Newbies Quick Guide to Online Marketing Terms

Presented by Charles L Harmon

In all forms of business, and even hobbies, the people who have been involved in a particular activity will start to use jargon of that particular field. When someone new comes along this jargon can be very upsetting, making them feel like an outsider. Some people may be put off completely. If your business depends on people as customers, then you need to be careful you don’t drive them away with jargon they don’t understand.

It recently came to my attention that online marketing has more than its share of jargon and acronyms for the newbie to learn. Since marketing is all about getting and keeping customers, I could see as online marketers we have an image problem. Online marketing jargon was pointed out to me vividly by a close friend who was interested in working online.  She asked for an explanation but stopped me as I was talking with the words “speak English, not geek talk”. That moment was my wake up call.

Now I see the light. I decided to write this short guide to some of the online marketing jargon to help anyone on the outside of the internet marketing field to get on the inside much quicker.

1) Online Marketing, is selling any product or service on the internet or World Wide Web. Marketing is just the act of selling something, selling on the web costs less than having a real world, brick and mortar business. It’s this low entry cost which is very attractive in starting your own online business.

2) Joint Ventures, a joint venture is a partnership. Simply put two or more people work together to increase their sales, or to complete a product or service. Often shortened to JV, joint ventures are often very profitable.  Joint ventures are an excellent to help build your list in internet or online marketing.

3) Email List, this is sometimes known as a subscriber list, or ezine list (ezine is short for electronic magazine). It is a list of people who have given permission for the marketer to send them emails which may contain advertisements. This is also known as an opt-in list because subscribers opt in to receive the emails. This prevents people complaining that an email is spam because there will be a record of them signing up and agreeing to receive the emails. Another bit of jargon is double opt-in, which just means after filling in a form, the potential subscriber will receive an email asking them to verify that they agree to accept future emails. If they do then they are actually added to the email list to receive them.

4) Viral Marketing, this little phrase is 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 people realized they could use the power of people sending each other information, and watch information about their own business being spread in the same way as a virus. Giving away a free gift, which contains a link to your business, and allowing others to give it away too will work like a virus spreading the word to others as people send it on to their friends. This only works well as long as your freebie was something people would give away in the first place.

Continued in Part II