Are you overwhelmed by the sheer amount of marketing terms? Ever finished surfing the internet or walked out of a meeting with a marketing professional and been more confused than before?
You are not alone.
Marketing professionals use their own set of terms, acronyms, and marketing jargon to describe their process and procedures, and it can take a while to get to know all of them.
To help you get your finger on the marketing jargon pulse and to understand some common marketing vocabulary, we have compiled a list of the 58 marketing terms we think you should know.
This list is compiled in alphabetical order.
Table of Contents
A/B Testing
Marketers use A/B testing to compare two different versions of something – like a landing page copy or design elements – to gather users’ feedback to determine which version is more effective. By comparing metrics like CTRs, conversion rates, and engagement rates, one can define which option serves their goals best.
Ad Copy
Describes the written words that make up the content of an advertisement. This can be a combination of different copy forms within an ad, from a headline to the body content. The ad copy informs an audience about your particular product and increases brand awareness.
Advertising
A marketing specialization that focuses on making a specific product or service known to the public. Advertising is primarily used to inform potential customers about a company and its products/services with the final goal of persuading them to buy from said company.
B2B
An acronym for “business to business” to identify private or public organizations that create products and services geared toward other businesses. Examples of B2B may include car manufacturing companies that sell car parts to other car companies or businesses selling software solutions to other businesses to increase efficiencies.
B2C
An acronym for “business to consumer” used by businesses that sell products directly to individual customers. Examples of B2C include sales representatives selling cars to natural persons, sports equipment for athletes, or a department store selling shoes.
Blogging
Blogging is a form of content marketing where an author writes and publishes content for website visitors to read. Think of it as a personal journal, but the collection of pages are stored online for everyone to read. Blogs are typically published in chronological order and inform readers about specific topics, products, or start discussions based on the author’s interests or what the company has to offer.
Bounce Rate
Marketing term used to represent the number of visitors who enter your website and leave without doing any further action, like clicking on an internal link or filling out a contact form. Understanding the bounce rate metric helps you determine how your pages are engaging or not.
Branding
Branding relates to how your business presents itself to customers and how they can differ you from your competition. You can create a unique brand by:
- designing a logo with custom fonts, colors, and symbols;
- using a specific tone/voice when reaching your customers (like impersonating a motherly character for a baby clothing shop, or formal conversation for a law firm);
- caring for and writing content about specific matters of your niche, like small business marketing or donating to a local charity.
Brick and Mortar
Brick and Mortar stores traditionally serve customers through a physical location and not just through a digital presence. However, these stores can have a presence online, i.e Target or Walmart, where customers can go to the location or purchase products online.
Briefing
A document that agencies and marketing freelancers use as a framework to work on upcoming projects. Briefings are used as an outline to develop marketing deliverables like website design, copy, or advertising. These documents create the outline of expectations and actions to be developed by the team in charge.
Buyer Personas
A representation of your ideal client or target audience. Based on qualitative and quantitative research within your niche market, a buyer persona is developed as a fictional representation of who you are marketing to and why.
CMS
An acronym for “Content Management System”, which is a piece of software used to manage the creation and organization of digital content. Examples of CMS software include website building platforms such as WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix.
Cold Calling
That’s when businesses reach out to potential customers without any previous interaction with them. This tactic is used to sell goods and services to a customer who may not have previously expressed interest, which considerably lowers your chances of making a sale.
Content Marketing
A form of marketing that is focused on creating, curating, and publishing content for an audience. Content marketers focus on providing valuable and relevant content to potential customers to drive traffic to your website. Examples of content marketing include ebooks, videos, and newsletters.
Conversion rate
A most crucial metric that tracks what percentage of visitors completes a desired action. Conversions can be anything from buying a product to downloading an ebook or filling out a form.
For example: if 15 out of 100 visitors fill out a form on your landing page with their content info, you can say you have a 15% Conversion Rate on that web page.
Setting up conversions and understanding how they work is a way to identify how to improve specific areas of your business.
CPC
CPC means “Cost Per Click”, a metric that tells marketers how much they will spend for a single click on a keyword ad created on a PPC platform, like Google Ads or Facebook Ads.
The cost per click varies depending on the keyword you’re targeting on your ad.
If you created an ad directed towards users looking for “car rentals” on Google, you’re likely to pay $3.50 per click on your ad (CPC data taken from Ahrefs). However, there are more competitive markets, like roofing, that can get your CPC up to $14,00 with keywords like “roof repair”, for example.
CRM
Customer Relationship Management is a management model for a company’s relationships and interactions with potential and current customers.
Businesses use CRM to fuel relationships with customers, providing positive experiences, and ongoing engagement. Some CRM software examples include Hubspot and Salesforce.
