Mamba Media - Decoding Digital Language

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“You can't take over the
world without a good
acronym”
— C.S Woolley

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Designers, coders, developers and project managers talk in their own special language. Many do not realize that they have
slipped into this, until they see the glazed look in their client or agency partners eyes! All of them start out saying that they
will speak in clear layman's terms but most fall into the trap of reverting to industry standard acronyms and explanations.
Why wouldn’t you have acronyms and abbreviations when HTML, means “Hyper-text markup language”, and what does
that even mean? Actually most of us have a loose idea of that one, but there are plenty more that are dropped into
meetings, project scope documents and presentations that just confuse or intimidate people.
What follows is a list, a rather long list, with suitable explanations that should empower the layman with enough knowledge
to nod wisely when next confronted with industry acronyms.
It must be noted that this is by no means the deﬁnitive list, as the speed of technology and its associated ﬁelds and
disciplines will always be contributing more.
Introduction
Why so many acronyms and abbreviations?

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Errors
401 Unauthorized
This error happens when a website visitor tries to access a restricted web page but isn’t authorized to do
so, usually because of a failed login attempt.
404 Page Not Found
A 404 page shows on a user’s screen when they reach a page that doesn’t exist on the website. Top tip –
Design and implement a user friendlt 404 page. It’s a great opportunity to show your fun or wacky side.
301 Redirect
A permanent redirect from one URL to the other. Very important to use so that search engines know where
a page has been moved to.
500 Internal Server Error
This is the most common and happens when a web server comes across some form of internal error.
General Web & Mobile - 01

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General
B2B: Business-to-Business
Companies that sell to other businesses. Examples: Slack, Google.
B2C: Business-to-Consumer
Companies that sell directly to consumers. Examples: Amazon, Apple, Nike.
DNS
The Domain Name System is what links the domain name you type into your browser address bar, to the
IP address where that site is really located.
Domain Name
A domain name is a name used to identify a website on the internet. Websites are associated with IP
addresses and these are numerical addresses that tell your browser where to find the website on the
internet. To simplify this for human’s every website has a corresponding name. A domain name is the
human readable version of the IP address.

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General
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
This is the system you use for uploading files to a website.
Frontend v Backend Development
Frontend development is done in HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Backend developers normally use PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, SQL or .Net for programming.
•  Full stack developers can understand and code the full stack ie both frontend and backend.
GUI (Graphical user interface)
GUI is a program interface that takes advantage of the computer's graphics capabilities to make the
program easier to use.
IE (Internet Explorer)
Other Browsers: Safari, Chrome, Firefox

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General
IDE (Integrated Development Environment)
An IDE is software designed for programmers to write, debug and test their code
ISP (Internet Service Provider)
An organization (commercial, community-owned, nonprofit, or otherwise privately owned) that provides
internet services.
FAQ (Frequently asked questions)
A common support mechanism on many web sites that provides answers to questions that are commonly
asked.
OSS (Open Source Software)
Software where the source code is freely available for anyone to read and modify. An example of open
source software is WordPress.

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General
PR (Public Relations)
PR is all about getting a company in front of the right audiences at the right time with messages that make
its spokespeople sound like human beings, not robots. The idea is to earn media attention, rather than buy
it. What is the goal?
QR Code (Quick Response Barcode)
Scan able barcodes used by marketers to bridge offline and online marketing.
SMB (Small-to-Medium Business)
Usually defined as companies that have between 10 and 500 employees.
SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
A SWOT analysis is when a company conducts a study to pinpoint its internal strengths and weaknesses
and its external opportunities and threats

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General
SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
Any software that is hosted by another company, which stores your information in the cloud. Examples:
HubSpot, Dropbox, IM clients, and project management applications.
SLA (Service Level Agreement)
For digital marketers, this is an agreement between the sales and marketing teams that defines the
expectations Sales has for Marketing and vice versa. The Marketing SLA defines expectations around lead
quantity and lead quality. The Sales SLA defines the expectations around how deeply and frequently Sales
will pursue each qualified lead.
SLAs help to align sales and marketing functions. It is critical that the two departments are aligned and
integrated. If the two departments are managed as separate silos, the system fails.
TLD (Top Level Domain)
A Top Level Domain is a domain name extension such as .com, .net or .org.

