With the increasingly digital world that we live in it can be hard to keep up with all the new terms that get banded around. This week we are taking it back to basics and giving the low down on a few of the digital terms that are commonly used.

e-Commerce

Broadly, this refers to companies that use digital tech to sell their products. Any company where you can purchase their goods or services online on their website is classed as e-commerce.

Social Commerce

An extension of e-commerce, some companies have now introduced the ability to buy their products and services using their social media channels.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engines have become one of the core sources of new customers for many companies. Google dominates the search engine market, with Bing! and Yahoo still trying to compete. The main aim of Search Engine Marketing is to appear on the first page of these search engines and attract searchers to click on your link.  There are two main types of Search Engine Marketing – these are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC).

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This is a natural process whereby your website is optimised through its content and structure to appeal to search engines. If you get this right you will organically start to appeal to your target audience and in turn to the search engine algorithms.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

This is where Google makes most of its money. While SEO can take time and significant input from internal resources, pay per click offers businesses the opportunity to appear at the top of the google rankings immediately. The catch, you have to pay for it. Many companies enter a bidding war to appear at the top of the search results for key search terms used by their target audience.

Social Media Marketing

The use of social media by businesses is becoming more and more prevalent. There are various levels of use by companies on social media from simply having a profile page to regular posting and sponsoring their content. Similarly to SEM, social media marketing can be both organic and paid for. With recent changes to the way that the social media channels deal with content from businesses the paid marketing across social media is set to become far more dominant.

There are, of course, a whole range of other digital marketing terms that we have not covered here and if you would like any further information on these or any other areas of digital marketing then get in touch.