An Abbreviated Introduction to Acronyms
Picture this: you are sitting in a meeting and suddenly your boss uses an acronym that isn’t familiar to you. You might feel uncomfortable raising your hand to ask what it means, or you may politely nod to avoid participating in the conversation. You could also be an organization that recently hired a Public Relations and Marketing agency, hearing phrases that sound foreign to you.
If either of these scenarios sound like you, check out our list of some of the most commonly used acronyms in Public Relations and Marketing. While this list isn’t exhaustive by any means, it is certainly a great place to start. Grab a pen and paper, and let’s begin!
BUSINESS TO BUSINESS (B2B)
Business to Business refers to companies that cater to the needs of other businesses.
BUSINESS TO CONSUMER (B2C)
Business to Consumer refers to companies that sell products or services directly to consumers.
BOUNCE RATE (BR)
Bounce Rate represents the percentage of visitors entering and then immediately leaving your website. In other words, bounce rates only represent single page views. It’s important to note that high bounce rates don’t necessarily mean there’s a problem, and your goal should be keeping your bounce rate as low as possible while still boosting your websites conversion rates.
CALL-TO-ACTION (CTA)
A call to action is a conscience statement designed to provoke an immediate response from the reader. Additionally, it usually consists of an imperative verb such as “find out more” or “sign up here.”
COMMUNITY MANAGER (CMGR)
A community manager is responsible for maintaining and protecting a brand’s relationship with its followers. Essentially, a community manager builds brand personality and earns consumer trust, ultimately increasing sales. In fact, according to Sprout Social, 21% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that are available on social platforms.
CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION (CRO)
CRO is the process of improving your website conversion using creative techniques, key optimization principles and testing. While CRO is most commonly used on landing pages or websites, it can also be applied to other aspects of your marketing plan.
DIRECT MESSAGE (DM)
A direct message refers to an instant message sent between users on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. Companies often use this term to engage with followers and ask them to “DM for inquiries.”
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR (KPI)
KPI is typically used to measure and evaluate a designated activity’s success. Communicators and marketers often monitor KPIs to track progress toward overall PR goals.
OFF-THE-RECORD (OTR)
OTR is a verbal agreement to not publish or air what you discuss with a media professional. It’s important to be cautious with this term and avoid saying anything that would make you uncomfortable if it went public, because nothing is ever truly off-the-record.
PUBLIC RELATIONS SOCIETY OF AMERICA (PRSA)
The Public Relations Society of America is the largest association for PR professionals, overseeing more than 21K members annually.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimizing content to be discovered through a search engine’s organic search results, such as Google and Yahoo. SEO has many benefits, including free traffic to your website without the use of ads. All major search engines have primary search results, where content is ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users.
UNIQUE VISITOR (UV)
A unique visitor is someone who visits a website more than once within a defined time-frame. For example, if only one person visits a website 10 times, then that website has one unique visitor and 10 total site visits. This is a great way for marketing professionals to track the amount of traffic to their website.
WORD-Of-MOUTH (WOM)
This is the passing of information from one person to the next. Today, the term addresses oral and online communications. The term is widely used in marketing strategies because it’s free, however, it takes a lot of work to be successful. It often involves components of inbound marketing techniques, including product and content marketing.
Although we could add many more acronyms to this list, we hope this brief overview has helped you understand some of the language we use daily. Many of these terms find their way into various reports or business meetings, so it’s important to understand each of them. If you have any questions, or would like to recommend an additional term for our list, please let us know.