Marketing Glossary | Dictionary of Important Terms & Definitions

A/B Testing

This means comparing two versions of one thing to determine which version does best to help get better marketing outcomes.

Abandoned Cart

When a user places a product in the e-commerce basket of an e-commerce site but doesn’t proceed to checkout and complete the purchase.

Ad Copy

The text in your promotional communications to customers.

Ad Extensions

You can tack specific info onto your Google Advertisements to help them do better.

Ad Network

A service that offers online ad space for sale to advertisers.

AdSense

A Google marketing program that pays website publishers for allowing relevant ads from Google to run on their sites automatically.

Advertising Budget

The money a company puts toward promoting its products and services to its target audiences.

Advertorial

Advertising and editorial content combined.

Affiliate Marketing

Marketing is based on a relationship between an online advertiser and website publishers where the advertiser pays for leads or revenue from the publishers’ websites.

Affiliate Network

A specially selected group of website publishers who partner with an advertiser to deliver leads or sales and receive a commission.

Alt Text

Text that shows in place of images or pops up when you hover your mouse over an image.

What I sometimes refer to as the eyes of inbound marketing, analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. When referred to in the context of marketing, it’s looking at the data of one’s initiatives like website visitor reports, social media, PPC, etc., analyzing the trends, and developing actionable insights to make better-informed marketing decisions.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the wording of a link on a website, in an email, or within another digital asset. Ideally, the target URL references relevant information about the topic on the source page. Anchor text is also known as a link title, link text, or link label.

Application Programming Interface (API)

APIs are a series of rules in computer programming that allow an application to extract information from a service and use it in its application or data analysis.

Audience Segmentation

A marketing plan based on identifying subgroups within the target audience to deliver more tailored messaging for stronger connections.

B2B (Business-to-Business)

An adjective used to describe companies that sell to other businesses.

B2C (Business-to-Consumer)

An adjective used to describe companies that sell directly to consumers.

Backlinks

Links on websites other than your own that go back to a page on your website.

Banner Ad

A standard horizontal ad placement at the top of a web page.

BIMI

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is an emerging security technology that helps authenticate your email marketing and builds customer trust.

Bing Ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads that run on Bing and Yahoo search engines span desktop and mobile devices.

Black Hat SEO

It refers to a set of practices used to increase a site or page’s rank in search engines through means that violate the search engine’s terms of service. The term “black hat” originated in Western movies to distinguish the “bad guys” from the “good guys” who wore white hats. Recently, it’s been used more commonly to describe computer hackers, virus creators, and those who perform unethical actions with computers.

Blog

The short form of “weblog.” A blog is a collection of journal-like articles written about a particular topic and published on a website.

Blogging

This is short for web log or weblog.

Bottom of the Funnel

The bottom of the marketing funnel is where prospective customers or leads become paying customers.

Bounce Rate

It is the percentage of people that land on a page and leave.

Brand

The experience a customer has with a product or service that makes it different from others in the same category.

Brand Identity

The experience a customer has with your product or service visually.

Brand Image

How your clients perceive your products, services, and company. A solid brand identity and relentless brand management are two keys to success.

Brand Manager

A marketing professional is responsible for making sure the customer’s experience with a brand is brand-worthy.

Breadcrumbs

A breadcrumb is a secondary navigation aid that improves customer experience by helping users understand their location on a website or mobile application.

Business Blogging

Business blogging retains all the attributes of “regular” blogging but places a tasty layer of marketing plan on top. When blogging for a business, marketers should create posts optimized with key text that their target audience is searching for and provide helpful, educational material to these readers.

Buyer Persona

A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and accurate data about your existing customers.

Call to Action (CTA)

A call-to-action (CTA) is a text link, button, image, or web link that encourages a website visitor to visit a landing page and become a lead. Some examples of CTAs are “Subscribe Now “or “Download the Whitepaper Today.” Conveying a very enticing, valuable offer on a CTA is essential to better fostering visitor-to-lead conversion.

CAN-SPAM

CAN-SPAM stands for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing” and refers to a law passed by the United States Bureau of Consumer Protection in 2003.

Canonical URL

The “master version” of a page on your website that you want search engine crawlers to find.

CASL

CASL stands for “Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation.” It’s a 2013 law that covers the sending of “commercial electronic messages” that may be accessed by a computer in Canada.

Churn Rate

A metric that measures how many clients you retain and at what value.

