PR and Marketing terms can trip up influencers who might not have a background with this industry jargon. Learn the language to use when talking to your clients so you can earn their trust.
Who are your clients and what do they care about? This question may seem easy on the surface, but it’s important for creators and influencers to consider how they can specifically help each individual client.
It’s worth digging a little deeper to better understand a brand’s priorities and motivations. With that knowledge, you’ll have the inside scoop to position yourself as an indispensable resource.
Most likely, your clients – or potential clients – are in marketing or public relations, and influencer content is one of many outlets they utilize.
Using that assumption, this article will help you articulate your value in the language your clients understand, increasing your likelihood of winning their business.
Read next: 31 tips for your campaign proposal
The Basics: Public Relations and Marketing 101
Marketers are responsible for making their target audience aware of and interested in their product or service. The end goal is to inspire consumers to make a purchase.
To do this, they leverage a variety of outlets – better known as the Marketing Mix – to reach their target demographic.
As an influencer, you are competing for marketing dollars with various outlets, which include:
- Digital ads and banners
- Print ads and banners
- Advertorial content
- Podcasts
- Affiliate placements
- Sponsorships
Understanding where your clients spend their money can help you position yourself as a complement to what they’re already doing or as a cost-effective alternative.
If your client is in PR, you have an additional obstacle to overcome: their job is to not spend money.
PR professionals typically liaise with the media to pitch their campaigns in hopes of earning placement in a prominent publication. These earned placements are free and can get distributed to millions.
However, these are hard to come by.
Working with influencers is attractive to PR professionals because it’s guaranteed, positive coverage that has longevity and spans multiple channels.
But to sell yourself to a PR professional, you’re going to have to convince them why it’s worth the money.
Basic PR & Marketing Terms:
Unique Selling Proposition
Abbreviated as USP, this is what differentiates brands from their competitors and how they want to be known in the marketplace. The USP is usually woven through brand-led campaigns and should be prominent in yours as well.
Ad Spend
The total cost of a digital or print campaign or a collection of campaigns.
Earned Media
Coverage you don’t have to pay for. This is when influencers or media like what they see and choose to cover a campaign or announcement without expecting anything in return.
Marketing Metrics That Matter
For savvy marketers and PR professionals, data drives decisions.
This means the metrics from your campaign will determine whether or not they want to work with you again in the future.
Clients may prioritize certain metrics over others, so it’s important to understand how they measure success before your collaboration begins (see “KPI”).
Key Marketing Terms to Know for Metrics:
KPI
This is an acronym for Key Performance Indicators. In other words: how are you measuring success? This could be the number of unique views of a blog post, the number of engagements on a social media post, or promo code usage. The KPIs will vary by the client and the campaign.
Click Through Rate
Often abbreviated as CTR, this refers to how many people who saw your social media or blog post clicked through via the link provided.
Engagement Rate
This is a catch-all for any extra action someone takes after seeing your content. This includes clicks, comments, likes, and shares. It’s measured by dividing the people who took one of these actions by the total number of people who saw the post (see below: reach).
Impressions
The total number of times your message was seen. This may include the same person seeing the same post more than once.
Reach
The unique number of people who saw your message. Unlike impressions, each person is only counted once.
PPC
An acronym for Pay Per Click, this is the cost associated with digital ads. Marketers typically pay for clicks vs. reach or impressions.
Marketing Words for Assessing Value:
At the end of your collaboration, your client will review the metrics and the cost and determine if the collaboration was a success – or a disappointment.
Read next: 7 easy steps to create your campaign report
Key Terms for Marketing Value:
ROI
This stands for Return On Investment. In other words, what did you spend and what did you get in return? This isn’t always calculated just by monetary value, but it’s certainly a big part of it!
CPM
Admittedly confusing, this actually stands for Cost Per Thousand (the M is the Roman numeral for thousand). This is the way marketers can have an apples-to-apples comparison for how much a campaign costs to run on each channel. They can then determine which channel was the most cost-effective.
Conversions
This measures how many people who saw your content, ad, or promo went on to make a purchase. While it may not be your responsibility to sell the client’s product, it is your responsibility to make your followers interested enough to click through to where the conversion can take place.
General Business Terms to Know
Clients who are interested in moving forward may use different terms to actually say it. But you want to be able to recognize a “yes!” when you see one and respond appropriately.
Key Terms for Marketing Agreements:
MOU
An acronym for Memorandum of Understanding, this is a less formal way to say “contract.”
SOW
An acronym for Statement of Work, this is the roadmap for the work that will be performed once the contract or MOU has been signed.
COB
This is short for Close of Business, typically meaning 5pm local time. Not to be confused with “end of day,” which can mean anytime that day.
Hopefully, this marketing glossary gives you the lingo you need to convey your value to your clients in terms that matter to them. And hopefully, you can better understand what is being asked of you!
Feature image by Serpstat from Pexels
If you’ve had another PR or Marketing word or phrase stump you, let us know and we can add it to the list!
Thanks Netanyahu for sharing amazing tips. The only thing I knew was MOU, but now I understand statement of work. I will definitely use them in my web design services.
Your research plan should spell out the objectives of the research and give you the information you need to either go ahead with your idea, fine-tune it or take it back to the drawing board.