Marketing Terms Glossary

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For starters, PPC stands for Pay Per Click.
It is a Internet advertising term. There are many different options to pay for Internet advertising. In addition to PPC, there is CPM (Cost Per Thousand) The M represents the Roman numeral for 1,000. There is also CPL (Cost Per Lead) and CPA. (Cost Per Acquisition)

PPC (Pay Per Click) means that a website will display your ad on their site and you only pay a fee if someone clicks through to your site. This is one of the more popular and common methods. It is the method that Google and Yahoo use to earn the bulk of their revenue. The Cost Per Click can range from as low as 10 cents to as high as $100 or more per click depending on the value of the traffic.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand -M) is one of the oldest measurements for advertising know. It is used to measure advertising rates across all media. That is why television ratings are so important. The more viewers a show has, the higher they can charge for an ad. This works the same for the cost of a radio spot, a magazine ad and a billboard. The cost is based on the number of impressions. If 5,000 people a day drive by billboard A, but 20,000 people a day drive by billboard B, billboard B can command up to four times the price to place an ad on it. That is CPM at work.

CPL (Cost Per Lead) takes CPC to the next level. Advertisers are not always happy to pay for clicks and traffic to their website when they do not know who those visitors are. Enter CPL. This is a method that does not pay for the impression or the click, but only pays a fee when someone actually fills out a form and requests information or at the very least provides a valid email address.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) is very similar to CPL, but instead of a lead, it requires a sale to be made to pay for the ad. This is one of the most popular Internet advertising strategies today. It allows companies to place advertisements on the web while only paying for real results. This is a stark reality to the traditional CPM world of advertising and I suspect that smart marketers will soon find many ways to extend this model beyond the web. This model is the basis for affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing provides some amazing opportunities to both marketers and website owners alike. For the marketers, they have an opportunity to get great exposure for their company, product or service while only paying for performance. For website owners, also termed "publishers", they benefit form the ability to have access to thousands of marketer's online advertisements to put up on their sites and make a commission on sales and leads that those ads produce. In most cases, these publishers would not be able to attract any online advertisers who would be interested in advertising on their site for various reasons including the inability to communicate with the advertiser directly. Take a look at the right side of your screen. Do you really think that Sony, Sirius and Monster.com are paying us to place their ads there. We wish. These ads are an example of affiliate advertising. Sales and Marketing Help dot com is a member of Commission Junction. CJ is probably the largest and best affiliate network. They connect marketers and publishers in a sensible no risk arena. If you buy a Sony computer or a Sirius radio by clicking to their sites from this site, those companies will pay us a commission on the sale and CJ keeps a portion. If you don't the companies do not pay us anything for the right to have their ad on our site. This is an example of affiliate marketing and a CPA model at work.

Integrated Marketing
What is integrated marketing? That is a very common question even for seasoned marketers. I have heard a lot of wrong answers to this question. Even in a major advertising publication. I could not believe it. At first an accepted definition was any marketing campaign that was promoted both on and off the web. WRONG! The next wrong definition I heard was any marketing (or advertising campaign) that utilized a minimum of three media. So basically, they thought that if you ran a television ad, placed a few magazine ads and put up a billboard you were integrated. WRONG! A truly integrated marketing campaign is a journey along a deliberate, strategic marketing path. It can and should include multiple touch points, but unless the touch points "integrate" (Ah Ha!), how can it be integrated? To be truly integrated, your television ad should deliberately drive traffic to your website where you can provide additional information (continue the journey) and sign people up to receive even more information either through email or traditional mail. This journey can continue through an offer or coupon in the mail (or email) that drives the consumer to the store to buy your product. The concept is similar for b-to-b and non-consumer products as well.