Classified Advertising

Ads appear on the same page and are grouped into categories in a list-like format.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The percentage of consumers who click on the link in your digital marketing message after seeing it. CTR is a critical success metric for an advertising campaign.

Closed-Loop Marketing

The practice of closed-loop marketing, which involves executing, tracking, and showing how marketing works, has impacted bottom-line business growth.

Contact Form

A page on a website that contains a brief questionnaire allowing consumers to provide info about themselves and show an interest in being contacted about your products or services.

Content

About inbound marketing, content is information that exists to be digested (not literally), engaged with, and shared.

Content Management System (CMS)

A web application designed to make it easy for non-technical consumers to create, edit, and manage a website.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a plan businesses use to attract, engage, and retain clients by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media.

Content Optimization System (COS)

COS is a CMS (Content Management System) optimized to deliver clients the most personalized web experience possible.

Context

If content is king, then context is queen. Serving up valuable content is essential, but ensuring that it’s customized for the right audience is equally (if not more) necessary. As buyers become more in control of what info they digest (again, not literally), delivering contextually relevant content is essential.

Conversion Path

A conversion path is a series of website-based events that help capture leads.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of user actions taken after total clicks on a display ad or other digital asset.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is increasing the percentage of consumers who take the actions you want them to, such as clicking on a website link or purchasing a product online. Two critical conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies are A/B testing and personalized marketing.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

How much do you spend to win a single-paying customer?

Cost Per Click (CPC)

A website publisher charges a fee to serve your display ads.

Cost-per-lead (CPL)

The amount it costs your marketing organization to acquire a lead.

CPM

Cost per thousand impressions of an online ad.

Creatives

The products of copywriters, graphic designers, and other creative advertising people‚ or simply the people themselves.

CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers.

Crowdsourced Content

Creating your content can take more time than you have to devote to it, which is where crowdsourcing comes into play.

CSS

Cascading style sheet (CSS) is a language that dictates how a web page looks.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the money a company spends to get a new customer.

Customer Data Platform

A customer data platform (CDP) is a central location for customer data from various sources.

Customer Journey

Customer journey is a detailed map showing the customer’s entire experience with your business.

Digital Marketing

Any marketing that uses electronic devices to convey promotional messaging and measure its impact.

Direct Mail Marketing

A type of direct marketing that is delivered physically to a prospect’s mailbox through the United States Postal Service or another delivery service.

Direct Marketing

Marketing that is delivered directly to the customer via the company selling a product.

Display Ads

A type of online ad that combines text, images, and a URL that links to a website where a customer can learn more about or buy products.

Distribution Channel

The path a product or service takes from its creation to the person who will use it.

DMARC

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is a widely recognized email protocol that helps people and businesses protect their email addresses and domains from being misused by third parties.

DNS

A domain name system (DNS) takes a human-friendly internet address, such as Website.com, and translates it into a computer-friendly IP address a web browser can use to find and display a website.

Domain

A domain or domain name comes between the @ in your email address and the .com, .org, .net, etc.

Drip Campaign

Automated emails are sent to people who take a specific action.

Dropshipping

In an e-commerce model, the seller owns no inventory or handles shipping responsibilities.

Dynamic Content

A way to display different messaging on your website based on the info you already know about the visitor.

E-commerce

E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services using the Internet.

E-commerce Website

A website allows people to buy and sell physical goods, services, and digital products online rather than at a brick-and-mortar location.

Ebook

Ebooks are a common type of content that many marketers use, often to help generate leads.

Editorial Calendar

It’s like a road map for content creation, showing you what kind of content to create, what topics to cover, which personas to target, and how often to publish to best support your plan.

Email

In its most basic sense, email stands for Electronic Mail. It is a core marketing component because it directly connects to a contact’s inbox. However, with great power comes great responsibility, meaning it is essential for marketers not to abuse the email relationship with a contact.

Email Automation

The use of predefined rules to trigger email messages based on specific actions clients take or do not take.

Email Bounce Rate

Email bounce rate: The rate at which an email cannot be delivered to a recipient’s inbox. Not all bounces are bad in email, so it’s important to distinguish between hard and soft bounces before taking an email address off your list.

Email List

A list of email addresses that your business can send marketing emails to.

Email Marketing

The use of email to promote a business’s products and services.

End User

The person who uses a product or service.

Engagement Rate

A popular social media metric describes the amount of interaction- likes, shares, comments- a piece of content receives.

Error 404

The file was not found, and your web browser flagged an error.

