Find Your Way Around the Confusing lingo
We’ve compiled a list of 68 vital marketing phrases that you should know in order to impress your colleagues, investors, customers, and, of course, the real marketers.
A/B Testing
A/B testing or split testing comprises testing two versions commonly in the form of a product or content with the aim generally being selecting which one works better. It is feasible to execute an A/B test in order to evaluate which website or ad performs better, where better performance is defined as the number of clicks or transactions made. An example of content A/B testing is sending a newsletter with two alternative subject lines or headlines to determine which subject line encourages your readers to open the letter more. With this knowledge, it’s easy for you to find out precisely how you can best connect with your audience.
Abandonment Rate
Depending on the context, the word “abandonment rate” might signify one of two things: According to one definition, “bounce rate” refers to the percentage of people who leave a web page without viewing another page on the same site. In the second definition, the proportion of consumers who add products to their basket but never complete the checkout process is referred to as cart abandonment rate.
Account-based Marketing (ABM)
To put it another way, account-based (ABM) marketing is a new way of doing business. By focusing on discovering methods to connect with individuals who fit your ideal customer profile, ABM instead of relying on buyer personas and then casting a broad net to attract those personas to your business (ICP).
As the name suggests, ABM focuses on providing personalised messages to specific accounts. With the help of sales, marketing may learn more about the effectiveness of their ABM strategy by analysing the results of their interactions with their target accounts.
Adwords
Paid-per-click (PPC) internet advertising networks such as Google Adwords, Bing Ads, and Yahoo! Ads allow marketers to place ads on Google’s search engine results page, Google Display Network (GDN), and affiliate sites. Businesses regularly pay to have their advertising shown at the top of the Google search results page or on the first page.
Affiliate
When a person or company promotes the products or services of another, they are known as affiliates since they get paid a percentage of the selling price. In order to start earning affiliate commissions, most affiliate marketing schemes need participants to create promotional materials (reviews, videos, seminars) for the products or services they are endorsing that include a unique affiliate link. You get a commission if someone clicks on your affiliate link and then buys the product.
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
Repeating income for one calendar year. It’s often subscription-based revenue. You may see it referred to as ARR.
Backlink
When an external website links back to your startup’s website or other content, this is known as an inbound link. With backlinks from trustworthy websites – such as a media site – you’ll enhance your SEO in the eyes of Google and other search engines. You should constantly ask for a backlink to your startup’s website when performing marketing.
Baseline
The starting point from which comparisons are made for analysis, performance improvement, forecasting and strategy creation.
Blogging
Originally, the phrase was web log or weblog and eventually…blog. Individuals, small enterprises and even huge organisations produce articles, opinions, and the like, posting frequently on their website. A fundamental component of the inbound marketing strategy, blogging helps to boost website traffic, creates thought leadership and authority, and drives leads.
Bounce & Bounce Rate
‘Bounce’ happens when a person accesses your website, but instantly clicks back or in some means quits your website. In other words, if your website or the material on it did not interest the visitor in any way. Bounce rate is formed by the proportion of people that instantly depart your website. The percentages vary by business, but if you have a bounce rate between 20-40 percent , your website is nailing it. Anything around 70 percent is considered typical. You may discover more detailed bounce rates from your Google Analytics. Bounce rates affect your search engine ranks, therefore it’s a good idea to keep your bounce rate under control.
Buyer Persona
Market research and actual customer data are used to create a buyer persona, which represents the startup’s ideal customer, their interests, and traits. The Buyer Persona helps the company discover what genuinely draws their consumers and what approach works best to reach them.
Buyer’s Journey
The buyer’s journey is the sequence of events that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase. There are three stages in the buyer’s journey: Awareness, Consideration and Decision.
It’s important to note that not every potential consumer turns out to be a paying customer. The buyer’s journey may be completed by people without ever completing a purchase.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
CAC is the customer acquisition cost or the cost of getting a consumer to buy your product or service. A company’s CAC is determined by dividing the entire marketing or customer acquisition expenditures by the total number of customers gained within a certain time period.