CTA
A Call to Action is a design element (such as a button) that encourages users to take a specific action on a page, like downloading an ebook or making a call.
The CTA is a clear instruction to guide your potential customers to the next step of the sales funnel.
These instructions must be direct and provide no room for confusion, like “Subscribe for a 7-day free trial” or “Join our Mailing List”.
CTR
Click-Through Rate determines the percentage of people who saw and clicked on a specific link in your website, email campaign, or ad.
Knowing the CTR can help you determine the effectiveness of your campaigns or specific Call to Action.
For example: if you sent an affiliate link to 1000 customers, but only 50 of them clicked on it, you can say that link had a CTR of 5%.
Digital Presence
The digital presence of a company is the concept that its value is measured by how often and in what quality it shows up on the internet. This often includes how they interact with their followers on social media, the quality of reviews they get from their buyers, the advertises they create online and – most importantly for small businesses – their services/products listed on Google My Business.
It may be tough to comprehensively organize a firm’s entire digital presence, as it might cover much more than that, including emails campaigns sent to client’s inbox, private conversation on WhatsApp and Telegram groups, and even mentions of your brand in other businesses’ websites.
In all cases, digital presence is where we can find you online, and figuring out whether these encounters are beneficial or harmful is what distinguishes the quality of it.
Ecommerce
A website design to sell products with a digital checkout. Ecommerces allow users to purchase on digital devices such as computers, tablets, and smartphones. It is the digital counterpart to the sales made on brick and mortar stores.
Email Marketing
A marketing channel that allows the exchange of direct messages sent through emails for customers, leads, and/or stakeholders. Email marketing campaigns can be used for various reasons, from promoting a particular brand to making sales or informing potential and current customers about products.
End-users
People that actually use the products or services your company provides.
For example, a mother may buy diapers for her infant child, making her the buyer, but the actual end-user of the diaper is the baby.
Knowing how the end-user operates and performs in the market is a way for the business to understand who they are marketing to.
Engagement Rate
A metric that tracks how involved your audience is with a particular piece of content. Typically used when discussing social media metrics (likes, shares, and comments), but can also be used to analyze how engaging your website content is.
For example a service page that gets no clicks on its content (internal and external links, CTAs, fill-out forms) can be considered to drive low engagement rates.
Evergreen content
When the information exposed on a piece of content never gets old, it is said to be evergreen. This particular content is not time-sensitive and is always relevant to readers no matter the passing of time.
An example of evergreen content would be “best dog breeds for children” vs. a non-evergreen piece of content would be “best pet ecommerces in 2022.”
Geographic segmentation
The process of segmenting your audience by where they live or are currently at. By segmenting your audience in geographic locations, you can get more accurate data on customer groups and compare them with other geographic based audiences.
Google Ads
An online advertising platform developed by Google where businesses pay to display their advertisements, product offerings, and listings. These advertisements are then placed in a variety of search engine results and mobile applications, like Youtube and/or third-party websites.
Google Analytics
A web analytics platform, developed by Google, capable of tracking and reporting meaningful metrics on websites. Google Analytics offers businesses the tools they need to understand how customers behave on their website, what type of devices they are coming from, what pages drive the most traffic, and your audience demographics. Google Analytics offers the data businesses need to make informed decisions about their website and product offerings.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a process that focuses on attracting customers to a website through content and the website’s design that is relevant to them. It can include blogs, social media, and videos.
Inbound marketing does not involve outbound forms of advertisements – such as print ads or billboards – which require brands to showcase their offers when their audience is not actively seeking this information, making traditional marketing somewhat invasive towards the user.
Key Performance Indicators
Often shortened to KPIs, key performance indicators are specific metrics relevant to the growth of a business. Each organization determines which KPIs they want to track.
Some examples of KPIs include financial, operational, and strategic achievements, such as Sales per Region, Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Lifetime Value, and ROAS (Return Over Ads Spent).
Keyword
A keyword is what you type in search engines, like Google, for a given query.
It is the words or phrases that internet users type into the search engine to find what they are looking for. Keywords can be just one word such as “cars” or a phrase, such as “red cars with racing stripes.”
The study of keywords and how your competition uses them in their marketing is pivotal to SEO strategies and Content Marketing.
Landing Pages
Single static pages with the sole purpose of converting visitors into leads.
A landing page pushes the user to give their contact info in exchange for a high-value offer like an ebook, video course, or any free material relevant to the your audience.
Leads
Person or company who shows interest in a brand’s products or services. A visitor that shows interest in your offer by filling out a contact form becomes a lead and is added to your lead listing for future marketing actions such as email outreach or scheduling a call.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of identifying potential customers and convincing them to buy your product. It’s often the first step for sales teams, who use it to find out how much interest they can expect to generate in their company’s services. Leads are identified through website traffic, online advertisements, social media followers, list rentals, and more.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is the process of nurturing leads with information about your company in order to build stronger relationships and move them along in the buying cycle. It’s one of the most popular forms of inbound marketing because it helps you build a sustainable, predictable pipeline.
