Decoding marketing jargon ASAP

Have you ever read through a business journal, Time, or even a USA Today story and asked yourself, “What does POS stand for, anyway?” You probably encounter these hieroglyphic-like acronyms with your clients, customers and co-workers too. But are you too embarrassed to raise your hand in a meeting, or interrupt an intense sales conversation to find out what EPC stands for? NW (“No worries” — or maybe northwest?), I’ve got your back. Here’s a simple list of the 11 most common jargon acronyms you can break out the next time you need to shine in the boardroom. AOV: Average Order Value Let’s say you went to Taco Bell three times in one day, spending $5 at breakfast, $13 at lunch and $12 at dinner. Divide that total spend of $30 by your three orders, and you get $10 as your AOV at Taco Bell. B2B: Business to Business This term is most commonly used when referring to the type of customers your business has. So Xerox is considered a B2B company when it sells its printers to Boeing. B2C: Business to Consumer By contrast, Apple selling its Macbook Pro to consumers like college students makes it a B2C company. CRM: Customer Relationship Management Have a rewards card to your favorite frozen-yogurt spot? These cards track your buying habits and allow the company to manage the relationship you have with them by knowing when to give you discounts or loyalty offers. PPC: Pay Per Click When a company advertises on a website, they pay a certain amount to that site only when a consumer clicks on the ad if their agreement is PPC. So if you click on an ad for a fancy new dress from Anthropologie on a blog, chances are the retailer gave the blog a few dollars. POS: Point of Sale Most often, this refers to the cash register and the computer system used to track all transactions, but POS means anywhere a sale occurs. PV: Page Views This measurement tracks how many people viewed any single piece of content online, and it is the simplest base metric for calculating how engaging your ads and content are — and how much you should pay for them. ROI: Return on Investment Any time there is a gain or loss on an investment, divide that by what you originally paid to get the ROI. So if you buy a share of Target stock at $40 and sell it for $60, dividing that $20 profit by the $40 investment yields an ROI of 50 percent. Or if your brand spends $1,000 on a social-media campaign and drives a $5,000 sales increase with it, the ROI is an enviable 500 percent. SEO: Search Engine Optimization Companies can load up their Web pages with certain key words or phrases so that their content shows up in the top results of a search on Google or any other search engine. Dozens of vendors can assist your business in attracting Web traffic and boosting its search rankings. YOY: Year over Year Most brands compare their data and performance from one year with the year earlier to know whether or not they are growing. YTD: Year to Date Companies also will use YTD figures to track how well they have done since the beginning of the year — and how far off they are from their yearly projections. These 10 acronyms are just the beginning of a very long list, but with the technology that is available to us daily, Google is never too far away. The best advice on learning these terms is to look them up when you don’t know what they mean and stash them in your memory bank. Who knows, you may even start using some on your own.