Churn
Churn or churn rate is the number of customers that stopped their association with the firm generally by the end of a subscription. List churn refers to the amount of unsubscribers or inactive subscribers on an email list.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
As an advertising or email campaign’s performance is evaluated, the Clickthrough Rate (CTR) is one of the metrics utilised to do so. The CTR is computed by dividing the number of individuals that clicked on a certain website or email link, by the total number of people who saw the advertising, webpage, or opened the email. If you have a Facebook ad that displays 100,000 times, for example, with a CTR of 0.3 percent , you will have received 300 website visitors.
The greater the CTR, the more receptive your subscribers are to your advertising or email content. Average CTRs vary by industry and based on the platform you utilise.
Content Management System (CMS)
Content Management System (CMS) is a software system that makes it easy to generate, modify, organise, and distribute digital content on the web. When it comes time to make changes to your website, you may do it using the CMS.
Cost Per Acquistion (CPA)
Cost per Acquisition or Cost per Action (and often also known as Pay per Acquisition), is an outcome-focused advertising payment strategy where advertisers – such as startups – pay for things like sales, clicks or signups. This strategy enables you to pay just for activities people do because of your ad, which is very beneficial if you want to manage how much you spend for certain actions.
Contextual Marketing
You may use contextual marketing as a way to ensure that all of your material is relevant to the audience you’re trying to reach.
It is essential that you understand the psychographics of your buyer personas so that you can communicate effectively with them and create content that resonates.
Conversion Rate (C/R)
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who do the intended action on a particular site compared to the total number of visitors. Filling out a form on a landing page or clicking a CTA in a blog post are two examples of desired actions.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is based on the scientific approach and aims to increase the proportion of visitors who do a desired action on a given page. They may, for example, complete a form or provide information to a chatbot in order to convert on your site.
You may learn more about your site’s visitors and the activities they perform by identifying critical indicators. These metrics may be used to evaluate and identify the best ways to generate leads and close clients.
Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing, as defined by Drift, is “the quickest method to move consumers through your marketing and sales funnels using the power of real-time interactions.” It’s a great way to establish and maintain meaningful connections with potential and current consumers and clients.”
Conversational marketing is most often done through chatbots, but it is also possible to use social media platforms that allow for real-time interactions.
Conversation Qualified Lead (CQL)
In today’s marketing world, conversational marketing and chatbots are becoming more crucial. When a customer expresses an interest in making a purchase after speaking with a live person or a chatbot, they are considered a Conversation Qualified Lead. These potential customers have very particular concerns, and they want immediate responses to those concerns.
Cost-based pricing
A strategic form of pricing intended to cover the expenses of running your business.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
A Cost per Lead (CPL) analyses your marketing and sales campaigns’ efficiency when producing new leads for your sales team. The most common method of determining the cost per lead (CPL) is to divide the campaign’s overall cost by the number of new customers it generates. CPLs give organisations with crucial statistics to analyse whether they are attracting new clients in a cost-efficient way.
Cost Per Lead Formula
In order to figure out the most efficient use of your money, you need a thorough grasp of your cost per lead (CPL) (CPL). In other words, what’s the most efficient method of figuring it out?
Total campaign costs divided by total number of leads produced is the cost per lead calculation.
Call-to-Action (CTA)
A CTA or Call To Action is a prompt used on websites, newsletters, or other content items that takes a consumer to your intended destination, i.e. your website. CTAs are, in a sense, the next action you want your clients to take. CTAs are text-based buttons or requests that are designed to be both aesthetically appealing and easily identifiable.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
The customer lifetime value is the estimated revenue that an average customer will create for your organisation over the length of your relationship. Determining CLV is fairly simple: you need to compute the average purchase value (the price of your product or service) and then multiply that figure by the average number of purchases (how many times do consumers buy from you) to estimate customer value. After calculating this, calculate the average customer lifespan (how long this customer will be buying from you) and then multiply it by customer value (sum of the average purchase values and average numbers of purchases) to get customer lifetime value.
When comparing CLV to customer acquisition cost you may assess a customer’s profitability for your firm, as well as enhance your forecasting of your startup’s growth.
Customer Relation Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a technique or a tool that a firm employs to create connections with its customers. CRM operations are frequently handled using CRM software, to maintain track of contacts inside the firm. CRM software is beneficial to establish long-term connections with customers, respond to customers’ demands, and boost marketing and sales effectiveness.