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General
W3C
International standards organization for the web.
WAI (Web accessibility initiative) WCAG (Web content accessibility guidelines)
Enacted by the W3C for improving the accessibility of web pages.
Guidelines published by the WAI (cited above).
WWW / W3 (World Wide Web)
A network of interlinked documents available through the Internet.
UTF (Unicode Transmission Format)
This Is another character encoding scheme, more powerful than ASCII.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
The global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web.

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People
CIO (Chief Information Officer)
Management, implementation and usability of information and computer technologies at the company. The
CIO figures out how these pieces of technology benefit the company or improve an existing business
process, and then integrates a system to actually make that benefit.
CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)
The most coveted job in marketing. A CMO's skill set is rooted in marketing fundamentals but expands into
personnel development, quantitative analysis, and strategic thinking.
COO (Chief Operating Officer)
The senior-most executive responsible for managing and overseeing the ongoing business operations
within a company.

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People
CSO (Chief Security Officer)
Responsible for developing and overseeing all the policies and programs that protect the people,
intellectual assets, and tangible property of a company. This includes everything from privacy and data
protection to environmental security, health, and safety.
CTO (Chief Technology Officer)
The CTO is the senior-most executive responsible for focusing on all the scientific and technological issues
within an organization.
PM (Project Manager)
PMs are the managers of a project. They usually don't participate directly in whatever it takes to produce
the end result of a project They keep track of a project's progress, figure out ways to reduce the risk of
failure, maximize benefits, and minimize costs. They're also the first point of contact for anything that might
go wrong.

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Agile v Waterfall
•  An Agile model uses a linear, sequential flow.
•  The Waterfall model is a life cycle with each phase of a product’s life in sequence, so that progress
flows steadily downwards through these phases like a waterfall.
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
A web programming technique that uses JavaScript to transparently interact with a web server, eliminating the
need to reload a web page to see changes.
Design & Development - 01

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API (Application Programming Interface)
A computer programming term meaning a series of rules. APIs allow an application to extract information from a
service and use that information in their own application, or sometimes for data analysis. It's kind of like a phone
for applications to have conversations -- an API literally "calls" one application and gets information to bring to
you to use in your software. APIs facilitate the data needed to provide solutions to customer problems.
Examples:
•  Running reports on Twitter stats
•  A keyword tool that accesses Googles search API
•  Google maps API
•  Social login
•  Dropbox API
http://www.computersciencezone.org/50-most-useful-apis-for-developers/

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CRON (Command Run ON)
A scheduling program used to schedule time-sensitive activities for software programs to perform.
Examples - backup, schedule updates and synchronization of files
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
Used to define how a web page written HTML or XHTML should be presented and displayed in a web browser.
CSS3
CSS3 is the third ‘generation’ of CSS. Added abilities to CSS in clude animation and photo filters.
CTA (Call-to-Action)
A text link, button, image, or some other type of web link that encourages a website visitor to take an action on
that website, such as visiting a landing page to download a piece of content.
CVS (Concurrent Versions System)
Allows several developers to collaboratively work on a single set of code.

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DBMS (Database Management System)
A structured collection of data organized to allow for easy retrieval by computer programs using SQL.
DHTML (Dynamic HyperText Markup Language)
A term used when HTML, JavaScript and CSS are used to create animated or interactive web sites.
Favicon
Small pictures you see beside some URLs in your browser’s address bar.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
A protocol for transferring files from one computer to another over a network.
HTTP (HyperText transfer protocol)
HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are
formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various
commands.

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HTTPS (Secure HyperText transfer protocol)
Similar to HTTP cited above, however, specifies that data is/should be encrypted and secure.
HTML5
Like CSS3, HTML5 is more of a buzzword than a formal ‘version’ of HTML. It normally refers to the latest
specification document and the new abilities that browsers have added to HTML, such as native embedding of
video and audio.
jQuery
jQuery is an extremely popular and widely used JavaScript library, that both simplifies and adds cross browser
compatibility to JavaScript.
JS (JavaScript)
Is a front-end scripting language. JavaScript is what lets you have dynamic, interactive elements on your web
page. Most contact forms, changing image carousels, auto-suggest / auto-fill fields are all based on JavaScript.
http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=tryjs_intro_lightbulb

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JSON - JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced Jason, is a format for storing data. It’s based on JavaScript,
but can be used by other languages too.
MSSQL
Microsoft SQL Server is web database software designed for use with ASP.NET.
MySQL
MySQL is open source web database software designed for use with PHP.
SQL
Structured Query Language is a programming language for creating, editing and deleting web
databases. It’s the only language of its kind and is supported by all web database software.