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content continues to provide value to readers no matter when they stumble upon it.

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

A human- and machine-readable coding language that places structure, meaning, or context to a text document.

Eye Tracking

Measuring and recording the movement of eyes as they look at a web page.

Facebook

Facebook is a social network you’re likely quite familiar with, but it has become so much more than a platform for publishing content and gaining followers.

Facebook Ads

Ads that run exclusively through the Facebook advertising platform.

Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager is a comprehensive platform that Facebook provides for creating, managing, and analyzing advertising campaigns.

Facebook Business Page

Your business’ home on Facebook.

Facebook Profile

Your home on Facebook.

FCC

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a United States government agency that regulates communication devices and systems, including the Internet.

Featured Snippet

A section of Google’s search engine results page that tries to answer a question without a person having to click through to another web page.

Form

The place where your page visitors will supply info in exchange for your offer.

Friction

Any element of your website that is confusing, distracting, or causes stress for visitors, causing them to leave your page.

FTC

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) promotes competition in the United States marketplace and protects consumers.

Go-to-Market Strategy

A plan that helps you launch your new business, product, service, or brand to your customers. It usually includes target audience research, the key differentiators in your market, and a planned approach for marketing and distribution.

Google Ads

Google Advertisements is the software platform Google uses to power its ad network. Advertisers choose which key text is most relevant to their products and how much they want to pay for their campaigns. The ads appear at the top of the Google search engine results page (SERP) or on third-party websites and apps when someone searches for one of these keywords.

Google Algorithm

Algorithms are a list of mathematical calculations and if/then statements that decide what action a computer program should take.

Google Analytics

A platform that measures and reports on website traffic.

Google My Business

A free service that lets you provide more detail about your business when it appears in search.

Google Remarketing

Also called retargeting, Google remarketing is the technology that lets your Google Advertisements follow potential clients as they move across the Internet.

Google Search Console

A Google tool that helps you optimize your website content to improve its doance and your search engine optimization (SEO) works. You can submit URLs and full sitemaps to Google Search Console to make sure your most important pages are indexed in the Google search engine.

GPT-3

GPT-3, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, is a remarkable language model that has taken the world by storm.

Gross Rating Points

A math equation that multiplies the number of times an ad is run by the percentage of the target audience that sees it, multiplied by 100.

H1

An H1 tag is an HTML tag used to identify a page’s highest level of information. H1s are essential in search engine optimization (SEO) and make it easier to index content. Search engines know it is necessary if something is in an H1 tag.

Hard Bounce/Soft Bounce

An email that is rejected by an email server for a permanent reason.

Hashtag

A hash or pound sign (#) is used after a word or phrase to label content and make it easier to find.

Heat Map

A visual representation of data that uses color to communicate areas of highest use or likelihood.

Hreflang Tags

An HTML tag that helps search engines find and display content in a specific language when a website uses multiple languages.

HTML

Hypertext markup language (HTML) is the coding language used to create web pages.

HTTP (HTTPS)

Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) is a web browser’s application (or program) to ask a web server for information.

Hyperlink

A piece of text or an image on a website that takes you to another web page when you click on it.

Iframe

An iframe is a section of a web page that contains content that comes from another page.

Inbound Link

An inbound link is a link from another site to your website.

Inbound Marketing

A marketing plan that encourages people to seek out and engage with your brand actively.

Index Page

The homepage of a website.

Infographic

It is a highly visual piece of content that is very popular among digital marketers for relaying complex concepts visually.

Instagram

Though initially a haven only for younger generations who wanted to post, edit, and share unique-looking photos, Instagram has become a premier social network that’s a viable opportunity for content marketers.

Instagram Ads

Instagram posts that promote a business’s products or services.

Integrated Marketing

The practice of aligning all marketing tactics to the same core messaging for a consistent customer experience with your brand.

IP Address

An Internet protocol (IP) address is a unique number, similar to your street address, that uses commas and periods to identify a device accessing the Internet.

JavaScript

A coding language that works with HTML to make dynamic web page content possible. JavaScript is also a key player in responsive web design, which uses the same code for desktop and mobile devices, making the user experience (UX) seamless.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Companies use a type of doance measurement to check an employee’s or an activity’s success.

Key Success Factors

The five elements determine whether or not a company will effectively capture its target audience. The critical success factors are strategic focus, people, operations, marketing, and finances.

