Street slang, business speak, urban dictionary entries, new entries to the Oxford English Dictionary, text talk; what is it all about? With time becoming a more precious commodity and convenience being a key factor, It seems that even words are getting shortened more and more to save us time. “Today’s” lingo requires us to abbreviate, improvise, adapt and adopt. So for all those who are busy ROFL whilst following the mantra YOLO, to make every business day count I’m going to make you aware of four of the most common marketing acronyms you should introduce to your daily vocabulary… and marketing activity.
AIDA
This is one of the first marketing acronyms I learned and it stands for the following four words:
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
This acronym was coined to help illustrate the common list of events that the human mind carries out in order when digesting advertising. It helps marketers to then design advertising to best allow purchasing behaviour to follow its course.
Specifically this means that the advertisement first has to grab your attention (A), i.e. get you to notice the advert. Following on from this the ad then has to gain your interest (I) so as well as noticing it you become interested in it. Then comes desire (D) you need to want the product in question,and finally Action, meaning you now want to do something about it e.g. buy it, subscribe, call etc.
SMART
This acronym is used to help set objectives for your business. The word SMART stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timescale
Simply put, this means that your objectives are clear, that you can measure if and how you are meeting them, that you can ensure they can realistically be achieved and that you can define when you can achieve your goal by.
PPC
This is an acronym that is used by many modern marketers when talking about online. The term “PPC” stands for Pay Per Click which is a form of online advertising where you bid and pay every time your advert is clicked on. This is usually on search engines such as Google, and are the paid for adverts that appear at the top or down the side of the natural search results.
WOMM
The final acronym for today, and an appropriate one for helping tell everyone about how useful you found this blog, is Word of Mouth Marketing. This is an incredibly important acronym for small businesses. With limited budgets, word of mouth marketing can help grow awareness of a business. There are tools to help this such as recommend a friend schemes, or in the digital age we now have the social share. It’s a really cost effective way to spread the word about your products or services and should be encouraged. Don’t be frightened to ask people to share their experiences with friends, peers and family.
I hope these four acronyms help debunk some myths on meanings and help reduce the awkwardness next time someone mentions AIDA to you and you start talking about opera…
Next week I want to focus on one of the above acronyms, and that is how PPC can help a business “click” with their target audience.
Until next time…