm. Now what does ‘digital’ mean?
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Jargon is really just a definition of a word or term that’s accurate only at a specific time. It’s jargon while only a few understand what it means. A term can be a really useful shorthand once everyone is down with its meaning. For instance, GPS and WiFi were both jargon terms until everyone understood what they were and how they worked.
I be more inclined to buy the well-meaning intention of this piece if it was solely about removing things that have no real use or utility. Something like remarketing, however, does and it’s likely to continue. Given that’s the case, instead of saying to my clients:
“We’d like to run an online advertising campaign that targets only people that have been to your site before. This type of campaign generally has really great results because we know the audience is already interested. Because the audience is so relevant, the overall cost is a lot less.”
..I’d really much rather just say, “let’s remarket” and have them understand what I mean to begin with.
Much simpler, no?
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What a ridiculous article. The phrases highlighted are pretty descriptive of the concept and easy for the client/stakeholders to understand.
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I’d say some of the phrases listed in here are actually very descriptive and important elements of digital marketing. Remarketing might be used poorly by some advertisers, but that doesnt make it a useless phrase of jargon. Above the Fold? Thats an important phrase, especially when we start talking viewability. Sorry, I have to disagree with a fair chunk of this article.
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I like the spirit of this. Totally agree we should laugh at ourselves.
I get where the jargon comes from, and I think many of us secretly like the feeling of superiority that comes with using words that others don’t understand.
But on the flipside jargon can make people feel excluded or stupid if they don’t know what it means. Surely that’s not helpful for paying clients who are just trying to decide on the best use of their money?
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@Harriet
Or maybe renaming or reframing something, offers it the ability to stand for something that breaks from the past. You know, like those ridiculous buzzwords of the past – ‘gravity’ and ‘automobiles’.
Having a laugh is one thing, dismissing important, proven concepts without giving them due credit for their impact is very much another.
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A better definition of remarketing: Trying to get me to buy something I once looked at but decided against, by stalking me for weeks afterwards.
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I’m tipping Harriet hasn’t had much experience with genuine attribution modelling if she thinks it’s a simple concept.
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gee, there are a few growth-hacking big data enthusiasts on mumbrella today!
i agree with the complainers on “above the fold” though, that term pre-dates digital marketing by a long way
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@Father Time. Whilst SMH and The Age might have ‘quirked’ up their offering. The Australian is about as ‘Broadsheet’ as Fox News.
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On Attribution modeling,… “whilst digital marketers get super excited when they get more data, they are also at high risk of ending up chasing their own tails creating complicated models to apportion percentages that in reality are pulled completely out of thin air”.
This is wrong. Sales / lead data is not ‘thin air’. If this were the case attribution modelers and a great many number of data scientists would be out of a job!
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GREAT ARTICLE. 10/10
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Re:Remarketing – one really annoying thing about things like Criteo is that you have no way to indicate you’re no longer interested in hearing about vacuums from Store X because you already bought the vacuum! A “this ad is no longer relevant” option – like what Google Ads does – would be useful.
“Above the fold” that’s a term from the print world, then desktop publishing, then web 1.0 onwards. #getoffmylawn #damnkids
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I think I dislike “Above the fold” more than I dislike Growth Hacking, and I can’t stand Growth Hacking!
There are so many clever articles explaining why Above the Fold is a myth and people should stop talking about it.
http://www.rareview.com/scroll.....fold-myth/
http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/
et al
if you ask me, the fact that Harriet didn’t know the origin of the phrase “above the fold” (to the extent that she embarrassed herself with a speculative potential reason) simply highlights the problem with digital marketing and digital marketers, full stop – they wear their profound ignorance of the rest of the media and marketing landscape like a badge of honour
i will never forget when a 27 year old ‘digital native’ media buyer at our agency of record (at the time) suggested we advertise on Facebook to drive supplemental traffic to boost our SEM efforts.
We had to gently remind her that we were spending $6m a year in free to air TV through her agency, because that’s the form of media most consumed by our target audience – and therefore what the old-fashioned “traditional” media buyer at her agency had recommended
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I love this piece! Smart.
I want to hire you!
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“Thankfully, Google woke up and saw the light on that glaringly obvious mistake.”
Only somebody who has literally no understanding of data mining, networks or even the history of search could say something so jarringly ignorant.
Rather than rank a page based on how many times a keyword appeared on a page, Google search used the PageRank algorithm counted human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are themselves likely to be important. Although, yes, there was a serious flaw in this plan, it is considerably harder to fake than the previous method. I hope no one here is confused as to why it’s considerably more meaningful to count links from other sources rather than the occurrence of a keyword on your own page.
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Hello Harriet,
It may interest you to know, that one of Switched on Media’s foundation services was the above mentioned ‘Growth Hacking’. So maybe it is you who should ‘ stand up immediately, thank the person as politely as possible given the circumstances, leave the room and never, ever respond to their calls or emails.’
Kind Regards,
The Ghost of Switched On Media
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@Anonymous Johnno, Is that you?
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Strange piece. Half are legit terms, and the other half seriously irritating (to some) emperor’s new suit words. Growth Hacking and Big Data are nauseous. Am I the only old marketing type with no issues with the term Marketing? I also picture pivot tables every time someone waxes on about big data, in case you do too and need a therapy mate.
Also, you forgot to mention labeling yourself Innovative or Disruptive or a similarly obnoxious term (unless you’re the ghost the lovechild of Tesla & Gutenberg or something equally ridiculous). I read a column where someone likened it to deciding you are now a Ninja Master. That said, language is living and I got over giggling at the word monetise in the late 90s and even use it now, so perhaps I will become…
A Growth Hacking, Innovating & Disrupting Freakonimical Monetisation Ninja with Mad Skillz at .. um .. Marketing.
..That was more fun than CMO, admittedly.
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Your’e a very good writer Harriet. You took the piss of people who deserve it and educated me at the same time. Do lots more of this.
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