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PHP
A server scripting language originally called Personal Home Page, but renamed to PHP Hypertext
Preprocessor. PHP is the most widely used server language on the web.
PDF - Portable Document Format
Is a document format that preserves formatting, often used on the web.
Images
•  SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics
•  SVG files are written in the XML language.
•  JPEG / JPG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
•  GIF
•  PNG - Portable Network Graphics

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Responsive Design
A web page, site or application that fits any screen size and is optimized for performance.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
An XML specification for publishing frequently updated web content to subscribers.
Example: A news feed
SCRUM
This is the most popular agile framework in software development. It is an iterative approach that has at its core
the sprint.
SPRINT
Within each sprint, the development team builds and tests a functional part of the product until it is signed off and
becomes a potentially shippable product. Next sprint starts.

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UI (User Interface)
This is the design and appearance of a program or software.
UX (User Experience)
A concept closely related to UI, and is concerned more with the way a user interacts with a program or website.
XHTML (Extensible HyperText markup language)
A special type of HTML that conforms to strict rules of XML.
XML (Extensible markup language)
A general purpose tag-based language used to describe data in a structured manner.

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HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<h1>A Dummy Heading</h1>
<p>Some text that spans the line.. </p>
</body>
</html>
CSS
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<style>
h1 {
color: blue;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
<h1>A Dummy Heading</h1>
<p>Some text that spans the line. And goes on.
And on. </p>
</body>
</html>

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API (Application Programming Interface)
An API is a way for website or service to talk to another website or service via programming. APIs let you mix
information and media from other services into your own site or application.
B2B (Business to business)
Business-to-business, denoting trade conducted via the Internet between businesses.
B2C (Business to consumer)
Business-to-consumer, denoting trade conducted via the Internet between businesses and end consumers.
Buyer Journey
The path the buyer takes:
•  Search and select
•  Similar items
•  Purchase option / Payment options / Delivery Options
•  Confirmation – Online and email
•  Invoicing
•  After care
eCommerce - 01

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Pagination
The extra pages on an ecommerce product page. Controlled by filters and a numerical sub-menu.
Payment gateway
A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes payments for e-
businesses, online retailers, bricks and mortar locations, etc.
Examples:
•  Paypal
•  WorldPay
•  Sage Pay
•  Apple Pay
POS (Point of sale)
The point where money is exchanged for products or services.
VTP (Visits to Purchase)
A metric that indicates how many sales a website completes in comparison to how much traffic it gets.
eCommerce - 02

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CMS (Content management systems)
A web CMS (WCMS or CMS) is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and
administration tools. This allows users with little knowledge of web programming languages to create and
manage website content with relative ease.
Examples:
•  Wordpress
•  Joomla
•  Core PhP
•  Drupla
•  Magneto – E-Commerce
COS (Content Optimization System)
Take a CMS (Content Management System), and optimize it to deliver customers the most personalized web
experience possible.
CMS - 01

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CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
A set of software programs that lets companies keep track of everything they do with their existing and potential
customers.
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
A user interface that allows the user to view something very similar to the end result while the document is being
created.
Example:
•  http://www.wix.com
CMS - 02

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WORDPRESS
Admin Area
The area where users can manage the website. This requires logging in. Users can be given certain rights.
Categories
These are usually used to define news items.
CPanel
Web based hosting control panel. From here you can define hosting options eg: email
Custom Fields
These are a type of meta-data. You can add custome fields to posts. For example: types of skills related to
a blog post.
CMS - 03

