Every group has their own special words. The language we use to describe something to one group may have a totally different meaning to another. For instance, I have always thought of a tool as a useful instrument, such as the toolbar on my computer. However, to a millennial, a tool is a person who is foolishly being used by someone else and is oblivious to it. Something that is useful and someone who is foolish are defined by the same word by two different groups of people. Depending upon whom I may be speaking to, asking them to put a tool in the chair might yield a hammer or a dim-witted idiot.

Marketing has its own special language too. Oddly enough, the same words can have very different meanings from one form of marketing to the next, especially in the new media of websites and social media posts. Let’s look at three words that have dissimilar meanings based upon the marketing context.

Visits

Traditionally, visits might be used when a potential customer entered a place of business and inquired about making a purchase. They were showing interest in your products or services by showing up. Similarly, when we are talking about a website, a Visit is registered any time someone browses your site. A Unique Visit is a way to keep track of individuals browsing a website, not just the number of times they have opened the site. So if I visited a site every day for a month, the analytics on the site would register 30 Visits, but only one Unique Visit. Visits is a measurement of frequency, Unique Visits is a measurement of individuals who have browsed your website. Both Visits and Unique Visits are a big deal on a website. These numbers represent people and frequency on your website. They are people who are seeking and finding you – what we call inbound marketing.

Visits are different when you are dealing with social media advertising. The people reached is a number that reflects how many people were using social media when your ad was visible. It does not mean they necessarily saw it or paid any attention to it. It is much like driving your car past a sign on a road. You might see it, you might not. If you did see it, you might not have even read it, but if you did read it, you might not have taken any action based on what you read. That is why engagement is a number you should pay attention to in social media advertising, not people reached.

Engagement

In social media, any time someone reacts to your post, it is designated as an engagement. This can include clicking a link, liking, commenting, or sharing your post. It is a key measurement of how well your post or social media advertising is resonating with your target audience.

Website engagement is a bit different. When we talk about website engagement, we are typically talking about two activities. Click-through engagement happens when you have built a way for the customer to move from one page to the other, typically with a call to action button that links to another page. Website analytics track the pages each unique visitor clicks and reports these statistics. When you are using click-throughs as a marketing tool, you are leading the visitor to a call-to-action page on your website, such as a contact form or a link that puts them in touch with a sales representative. The second way we use engagement on websites has to do with advertising that sends the customer to a unique landing page. That may involve a search engine ad (such as Google’s Adwords) or an e-blast that has a link to a landing page on your website. You are measuring the number of clicks you get from the ad to your landing page, and then from the landing page to a call-to-action, such as a contact form, a phone or email link.

There is a third way your website measures engagement. That is when you are posting a blog article, a video, or some other form of content that is not advertising, but information that interests your target market. How do you measure engagement with an article? One way is to measure the amount of time spent on your content marketing. Your analytics should show you a summary of how much time is spent on each page of your site. The other way of measuring content marketing engagement is similar to social media engagement. If you have the functionality to allow the customer to share your content on social media, to email it, to comment on it, etc., you will be able to measure these activities too.

Conversions

Traditionally, conversions in marketing meant that a prospective customer had actually crossed over to be a full-fledged customer by making a purchase. Conversions in the new media mean that a prospect has completed a desired action, either on your website or on social media. Conversion is a bit of a nebulous term these days – it could mean anything! I just described how engagement is used in social media and on websites. That desired engagement is often reported as a conversion. But wait, you didn’t necessarily come away with a customer when they liked a social media post, did you? Did the conversion of a "like” do anything for you? Yes and no. It is important to realize that few people make a purchase these days without first taking a look at the product and the business online. They want to gather information before they commit to making the purchase, including feedback from other people who may have "liked” or commented on your products and services. Online conversions are helping them find the necessary information and transitioning them to inquire about making the purchase. The new, nebulous definition of a conversion becomes a necessary step in the marketing process. These conversions can be measured and it should be a good gauge of how effective you are at marketing your products and services. This precursor to a sale is a most important step in today’s economy.

These three words - Visits, Engagement and Conversions – are key to your success in marketing. Pay attention to them. Understand them. Make sure you are measuring your success against them.