To a business owner, marketing and the terms that describe its various functions can often be a hard subject to navigate. It can be difficult to understand all the key terms, and they can easily be mixed up or misunderstood.
Knowing these key terms and their definitions can make a difference in the success of your marketing efforts.
This three-part series explores these key terms in three categories: General Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Advanced Marketing.
- General Marketing Terms A-L
- General Marketing Terms M-Z
- Digital marketing Terms
- Advanced Marketing Terms
- Conclusion
General Marketing Terms:
Effective marketing requires a solid understanding of fundamental concepts and strategies. With the rapid evolution of technology and the ever-changing digital landscape, brands need to stay educated on new and emerging best practices.
This section focuses on 50 important marketing terms that every business leader should be familiar with – from social media metrics and content creation to analytics and paid versus organic distribution. Understanding these core definitions provides strong baseline knowledge for your marketing program and strategies.
- A/B Testing: a type of marketing research experiment in which you divide your audience into different variations and test to see which segments perform better and compare their overall effectiveness.
- Affiliate Marketing: a method of marketing that utilizes paid third-party representatives to generate leads or additional traffic for a company, persona or services.
- Analytics: the action of studying data occurring on online platforms and evaluating the overall performances of specific activities. The goal of marketing analytics is to increase one’s ROI (return on investment) and it is typically divided into three components which are descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics.
- B2B (Business-to-Business): a marketing and sales strategy focusing on only selling to large corporations and businesses instead of an individual consumer. B2B sales can involve the distribution of information, a product, or a service, and typically is being sold to a retailer or wholesaler.
- B2C (Business-to-Consumer): a marketing and sales strategy that involves targeting individual consumers instead of larger businesses. Selling cars, gym memberships, electronics, and real estate are all common examples of B2C sales.
- Benchmark: metrics used to indicate the achievement of a specific goal. Can be a financial goal or a percentage of increase in participation or usage.
- Blogging: considered content marketing and is a marketing strategy involving writing, photography, and other media types to explain a topic or one’s opinion through an online platform.
- Buyer Persona: a description of your ideal customer based on information about the product or service a business is trying to sell.
- Call-to-Action (CTA): The purpose of your advertisement or what you want the customer to do after visiting your website or seeing the ad. The use of specific keywords or phrases encourages customers to buy a product or create an account.
- Clickthrough Rate (CTR): the measurement of what percent of total ads a company sends out are clicked on by consumers. It is measured by dividing the number of clicks a specific ad receives by the total number of times that ad is shown.
- Content: information shared to the public with the purpose of drawing attention to and sticking the info or graphic into the viewer’s mind. It is typically posted on social media and gives viewers the option to like, share, comment, or subscribe depending on the quality of the content.
- Context: delivering your content to the correct audience based on their interests and demographics. Using user information and recent research history are common ways to pick out the correct consumers.
- Earned Media: attention or exposure garnered from organic methods instead of paid methods of advertising or marketing
- Ebook: an electronic version of a paper printer book that can be read on a computer or handheld device.
- Editorial Calendar: an electronic calendar that lets users edit and plan their future months by organizing it in a calendar. In marketing, it is most commonly used to plan when they are posting their content.
- Email: messages distributed through an online platform from one computer or mobile device to any possible recipient.
- Engagement Rate: marketing measurement that tracks the level of interactions your audience has with the content you post. It is calculated by total engagement divided by total followers and then multiplied by 100. A respectable engagement rate is between 1-5%.
- Form: The place your page visitors will supply information in exchange for your offer.
- Go to Market (GTM) Strategy: a step-by-step plan designed to bring a new product or service to market and drive demand.
- Hashtag: The hashtag is the pound symbol used prior to a word or phrase, often representing a specific topic on social media. This creates a way of linking posts that relate through that topic.
- Inbound Marketing: Strategic approach to creating valuable content that aligns with the needs of your target audiences and inspires long-term customer relationships
- Influencer Marketing: a form of social media marketing that utilizes influencers or popular/authoritative figures to drive traffic or increase the sales of a good or service. Influencers can be cultural, local, national or global people of influence or a well-known authority on a subject.
- Infographic: Graphic display of relevant information
- Landing Page: Typically the website’s home page, however, it is whichever page the viewer is directed to by clicking on the link from another web page.