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Child Theme
A child theme inherits all the settings and attributes from the parent. It is an easy way to make changes to
the theme without changing the parent. The changes are made through the css file.
Data Base
A data base is a filing cabinet of all the content on a website.
Default Theme
This comes standard with a WordPress installation.
Excerpt
This is an article summery and allows designers to display more content in smaller spaces. There is
normally a “read more” function.
Filters
This allows designers to segment data and display it according to the users requirements.
CMS - 04

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Featured Image
This feature allows theme developers to use a representative image for posts, pages, or custom post
types.
Feeds
These are areas in the website that display data from other lists or pages. Examples may be:
•  News feeds
•  Twitter
•  Facbook
•  Etc
Feeds are normally dynamic.
.htaccess
The .htaccess file is a configuration file read by the server. It is able to override many server configuration
settings and can be used for authorization, cache control, website optimization, and URL rewriting.
CMS - 05

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iFrame
An iFrame is an inline frame used inside a webpage to load another HTML document inside it. This HTML
document may also contain JavaScript and/or CSS.
Permalinks
Permalinks are the permanent URLs of your individual blog post or page on your WordPress site.
Permalinks are also referred to as pretty links.
Plugins
Plugins can perform a variety of functions within a WordPress site. Examples:
•  SEO
•  Backups
•  Longofrm Content -
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/may/26/firestorm-bushfire-dunalley-holmes-
family
•  Custom Logins
•  Multi lingual sites
•  http://www.wpbeginner.com/category/plugins/
CMS - 06

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Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a text file which allows a website to provide instructions to web crawling bots. The robots.txt
file contains a set of instructions that request the bot to ignore specific files or directories.
Slider
The term Slider is used for a slideshow added into a web page.
Sidebar
A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display
information that is not a part of the main content.
Sidebar
A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display
information that is not a part of the main content.
CMS - 07

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Shortcode
Shortcodes in WordPress are little bits of code that allow you to do various things with little effort. This
allows you to embed files or create objects that would normally require a lot of code, in just one single line.
Taxonomy
WordPress has two very popular taxonomies that people use on a regular basis: Categories and Tags.
Template
In WordPress theme development, a template defines part of a web page generated by a WordPress
theme.
Theme Options
Theme options is a custom admin page which comes with some WordPress themes. It allows users to
change theme settings without modifying theme files or touching any code. Examples:
•  Colours
•  Fonts
•  Logo
CMS - 8

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Updates
WordPress can be set to automatically check for updates on the WordPress core as well as installed
plugins and themes.
NB – Updating core WordPress files may not be compatible with plugins . On larger custom sites this need
to be done manually.
Widgets
A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in
sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page.
CMS - 9

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BR (Bounce Rate)
Website bounce rate: The percentage of people who land on a page on your website and then leave
without clicking on anything else or navigating to any other pages on your site. A high bounce rate
generally leads to poor conversion rates because no one is staying on
Email bounce rate: The rate at which an email was unable to be delivered to a recipient's inbox. A high
bounce rate may means your lists are out-of-date or they include many invalid email addresses. In email,
not all bounces are bad, so it's important to distinguish between hard and soft bounces before taking an
email address off your list.
BACKLINK
A link from another website to yours. The higher the PageRank of the website the better the juice.
CPA (Cost Per Action)
An internet advertising model where the advertiser pays for each specified action someone takes, like an
impression, click, form submit, or sale.
SEM / SEO / PPC - 01

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CPC (Cost Per Click)
The amount an advertiser pays each time an ad is clicked.
CPL (Cost per Lead)
The amount it costs for your marketing organization to acquire a lead. This factors heavily into customer
acquisition cost (CAC), and is a metric marketers should keep a keen eye on.
CPM (Cost per “mille”)
Cost per thousand impressions (or displays).
CR (Conversion Rate)
The percentage of people who completed a desired action on a single web page, such as filling out a form.
CRO (Conversion rate optimization)
The practice of increasing the amount of online sales and leads on a website, without increasing the amount of
web visitors.

