Diving into the world of digital marketing means picking up a slew of new terms and usages. But getting better informed about the concepts you'll encounter will move you along the learning curve faster. Getting to know these five terms will allow you to have more productive conversations about digital advertising campaigns.

Channels

In digital marketing speak, a channel is any singular way you can connect with an audience. Social media, web videos, your own website, and your own app would all be seen as separate channels for communicating with potential customers. Modern digital advertising firms work with their clients to build campaigns that cross a number of channels in order to reach the broadest audience in the most cost-effective way possible.

Affiliate Marketing

Having a third party promote services, products, ideas and organizations for compensation is referred to as affiliate marketing. A common example you'll see online are blogs and social media feeds that link to Amazon products as affiliates. These partners are typically paid a percentage of the value of any purchases that customers make through their links.

Metrics

Keeping tabs on all the traffic a campaign is producing is critical to measuring its success. Metrics cover a wide range of data points that are relevant to this task, including the total audience, conversion rates, and long-term stickiness. A number of common metrics are derived from other metrics, such as the cost-per-click number used to show how much a digital advertising campaign is paying to obtain one visitor to a site.

Target Market

Using metrics, you should be able to develop an idea of who is buying your products and how you wish to market to people like them. An entry-level car insurance company, for example, might have a target audience of drivers between the ages of 18 and 25. The goal is to narrow in on as specific of a target audience as possible in order to find channels they prefer and place digital advertising where they'll see it.

Return on Investment

Calculating what it took to make a profit is essential to deciding how to proceed with your digital marketing efforts. A company might elect to provide a 10% discount to returning customers, and the return on investment from that campaign would be established by comparing the difference between discounts and advertising against how much revenue the campaign generated. The goal is always to maximize ROI.