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic is made up of users who visit your website without a referral URL. When users follow a link to your website from an external source, for example Twitter, the traffic is termed referral traffic. Direct traffic, often known as “organic” traffic, is the result of a visitor entering your website’s URL directly rather than using a bookmark or other shortcut.
Engagement Rate (E/R)
Engagement rate analyses the amount of interactions your material (typically social media) gets per follower or viewer. Engagement rates are generally assessed by active vs passive responses (views or impressions) (views or impressions). Active responses include likes, comments, shares, saves, direct messages, mentions, click-throughs, and more (depending on the network) (depending on the network).
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is material that is not time-sensitive or does not go out of date. The idea behind evergreen content is to keep your tutorials, articles, and ebooks up-to-date for as long as possible, increasing the likelihood that other websites will link to them. How to get capital is one startup-related issue that never goes out of style. A great number of individuals continue to look for information on this subject, regardless of the time of year or season.
Forecasting
A prediction of marketing and sales trends that are likely to occur in the future. This forecast is based on historical, quantitative, and qualitative data.
Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy
Your product’s distinctive value proposition must be communicated clearly to customers in order to gain a competitive edge via a go-to-market strategy (GTM). It is the objective of a GTM strategy to help you launch a product in such a way as to achieve product-market fit—the ultimate goal of your launch—in the most efficient and effective manner possible.
Growth Hacking
An umbrella word for initiatives focused on nothing except growth. The objective is to gain as many clients as possible at the lowest cost feasible. It’s typically a word used in, but not limited to, marketing. Growth hacking utilises a technique of fast trials and testing in marketing channels as well as in product development to uncover the growth potential of a firm and accelerate it up. Growth hackers generally restrict their attention on low-cost marketing options such as social media and viral marketing instead of conventional print media, radio advertising, or billboards.
Heat Map
Heat maps indicate in a visual and fast manner where visitors are looking, browsing, and taking action on your website. You may use these heat maps to select where to position calls to action and crucial information, depending on your prior visitors’ behaviours. The hue of heat maps spans from red to yellow and green, signifying the amount of user attention, interactions, or eye movement.
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
For example, an ideal client profile describes the sort of business that would most benefit from your product or service. These companies tend to have the quickest, most successful sales cycle, the greatest customer retention rates and the highest number of evangelists for your brand.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing seeks to gain new organic consumers using existing channels, such as social media sources. Inbound marketing focuses on offering useful material for your potential consumers that gain high search engine ranking, attract new clients, and physically bring fresh leads to your site. If your buyer persona finds your blog articles, podcasts, or videos intriguing, you may leverage that content to entice them to click through to your site.
Information Architecture
Prior to the creation of a website, material must be organised and structured using information architecture. You may use it to organise and classify your material.
Creating a site’s primary navigation, reviewing all existing URLs, and deciding what to maintain, condense, and eliminate are all parts of the information architecture process. When it’s finished, people will have an easier time finding the information they need.
Lead Generation (Lead-gen)
Lead generation is the marketing activity of establishing and attracting interest in a product or service with the purpose of turning that interest into a sale. Lead generation helps to enhance brand awareness, develop relationships, provide quality leads, and finally complete transactions. The better the quality of leads your sales staff produces, the more of those leads will result in sales.
Lead Magnet
Free content, services, or products are called “lead magnets” because they are given away in exchange for new contacts and new leads. Lead magnets may be anything from trial memberships and free consultations to white papers and strategy planners. A white paper is a good example of a lead magnet because it is supplied to your target audience immediately and has a high perceived value for them.
Lead Nurturing
Engaging and building relationships with potential customers through a variety of marketing techniques.
Loss Aversion
Refers to the psychological idea that people feel more negatively about losing money than they do about the prospect of getting money.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is used to manage marketing operations and multifunctional campaigns across many media automatically. Channels may include email, internet, social, and text. The objective of marketing automation is to automate marketing and sales activities to create revenue and maximise efficiency. Additionally, marketing automation may assist in tackling repetitive labour via automated methods. Workflows are set up in the marketing automation systems to send out messages automatically according to workflow criteria.