- Lead: A person or a company who’s shown interest in a product or a service. Leads are generated from a variety of places such as prospecting, web page form, referral, etc.
- Lead Nurturing: The process of cultivating leads that are not yet ready to purchase. Essentially maintaining contact with the lead and moving them along the sales process.
- Marketing Automation: a software that allows businesses to target consumers with automated marketing messages. Common usages include emails, website marketing, social media, and texting to increase leads and overall sales.
- Microsite: a single website companies use to promote their products, events, services, or campaigns.
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): the amount of revenue a subscription-based company generates month to month.
- Native Advertising: a marketing strategy that involves content and website designers creating advertisements that are so cohesive with the website making the viewers believe that it belongs to the page. Basically, creating similar ads to the style of the website so it blends in and viewers believe it is a part of the website.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): a measurement indicating consumer satisfaction, their overall experience, and the likelihood of becoming a loyal consumer. It is measured by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.
- News Feed: newly published content on a website.
- Offer: content assets that live behind a form on a landing page whose primary purpose is to help marketers generate leads for your business.
- Organic Reach: a social media marketing metric that measures the number of times a unique account has seen a piece of content on a platform.
- Organic Marketing: (also known as inbound marketing)expanding your audience with unpaid marketing efforts like word of mouth or social media marketing.
- Paid Marketing: any marketing that targets potential customers based on their interests or previous interactions with a brand that helps your brand reach an intended target audience quicker than organic methods.
- Paid Media: attention or exposure from paid methods of advertising like boosted social media or paid advertisement.
- Persona: an imaginable representation of a brand’s audience/customer created from the demographic that interacts with the brand.
- Product Matrix: (also known as the Ansoff Matrix), is a chart projecting all of the products a business sells and the attributes associated with each product.
- Qualified Lead: a potential customer who has been reviewed by a marketing, sales or HR team and passes all background checks, qualifications, and other criteria to be a highly considered candidate.
- Return on Investment (ROI): a business measurement indicating the profitability of an investment. ROI compares how much you paid for an investment to how much you earned to evaluate its efficiency. It is calculated by either ((Net Profit / Cost of Investment) x 100) or ((Present Value – (Cost of Investment / Cost of Investment)) x 100)
- Small-to-Medium Business (SMB): smaller businesses typically consist of 0-100 employees and medium businesses consist of 100-999 employees. Any company that has an employee population between those two ranges. These companies typically have smaller departments and have trouble competing with larger corporations due to their lack of size.
- Social Competitive Analysis: an analysis of your current social media in contrast to your competitors in your market or landscape. Utilizes your strengths and weaknesses to compare to your competition’s strengths and weaknesses
- Social Media: media with the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. It is designed to be shared and distributed for many people to see and is a massive aspect of recent marketing.
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): is a method of software delivery that allows data to be accessed from any device with an internet connection and a web browser
- Stakeholder: a person with immediate interest or profit in the success of a project or business. Stakeholders can be customers, employers, communities, governments or trade associations.
- SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis : An analytical tool to examine an organization’s current strengths and weaknesses, future opportunities and potential threats both internally and externally.
- URL: (Uniform Resource Library), a reference to a unique resource (website) on the internet. It can be thought of as the address of a resource such as a website address.
- Viral Content: content on the internet that is viewed and shared by tons of people and is very well-liked by a large number of individuals.
- Website: a collection of publicly accessible, interlinked web pages that share a single domain name. They can be created or maintained by an individual, group, business, or organization for a variety of purposes.
- Word-of-Mouth (WOM): The passing of information from person to person through oral or online communication. It is designed to encourage or accelerate naturally occurring conversations within their existing customer base.
Digital Marketing Terms
Digital marketing covers ever-evolving tactics designed to connect with target audiences.
This section explores common terms that marketers use when describing how to optimize campaigns and meet online marketing objectives. With ever-shifting algorithms and buyer behaviors, effective implementation requires an understanding of both technical concepts like on-page and off-page SEO, as well as the customer journey from awareness to conversion.
We’ll cover terms like search engine marketing, pay-per-click, and social media. Understanding these definitions provides a shared framework for discussing performance, troubleshooting issues and enhancing strategy.