Local SEO
The practice of optimizing your website and content to be relevant to specific local areas. Businesses that have physical locations and services can use local SEO tactics to increase local brand awareness and connect directly with searchers in their geographic area.
Marketing automation
A technology that manages marketing processes and campaigns across many channels automatically. Examples of automation include feedback emails and surveys that are sent out to customers after purchases or product updates.
Marketplace
A marketplace is a website where people can sell goods and services. You can find almost anything you need on a marketplace website, from clothes to electronics.
When you showcase products on a marketplace, such as Amazon or eBay, you are “renting” a digital shop space with pre-selected configurations to make your offer to that marketplace audience. Remember that when doing so, you are sharing the same pages with other competitors, so there’s not much room for customization.
Meta Description
An HTML coding element that describes or summarizes the contents of a webpage. It is important for SEO rankings since the search engines use meta descriptions to find your website through keywords and relevant content.
Niche Marketing
A type of advertising that targets a specific market. Instead of sending out blanket marketing advertisements or offers, niche marketing focuses on one potential demographic or group who could benefit from a business’s particular offerings.
Onboarding
The process of bringing on or welcoming new customers to a business or company to encourage inclusion and loyalty. The onboarding process is all about getting new customers acquainted with your products and services and addressing any and all of their questions and concerns in an informational and entertaining learning process.
Organic Traffic
The number of visitors that land on your website from unpaid sources. Organic traffic is calculated by not including paid advertisements and is strictly built from SEO strategies.
Outbound Marketing
The process of advertising to customers through traditional offline media, such as print ads, television, radio, and so on. Outbound marketing makes the first contact with potential customers, even though they did not seek the company’s solutions at the given time.
Paid Traffic
When a customer visits your website through the advertising you have paid for. Examples of paid traffic include advertisements from social media outlets like Facebook or PPC platforms where a click on your ad leads the user to your website.
PPC
PPC or Pay Per Click is a form of paid traffic where advertisers pay a fee (CPC) each time one of their ads is clicked. PPC is used for businesses who want to “buy” visits to their site in the short term and increase the possibility of conversions on a given time.
Referral marketing
A word-of-mouth marketing tactic where a company incentivizes existing customers to introduce their friends, family, or other contacts to buy their product in order to receive discounts or benefits.
Examples of referral marketing include an offer to save 10% on your next purchase if you get someone to sign up using your referral code.
Responsive Website
A website design approach that automatically changes the size of a website to match any device screen. Responsive websites will render equally well on a smartphone as they do on a tablet and provide a good user experience for their customers.
ROI
Return on Investment is used in almost every industry as a performance measurement to evaluate profit and efficiency. In marketing, you can attribute an ROI to various content and marketing initiatives, from how much you spend on a campaign to how much profit you made in sales.
Sales Funnel
The sales funnel is a visual representation of every stage in a customer’s buying journey. There are four stages in the sales funnel: awareness, interest, decision, and action. Customers are addressed differently depending on what stage in the funnel they are.
Search Engine
A search engine is a website that somebody uses when they are trying to find information on the web. The website searches for words or phrases related to what you are looking for in order to find websites with the most relevant information.
The search engine ranks sites based on which ones provide the best user experience against criteria such as title, content, keywords, and links. It lists the websites in order from top to bottom based on relevancy.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving website rankings in search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
SEO includes both on-page and off-page strategies. On-page SEO focuses on website content, website structure, website coding, website promotion, and website hosting. Off-page SEO includes obtaining links from other websites, social media marketing, press releases, and online reputation management.
Unique Selling Proposition
Also known as USP, is what makes your business different from others. Your USP is your differentiator in the market that can be anything from a “first-ever” product to the “lowest price on the market.” A USP can set you aside and give you a competitive advantage.
User Experience (UX)
The process of designing a website or piece of content in a way that provides meaningful and easy usability for users. UX promotes quality interaction when customers are using your digital services.
User Interface (UI)
Any digital asset that your users interact with. The goal of effective UI is to make your user’s experience easy and intuitive and provide them with an experience that offers the least amount of work for the maximum desired outcome.
Web Design
Web design is the process of designing a website or website content. Web design can also include website usability, navigation, accessibility, branding, maintenance, and web page production.
A website’s design can have a huge impact on its success or failure. Successful websites will often include professional website development and proper functionality, while unsuccessful sites may not function properly and lack an attractive appearance.
Web Development
Web development is the process of designing and developing websites. It involves many different website technologies such as website hosting, website design, website content management, website package hosting and website domain name registration.