Marketing Funnel
A Marketing Funnel is a commonly recognised model for analysing your customer’s interaction with your firm throughout the sales process. Startups employ marketing funnels to understand their customers’ demands at each step, in order to make more sales. Marketing funnels are also widely used to maximise marketing in every corner, from awareness to the last stretch, i.e. acquiring your goods.
What a generic marketing funnel may look like:
- Awareness. Your consumer becomes familiar with your startup.
- Interest. Your consumer acquires a deeper understanding of your firm and its goods.
- Consideration. You’ve converted your consumer from a lead to a prospect: they may now demonstrate greater interest in your newsletter or contact form by giving their email address.
- Intent. Your consumer is trying to acquire a product or service particularly from you.
- Evaluation. Your consumer examines if your product or service is the perfect fit for their requirements.
- Purchase. The last step: your buyer purchases from you.
Marketing Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
The use of marketing KPIs, or key performance indicators, may shed light on the most effective ways to carry out marketing campaigns and the most effective ways to boost sales and revenue. Key marketing metrics include things like the amount of visitors a website receives on a monthly basis, the amount of interaction, the number of leads it generates, the cost per acquisition, and so on.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Preparation for the sales team to get a lead. An MQL has had some type of favourable experience with the company, such as a chat, downloading marketing goods, etcThat determines them eligible to move to the next phase of the sales funnel.
Market-based Pricing
Similar to competitive based pricing in the sense that this type of pricing is based off of the streamlined/current pricing for a specific product or service within the same industry.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
It is a product that has enough functionality to satisfy your target market in the outset.
The purpose of the product development stage (which precedes the introduction stage) of the Product Life Cycle (PLC) is to produce an MVP. Essentially, your GTM approach is a roadmap for introducing your MVP.
Multi-touch Revenue Attribution
An individual’s encounters with your firm before they make a purchase are organised, collected, and catalogued through multi-touch revenue attribution. To give credit where it’s due, it lets firms see how their marketing efforts are affecting their bottom line.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
You may use a Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge your company’s popularity on a scale of 1 to 10. Your clients may be divided into three groups using this customer satisfaction metric: promoters (9+), passives (7–8), and detractors (0-6).
Keeping a close eye on your Net Promoter Score (NPS) might help you discover methods to enhance your products and services. Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld own the trademarks “Net Promoter Score” and “NPS.”
Nurturing
A word to use in tandem with the marketing funnel. When your clients enter the funnel, they require continual attention to feel engaged in the brand. The term “nurturing” refers to the process of sustaining a state of exhilaration. The key to outstanding nurturing is fantastic, relevant content for the consumer at each level of the funnel. Call-to-actions may be used to guide new leads to the next level, and you can use updates and news about your product or service to keep existing leads interested. Nurturing, if done well, transforms these leads into something tangible: a purchasing client.
Opt-in Form
To gather email addresses, for example, an opt-in form is a web page that encourages visitors to provide their contact information. In return, members get a free product such as an ebook, white paper, research report, infographic, or template. Websites, landing pages, and even blog articles may include opt-in pages as part of their design. Once a viewer has submitted their email address and has “opted-in”, they have granted permission for marketers to contact them through email.
Outbound Marketing
Whereas inbound marketing aims to acquire customers organically, outbound marketing makes use of many channels (as well as some funding) to push the product out to customers. Outbound marketing is the act of reaching out to your prospective clients via various adverts.
Product-led Growth (PLG)
Products and consumption are the major drivers of customer acquisition and retention in OpenView Venture Partners’ (OVP) Product-Led Growth model. A free product is used for first use and paywalls are enforced only once value is supplied to consumers. Read more here.
Product-market Fit
Product-market fit occurs when your product meets the demands of a certain market. During the product’s launch and growth phases, product-market fit occurs.
You must first develop a minimal viable product before you can achieve product-market fit (MVP).
Referral Marketing
Recommendation marketing or word-of-mouth initiatives are examples of referral marketing, which aims to get current consumers to tell their friends and family about the brand and become new customers. Referral programmes aim to encourage current customers to spread the word about your products and services, while also fostering a feeling of loyalty among those consumers who have already used your services.