- Bottom of the Funnel (BOTF): a marketing term describing the process of converting potential customers or leads into sales for their specific products or services. The funnel is a representation of the process of getting the purchase starting with awareness, interests, desire, and action. The bottom of the funnel is the action of actually purchasing the product or service.
- Bounce Rate: the marketing measurement of how many visitors a website receives and exits without viewers visiting other pages or purchasing anything.
- Closed-Loop Marketing: a marketing method of gathering information about potential customers and using that information to create targeted content. This way marketers and sales teams can provide different information to different types of customers based on their behaviors to increase their ROI.
- Conversion Path: a description of the pathway or steps a user took to get to a desired end goal or complete the call to action.
- Content Management System (CMS): a software application enabling non-experienced users to create, publish, edit, and collaborate on digital content. It is typically used for enterprise content management or web content management.
- Content Optimization System (COS): a software application that allows users to optimize content in a way to deliver fully personalized internet experiences to users
- Conversion Rate: a marketing measurement showing the percentage of visitors that complete the call to action when visiting a website or viewing the content. It is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of ad interactions in a specific time period.
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): the process of increasing the overall percentage of visitors who complete the desired action per visit. Common examples of this are changing the wording on your content, trying new techniques, or experimenting with keyword optimizations.
- Cost-per-Lead (CPL): an online advertising pricing model which shows the total pricing it costs your company to create a lead. The advertiser pays for the costs of a sign-up for a customer interested in the offer.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): a cost measurement clarifying how much money a company spends to gain new customers. It is the total costs of marketing and sales efforts and the equipment to convince customers to purchase a product or service.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): a software or technology that manages all of your customer relationships and interactions with all your customers and allows you to reach out to new customers. CRM software allows you to keep contacts with information about clients and prospects as well as scheduling appointments and sending emails. Popular CRM systems include Oracle, Salesforce, Zoho, Nimble, and Microsoft.
- CSS: (Cascading Style Sheets): a style sheet language used to describe the presentation of a document such as HTML or XML. It is what gives your entire website its style and affects the mood and tone of the website.
- HTML: HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. Often referred to as the basic building blocks of the web, HTML is the language to curate web design for things such as graphics, color, font, and hyperlinks
- JavaScript: A computer programming language commonly used to create interactive content on web browsers
- Key Performance Indicator (KPI): A quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective.
- Keyword: Keywords are the topics that web pages get indexed for in search results by search engines
- Middle of the Funnel: the middle of the marketing strategy after you have already established awareness and are now focusing on increasing engagement and leading customers closer to the desired stage.
- Mobile Marketing: a digital marketing strategy that targets users on their mobile devices such as text messaging and push notifications through apps.
- Mobile Optimization: the process of adjusting your website to the perspective of a mobile device instead of a computer. Making sure that users who visit your website on their mobile devices can still view everything in an easy and organized manner.
- On-Page Optimization: an SEO component referring to any measurement involving SEO that refers to directly to what is on the website. On-page optimization can be controlled by the owner and it is essentially any changes the creator of the website can make to the site.
- Off-Page Optimization: all SEO tactics that don’t involve updating or publishing content to your website including brand building, citation building, content marketing and social media and much more.
- Page View: a request from a visitor to load any single webpage on the internet. Companies analyze their website through page views to see if it impacts the number of visitors brought to the site.
- Pay-per-Click (PPC): the amount of money a company has to pay a digital advertising publisher every time their ad is clicked on.
- QR Code: (Quick Response Code), a barcode that is readable and scannable by cameras and other smart handheld devices. Once scanned, it gives users the option to be transported to a different URL, a photo, data, or a text message. The code is black modules arranged in a square so it can be differentiated and read by cameras.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Utilizing paid marketing that appears on a search engine results page (SERPs). Similar to search engine optimization, but utilizes promotions and advertising to rank higher in search results.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): a set of practices to increase online rankings, website traffic, and positioning, and improve the appearance of a website. Overall ranking depends on the amount of traffic to the websites, the keyword usage, reliability, security, speed and much more. The three main components include technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.
- Sender Score: a score or indication clarifying the trustworthiness of the sender of an email’s IP address. These scores are put on a scale of 0-100 with 0 being the worst and 100 being the best. The Validity Provider Network captures sender reputation metrics and makes up a Sender Score.
