You gotta talk the talk...

When you meet with a marketing firm, they may throw out some of the following terms without defining them first. This list should help you to know what to listen for and what each term means or stands for.

ROI-
Return on investment. How much a campaign, project or event measured up after the initial investment. For example, if you spent $3500 on direct mail to promote a certain product or service and received $7800 in business from that direct mail campaign, the ROI would be $4300. This is why coming up with a way to measure your marketing efforts is crucial.

SEO-
Search engine optimization. If you have a business that is run completely online or would benefit from receiving exposure to a potential client base online, you need a way for people to find your site through search engines. People can place keywords in your site and give you advice on giving your site a higher search rating (which means it shows up higher on sites like google when people input those keywords). For example, if your site is on the 5th page of the google search results when people type in keywords related to your business, you’re probably not getting any web traffic from that search engine. If you’re in the first 2 pages (a coveted position, indeed), it’s more likely that you’ll have people finding your site through the search engine results.

Web 2.0
Ok, I’m going to cheat here and copy and paste the Wikipedia definition:
A term that describes the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.
To find out more about web 2.0, see this Wikipedia article.

Social Networking
Part of the web 2.0 movement with sites that allow users to interact with one another through their online profiles. Examples of social networking are facebook and myspace. It’s a great way to showcase your company through a more personalized approach (and there’s no cost to create profiles on either site).

I will have several more blogs with marketing terms defined over the next few posts. Please add some to the list you think need definitions or add your own definitions.