Glossary of Marketing Acronyms

A ZAA Marketing Glossary of Acronyms

If there’s one thing that you can guarantee about Marketing talk, it’s the overwhelming amount of acronyms that are used! So here’s a little ZAA Marketing guide to some of the most used terms.

 Marketing Acronyms

AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action 
The marketing funnel. The steps that are taken by a consumer on their route to purchase.

B2B – Business to Business 
When a business sells their product / service to another business. The business is the end user.

B2C – Business to Consumer 
When the end user of the business activity is the final consumer.

C2A – Call To Action
A reminder to get the customer to progress towards finding out further information or buying the product. This is often in the form of a button, link or message to promote action.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management
This is the process / tool by which a company keeps in contact with their customers / clients. A system that brings together and records all your sales, marketing and promotional activities. 

DOOH – Digital Out Of Home
This is the digitised form of out of home advertising across billboards, interior advertising screens in shopping centres, taxi screens and bus shelters. 

KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid
Often used when referring to the approach taken to devising marketing messaging. When adopting this style of messaging, you’re making a conscious effort to ensure that everything is easy to understand. 

KPI – Key Performance Indicator
The method of measuring how successful a marketing campaign is. This could include increased visitors to website, brand awareness, more followers across social media channels or an uplift in sales.

OOH – Out Of Home
In Advertising terms, this refers to out of home advertising solutions, such as advertising on billboards, bus shelters, buses, taxis and benches.

PESO – Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned
This acronym refers to media channel landscape used for marketing businesses. Paid Media: TV, Print, Online and Social Media Ads. Owned Media: Website, Blogs, Apps and Email Newsletters (controlled by the business) Shared Media (Social Media) Facebook, Google Business, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. Earned Media: Word of Mouth, News Mentions, Reviews, Shares and Social Media Interactions.

PEST – Political, Economical, Social, Technological
These are factors that could affect the smooth running of a business. They’re mainly external influences to the business, which you’re unable to directly control but need to aware of and have a plan to navigate. Examples of the factors could be an Election, a Pandemic, Brexit, a Heatwave – basically a combination of everything happening in the UK right now!

POEM – Paid, Owned, Earned Media
This refers to the media channels used by individuals and businesses. Paid Media: TV, Print, Online and Social Media Ads. Owned Media: Website, Blogs, Apps and Email Newsletters (controlled by the business) Earned Media: Word of Mouth, News Mentions, Reviews, Shares and Social Media Interactions.

ROI – Return on Investment
Whether there is a significant benefit to the marketing activity. This could be from a financial or effectiveness point of view. 

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
Techniques that can be applied to a website to ensure that it achieves high organic status on search engines.

SERP – Search Engine Results Page 
These are the results that show up once you have searched for your chosen keyword / phrases in a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo). These results will include a combination of organic results, paid ads, images and videos.

SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timed
This term is often used when creating business goals / objectives to ensure that they can be measured. 

SMEs – Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
The size of the business. It is thought that over 99% of UK businesses are SMEs.

SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
These relate to the analysis of the business environment. This is a really important activity to undertake as it makes businesses aware of their position in the market. This should be factored into a Marketing Audit – read here.

UGC – User Generated Content
This could be anything from photos, content and video that has been created by the user / customer / client. This is very popular in marketing as it gives an authentic feel and seal of approval to the product or service.

USP – Unique Selling Point
This is how you stand out from your competition, what makes your company different from all the others in your sector. Do you have a special product, an excellent reputation, dedicated staff?

UX – User Experience
All the factors that can contribute towards a positive or negative user experience with a business and their touchpoints.

4 Ps – Product, Price, Promotion, Place
These are often referred to as the Marketing Mix. They are the significant factors to consider when taking a product / service to market.

More ZAA Marketing Blog Posts