PR Glossary

Plain-language definitions for the terms used in this book.

Definitions are for this book’s purposes. Platforms, laws, and other writers sometimes use the same words differently, so check the definition before you compare your numbers with anyone else’s.

GLOSSARY

• Actionable metric. Meaning: A number that tells you what to do next. Opposite of a vanity metric.
• Active rate. Meaning: The share of a list that clicked, replied, or visited in a set period, usually 90 days.
• Advertising value equivalency (AVE). Meaning: Pricing a news story as if it were an ad of the same size. Rejected by measurement professionals; don’t use it.
• Ambassador. Meaning: A regular who brought someone who showed up.
• Attribution. Meaning: Working out which effort brought a guest. In this book, mostly by asking.
• Attrition. Meaning: Regulars drifting away over time. Plan to replace it.
• Audience retention. Meaning: How well each moment of a video held viewers, usually shown as a line. A dip means people left or skipped.
• Average view duration. Meaning: On YouTube, the average minutes watched among viewers who stayed to watch.
• Baseline. Meaning: Your normal: the average, median, and swing of comparable nights, with flagged nights set aside.
• Cannibalizing. Meaning: When a new night grows by taking guests from another of your nights rather than adding new ones.
• Cohort. Meaning: A group of guests who first came in the same period, tracked together afterward.
• Composite. Meaning: An invented but realistic example built from common patterns, not a report on a real business.
• Conversion. Meaning: A guest moving from one funnel stage to the next, or the rate at which that happens.
• Cost per extra returner. Meaning: Total cost of an effort divided by the returners above what the baseline would have produced.
• Cost per head. Meaning: Total cost of a promotion divided by the extra guests it brought.
• Cost per new regular. Meaning: Total spend divided by the new regulars linked to it.
• Earned media. Meaning: Coverage you do not pay for, such as a news story, a mention, or a review.
• Engagement. Meaning: Likes, comments, sends, and similar actions. Platforms define it differently, so check the definition.
• First Win. Meaning: The funnel stage where a first-timer has a good night and comes back within 60 days. Book 5 calls this “First Dance.”.
• First-timer. Meaning: A guest visiting your room for the first time.
• Flagged night. Meaning: A night with a holiday, festival, bad weather, or special event, kept in the log but left out of the baseline.
• Funnel. Meaning: The path from stranger to First-Timer to First Win to Regular to Ambassador.
• Goodhart’s law. Meaning: When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
• Guard number. Meaning: A second number watched beside the first, to catch gaming or harm.
• Hold-out. Meaning: A group or night that keeps the old way while the rest changes, for comparison.
• Impressions. Meaning: How many times something was shown. Not the same as people reached or people who came.
• Incrementality. Meaning: How much of a result happened because of your effort and would not have happened anyway.
• Lagging indicator. Meaning: A number that takes time to show, such as the 90-day return.
• Leading indicator. Meaning: An early number that predicts a later one, such as a 14-day return.
• Lift. Meaning: How far attendance or another number rose above its baseline.
• Margin. Meaning: What you keep after the direct cost of serving a guest. Use margin, not revenue, for decisions.
• Margin per visit. Meaning: Margin for a period divided by guest visits in the same period.
• Median. Meaning: The middle value when numbers are sorted. Less pulled around by one odd night than the average.
• Metric tree. Meaning: A diagram that breaks a big goal into the smaller numbers that drive it.
• Open rate. Meaning: The share of emails opened. Unreliable since some mail apps load emails automatically; see Chapter 21.
• Opt-in. Meaning: Clear permission, given by a person, to be contacted.
• Organic. Meaning: Reach or traffic you did not pay for.
• Owned media. Meaning: Channels you control, such as your list, website, and map profile.
• Paid media. Meaning: Advertising you pay for.
• Payback time. Meaning: Months for a new regular’s margin to cover what you spent to win them.
• PESO. Meaning: Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned: a way to sort media channels.
• Prediction line. Meaning: A sentence written before a test: the number, the baseline, the target, and the time.
• Pull-forward. Meaning: When a promotion moves visits from a later night to the promoted one, so the later night falls.
• Reach. Meaning: The number of different people who saw something.
• Regular. Meaning: By default, a guest with three or more visits, the first within 60 days. You can change the rule; write it down.
• Response rate. Meaning: The share of people asked who answered, such as first-timers who filled in the door card.
• Return on margin. Meaning: (Lifetime margin − cost) ÷ cost for the guests a tactic brought.
• Sends per reach. Meaning: Shares of a post divided by the people it reached. A simple measure of whether a post travels.
• Sentiment. Meaning: Whether comments are positive, neutral, or negative. Counted by hand in this book.
• Shared media. Meaning: Content spread by other people, such as posts, tags, and word of mouth.
• Social proof. Meaning: The tendency to follow what others like us seem to do.
• Staff turnover. Meaning: People who left in a period divided by the average number of staff.
• Suppression list. Meaning: A list of people who asked not to be contacted, kept so they’re never added back by accident.
• Swing. Meaning: The normal range a number moves in from night to night.
• Tally. Meaning: A simple count kept by hand, usually with tick marks.
• Tracked link. Meaning: A web address with a tag that shows which placement a visit came from.
• Unproven. Meaning: A result you liked but have not shown. A respectable verdict.
• Vanity metric. Meaning: A number that looks good and tells you nothing to act on, such as followers alone.
• Word of mouth. Meaning: Guests telling other people about you.
• Year over year. Meaning: Comparing a period with the same period last year, to set aside seasonal swings.