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CTR (Click Through Ratio)
A ratio between number of times an ad was clicked x the number of times the ad displayed. Ad clicked 100 times
and displayed 1000 times, the CTR is 100:1000 or 1:10 or10%, meaning 10% of the impressions have led to
clicks on the banner.
IBL (Inbound link)
A link to a particular webpage on your site that is generated from an external source.
Internal Link or Interlinking
This is an internal webpage link. It helps search engines crawl the web easier and helps with overall SEO.
The link is achieved through a <a href> tag
Keywords
A core part of your SEO strategy. Used for on-page, content marketing and PPC.

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KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
A type of performance measurement companies use to evaluate an activity's success. While KPIs are used
throughout a business, marketers look at KPIs to track progress toward marketing goals.
Examples of KPIs include CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), leads generated, and homepage views.
LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing)
There are keywords that are related to your primary keyword. Contrary to popular belief, they are NOT just
synonym or keywords that are similar in meaning. Divorce lawyer, family law, divorce settlement, separation
advice etc
META tags
A special HTML tag that provides information about a web page to user agents, such as search engines.
•  Meta Keywords Attribute
•  Meta Title Tag
•  Meta Description Attribute
•  Meta Robots Attribute

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MQL – Marketing qualified lead
These are leads that have been generated from marketing activities relevant to the goals of the company. These
are qualified as they can be attributed to specific campaigns.
SQL (Sales Qualified lead)
Theses are the MQL’s that have been nutured down the sales funnel and have a real chance of becoming
clients.
Organic search results
Listings on search engine results pages that appear due to their relevance to the search terms.

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On-Page SEO
An ideal web page should do all of the following:
•  Be hyper-relevant to a specific topic (usually a product or single object)
•  Include subject in title tag
•  Include subject in URL
•  Include subject in image alt text
•  Specify subject several times throughout text content
•  Provide unique content about a given subject
•  Link back to its category page
•  Link back to its subcategory page (If applicable)
•  Link back to its homepage (normally accomplished with an image link showing the website logo on the
top left of a page)

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Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to activities outside the boundaries of the webpage. The most important are:
•  Link Building
•  Blog
•  Directory submission
•  Forum Posting
•  Comment
•  Article
•  Shared Content
•  Social Media
•  Social bookmarking
•  Search Engine Submission
SEM / SEO / PPC – 07

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PPC (Pay-per-Click)
An internet advertising model where advertisers pay a publisher (usually a search engine, social media site, or
website owner) a certain amount of money every time their ad is clicked.
There are two ways to pay for PPC ads:
•  Flat rate, where the advertiser and publisher agree on a fixed amount that will be paid for each click.
•  Bid-based, where the advertiser competes against other advertisers in an advertising network.
PR (PageRank)
What Google uses to determine the importance of a web page. It’s one of many factors used to determine which
pages appear in search results.
PV (Page View)
A request to load a single web page on the internet. Marketers use them to analyze their website and gauge how
large their audience is.

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ROI (Return On Investment)
A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency and profitability of a marketing investment. The formula
for ROI is:
Gain from Investment minus Cost of Investment, divided by Cost of Investment.
The result is expressed as a percentage or ratio. If ROI is negative, then that initiative is losing money.
SEF URLs (Search Engine Friendly URLs)
Contain words and proper filenames only. They do not contain any special characters or spaces (when
necessary, use dashes to separate words).
SEM (Search engine marketing)
Search engine marketing includes any activity aimed at increasing visibility in search engines, whether it be paid
or organic listings. A strong SEM strategy typically involves a robust mixture of both.
SEO (Search engine optimization)
Aims to increase exposure in organic search results (e.g. unpaid). At its most basic level, the purpose is to
increase rankings for a website in search engines for keywords that are relevant to its content.

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UV (Unique Visitor)
A person who visits a website more than once within a defined period of time.
WOM (Word-of-Mouth)
Technically, the term refers to oral communication, but today it refers to online communication, as well. WOM
marketing is inexpensive, but it means leveraging many components of inbound marketing like product
marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing.

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“Always remember the acronym
for "FEAR" can mean one of
two things: Fuck Everything
And Run or Face Everything
And Recover.”
— Cupcake Brown

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MAMBA MEDIA
SURREY - UK
EMAIL
robin@mambamedia.com
PHONE
07788 194 180
Skype – robin.mamba
WEBSITE
www.mambamedia.com

Mamba Media - Decoding Digital Language

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