6 Common Digital Marketing Terms and What They Mean (Part 2)

Eddie Mutema
Inside Infobwana
29 September 2022
Digital marketing has so many arms and channels and each of them has its own definition/abbreviations. Which can get a bit confusing if you’re not familiar with digital marketing lingo...

We are sharing a series of educational tips and articles to help usher you into the digital marketing world. Digital marketing has become a preferred means of advertising as it is cost-effective and can be learned and utilised by anyone at any time or place. It is very important to note that the key to digital marketing success is taking time to understand your clientele and communicate your marketing message to them in a way that they’ll understand and relate to.

Digital marketing has so many arms and channels and each of them has its own definition/abbreviations. Which can get a bit confusing if you’re not familiar with digital marketing lingo. So we’ve compiled the most commonly used digital marketing terms (some of which are also general marketing terms) in a two-part series. We hope you’ll find it helpful.   

1. Clickbait 
Clickbait is content that is designed to engage people with an attractive picture or headline. Clickbait has proved to work effectively for platforms such as YouTube, where content creators can place a preview of an enticing image or title that may have nothing to do with the actual content, just to get users to click on it. Clickbait has become less popular over time, especially on platforms like Facebook, which is making changes to its algorithms to change this type of posting in order to improve the user experience.

2. Targeting
Targeting is basically defining your target audience through online tools. Some popular platforms offer highly detailed targeting tools that allow you to filter through their users to find the exact type of person you want for marketing purposes. These platforms allow you to choose your audience by age group, location, lifestyle etc.

3. Lead generation
Lead generation is the process of acquiring new sales leads. Online lead generation is done by providing valuable content to website visitors in exchange for their contact information.

3. Be consistent
Consistency is key to achieving any form of success in anything applied in our daily lives. Social media is governed by algorithms** that determine the popularity of your social media content. As such, consistent posting is one of the few things that social media algorithms favour. Posting consistently will improve how often your content appears on people’s timelines or newsfeeds, potentially growing your audience.

4. Content
Content is material that is published online. It’s designed, among other things, to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. Content is naturally meant to be engaging, informative and relevant to the designated audience. 


5. Blogging
Blogging is writing or sharing website content on a regular basis. Blogs are built from words, images, videos or a combination of all of these media forms. This content can be for entertainment, information or business purposes. Business blogging is created with the intention of attracting leads and retaining customers by way of providing them with relevant and valuable content.

6. Viral
Viral content is simply content that is shared many times, over and over again,  because people find it valuable or entertaining. ‘Going viral’ is the term used for this kind of content. We’ve all seen how funny videos or memes* travel rapidly across different social media platforms by means of sharing, tagging and views. Viral content has a great impact and will reach more people in your brand awareness campaigns. 


Understanding online lingo is your key to navigating the digital space. Learning the tools and tricks can help improve the way you communicate with your online audience. Look out for our next article as we continue to expand more on digital marketing essentials.