Retargeting
Retargeting is a form of marketing approach to promote to prior visitors, customers, or lapsed consumers of your product or service. Retargeting is commonly done in the form of campaigns and might be initiated when visitors leave your website without a purchase. Sales and/or customer loyalty may be boosted by remarketing. Common methods used in retargeting campaigns include Google Ads, Facebook retargeting, LinkedIn Ads, and other retargeting advertising platforms.
Retention
The customer retention rate is a statistic used to quantify your ability to ‘hold on’ to your customers or the proportion of customers who remain clients within a specific time period. Retention rate is calculated by dividing the total number of active users at the beginning of the time period by the number of active users who have continued their membership. Usually, a high retention rate translates to a low churn rate.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
In the buyer’s journey, a sales qualified lead (SQL) is the fourth of six lifecycle phases (after the MQL stage). When sales and marketing agree that a potential customer has shown enough interest and is a suitable match for a sales discussion, a MQL is referred to as a SQL.
The marketing-to-sales handoff occurs at the SQL stage, which is one of the most critical but also one of the hardest for a firm to identify.
Segmentation
Segmentation is when you separate your clients into groups according to similar traits with the purpose of generating an effective marketing plan. Segments are frequently constructed from a blend of demographics, psychographics, behaviour, and geographics. Segmentation enables a marketer to personalise their message according to their requirements, wants, and preferences.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing technique, where a company sells advertising that displays on search engine result pages (SERPs) (SERPs). In this method marketers, such as a startup, bid on words or phrases (keywords) that people normally type when performing an internet search and their advertisements are presented along with the results for such searches. For example, if you offer services around food delivery, it could be a good idea to identify keywords linked to it and advertise next to them. Some companies also hunt for rival terms, such as the name of their competitor, and advertise next to them.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the techniques and approaches through which startups might acquire greater search engine ranking. When it comes to SEO, all organisations should construct their website with outstanding accessibility, relevant and quality content, focused user experience, and website optimization in mind. When a user searches for a certain term, your website should appear higher in the list of results. In brief, it makes your page more apparent to those seeking your services or goods.
A common technique to enhance your exposure on search engines is the use of thoughtful keywords in your content. Another option is to create content for your website based on keywords like “AR glasses.” An important part of improving your SEO is getting to know your target market and what they are searching for online.
Tech Stack (Software Stack)
Technology and software that a company employs to operate their business is known as a tech stack, or software stack. The majority of organisations will likely need a content management system (CMS), CRM, sales acceleration tool, marketing automation platform, and project management software.
Additionally, it covers all necessary server and platform connectors.
Thought Leadership
Usually regarded as a component of content marketing, thought leadership material seeks to position you and/or your organisation as the authority in the subject while providing your clients the idea that your firm is the best in its sector. Instead of explicitly marketing your items, thought leadership material talks about your experience and understanding on anything connected to your product. You may establish thought leadership via blogs, articles, your own social media channels, and media prominence with well-thought-out pieces.
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
Your company’s total addressable market (TAM) is the total amount of money you could make if every person who needs your product or service actually purchased it.
Understanding your total market may help you identify your target market, even if the quantity of income you’re able to generate isn’t close to your TAM.
Traction
Traction is indication that your product or service has begun that “hockey- stick” adoption rate, which signals a vast market, a sound business plan, and sustained development. Investors will look at your traction over time to see the proof of how your business is adding customers and how thrilled the market is. Traction may be assessed by the number of customers, as well as numbers of subscribers to a newsletter, but also the number of clicks on a website – depending on the aim, customers, and the market of your firm.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
A startup’s competitive edge is outlined in its USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. A USP market position is generally based on one of the “four P’s” of marketing. The four P’s of marketing are product, pricing, placement strategy (including location and distribution), and promotional strategy.
Wireframes
Your website’s blueprints are wireframes. They serve as the foundation for the ultimate look and feel of your website. Wireframes aren’t concerned with the aesthetics of your website so much as they are with the structure and arrangement of the information that will lead your ideal user to do the desired action.
Wireframes come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and the degree of authenticity they provide is determined by how much functionality and material they include. In low-fidelity wireframes, all placeholder text is used in the design process. The use of clickable components to depict user flow is common in high-fidelity wireframes, as is the inclusion of draught or even finished content.