- Top of the Funnel: the beginning of the marketing strategy where companies try to increase the overall awareness of their product or service to a specific or many consumers.
- Unique Visitor: A person who visits a website more than once within a period of time. So if the user visits the web more than once, it counts as one visitor only.
- User Experience (UX): the holistic journey users traverse as they use a product. This does not only include their direct interactions with the specific product but also how it fits in with their overall task completion process. The overall experience a customer has from their first interaction to their final purchase.
- User Interface (UI): any method by which the end-user of a product interacts with, or controls a product, software, or hardware device. The user interface is designed to allow humans to control machines effectively and efficiently. Strong UI should make the interaction between the user and the product as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
- XML Sitemap: a text file used to detail all URLs on a website. It can include extra information on each URL with details of when they were last updated, how important they are, and whether there are any other versions of the URL created in other languages
Advanced Marketing Terms
While foundational marketing principles remain largely the same, advanced tactics incorporate evolving strategies and regulations.
This section explores concepts marketers use to optimize campaigns, maximize customer value, and mitigate risk. We’ll consider metrics like churn and lifetime value that shed light on relationship health. Terms like CAN-SPAM and CASL illustrate privacy protocols governing customer communication.
Exploring how brands implement responsive design and service level agreements reveals best practices for delivering seamless experiences across channels. Defining both technical and legislative terms provides the groundwork for high-level discussions around auditing performance, ensuring compliance and innovating approaches in dynamic digital environments.
- CAN-SPAM: (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) The first national law passed controlling the standard of sending commercial emails. It gave the requirements of what was allowed to be sent through emails and gave recipients the right to block certain emails.
- CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation): regulations passed by Canada requiring all businesses and individuals to express consent from their recipients when sending commercial emails. The three requirements senders needed to legally send the emails were getting consent, identifying themselves, and allowing recipients the ability to unsubscribe.
- Churn Rate: a marketing measurement calculating the number of customers that stop doing business with a specific company over a period of time. It is calculated by dividing the number of customers you lost over the specified time period by the number of customers that you started with.
- Inbound Link: Link from another website to a page on your website. It is composed of two parts; the link to the page on your site and the text highlighted in the link that brings people to your site.
- Lifecycle Stages: the strategies a company uses to complete a sale or get customers to complete their call to action starting with creating a positive first impression to completing their sale and hopefully creating a loyal customer base. The main steps involved in the lifecycle stages include awareness, interest, desire, and action.
- Lifetime Value (LTV): an estimate of the total value of the revenue that a specific customer will bring throughout their lifetime. It is calculated by subtracting their specific costs from the customer revenue.
- Long-Tail Keyword: a targeted search phrase or keyword phrase that contains at least three words. It is typically a specific search term that often contains a head term with two or more additional words refining the term.
- LTV:CAC: (The Customer Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost) is a measurement calculating the relationship between the lifetime value of a customer and the cost of acquiring that customer.
- No-Follow Link: links with a rel=”nofollow” HTML tag applied to them which tells search engines not to follow the outbound link that is being tagged. This essentially says that the website does not endorse the link.
- Responsive Design: a graphic user interface design approach used to create content that accurately adjusts to various screen sizes. Designers size elements in relative units (%) and apply media queries, so their designs can automatically adapt to the browser space to ensure content consistency across devices.
- Service Level Agreement (SLA): an agreement between a sales and marketing team defining the expectations Sales has for Marketing and vice versa. The Marketing service level agreement defines expectations Sales has for Marketing with regards to lead quantity and lead quality, while the Sales SLA defines the expectations Marketing has for Sales on how deeply and frequently Sales will pursue each qualified lead.
Conclusion
You now have a strong foundational understanding of over 150 key marketing terms spanning basic, digital, and advanced concepts. While this glossary provides high-level definitions, the dynamic nature of marketing means learning is ongoing.
Take what you’ve read and identify one or two areas for deeper exploration – whether researching new technologies, analyzing case studies, or having in-depth discussions with colleagues.
Consider these terms a starting point as you continuously expand your knowledge. Don’t hesitate to reach out if any definition needs further clarification or if you have additional questions. Our team is always happy to support small business owners in strengthening their marketing strategy and mastery of this evolving field.