Keyword

A keyword is a word or phrase in the content of your web pages that matches the text and phrases consumers are entering into search engines as closely as possible. The keyword is the cornerstone of search engine optimization (SEO).

Keyword Density

The number of times a keyword is used on a web page out of the total text. The higher your keyword density, the higher search engines will rank your page for relevance. Just avoid keyword stuffing.

Landing Page

A standalone web page that potential clients can use when they click through from an email, ad, or other digital location.

Lead

A person or company who’s shown interest in a product or service in some way, shape, or form.

Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is developing a series of communications (emails, social media messages, etc.) that seek to qualify a lead, keep it engaged, and gradually push it down the sales funnel.

Lifecycle Stages

These divisions describe your relationship with your audience and can generally be broken down into three stages: awareness, checking, and purchase.

Lifetime Value (LTV)

A prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site.

LinkedIn Advertising

A platform for promoting your company products or services on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Profile

Your landing page on LinkedIn. LinkedIn members searching for ‚ someone like you will have an easier time finding if you incorporate relevant key text into your content and maximize the number of profile features you use, such as uploading a photo and linking to publications.

List Broker

A business specializing in sourcing contact lists that direct marketers can rent for an email or marketing campaign.

Long-Tail Keyword

A long-tail keyword is a targeted search phrase containing three or more text.

Market Share

The percentage of the market for your product or service you want to capture. They may also buy critical competitors.

Marketing Automation

A process that lets technology take over repetitive marketing tasks from people, freeing people to focus on the plans.

Marketing Collateral

Digital or print materials that accompany a primary advertising campaign.

Marketing Mix

The 4 P’s: price, product, promotion, and place (point of sale).

Marketing Objectives

What do you want a marketing initiative, such as an advertising campaign, to accomplish for your business’s bottom line?

Marketing Research

We are gathering and analyzing market information to inform customers how best to offer a product or service.

Meta Description

A summary of what a web page is about in the page’s HTML code. Search engines consider meta descriptions when ranking your page for relevance to user searches, but it is not one of the most critical factors.

Meta Keywords / Meta Tags

Words and phrases in the HTML meta keytext tag of a web page. Meta key text helps search engines identify what the page is about and rank its relevance to user searches accordingly. The key text in your tag should reflect the content of your page. In other text, you can‚Äôt add key text to the meta tag to compensate for the lack of relevant key text in the content itself.

Microsite

A cross between a landing page and a website.

Middle of the Funnel

This is the stage that a lead enters after identifying a problem.

Mobile Marketing

With mobile search queries officially surpassing desktop queries, now is probably the time to explore mobile marketing.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization means designing and formatting your website to be easily read and navigated from a mobile device.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

The amount of revenue a subscription-based business receives per month.

Narrowcasting

Sending a media message to a highly targeted audience.

Native Advertising

A type of online advertising that takes on the form and function of the platform it appears on.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A customer satisfaction metric that measures, on a scale of 0 to 10, the degree to which people would recommend your company to others.

News Feed

A news feed is an online feed full of news sources.

No-Follow Link

A no-follow link is used when a website does not want to pass search engine authority to another webpage.

Nofollow

A meta tag in the HTML code of a web page that tells search engines to disregard the page. Some consumers comment on your blog post to promote their products and stuff your comments with crucial text.

Nonprofit Marketing

It is marketing with goals that advance a nonprofit organization’s cause versus driving a business’s profitability.

Off-Page Optimization

This is the free-spirited cousin of on-page optimization.

Offer

Offers are content assets that live behind a form on a landing page.

Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing creates a cohesive, integrated shopping experience across a brand’s sales, including brick-and-mortar locations, events, mobile devices, and online stores.

On-Page Optimization

This type of SEO is based solely on a webpage and the various elements within the HTML. Ensuring that critical pieces of the specific page (content, title tag, URL, and image tags) include the desired keyword will help a page rank for that particular phrase.

Organic Search

The natural and unpaid results consumers receive after making search queries. You can improve your ranking through search engine optimization (SEO) activities, such as including key text in headlines.

Page View

A request to load a single web page on the Internet.

Paid Search

Online advertising is triggered when consumers do searches using key text that a company has purchased.

Personalized Marketing

The practice of using analytics to make promotional communications and product experiences feel unique to each customer.

Personalized Product Recommendations

Suggestions to clients for products they may be interested in based on products they bought or viewed online. Personalized product recommendations, which mathematical calculations called algorithms find out on the back end, are a vital feature of websites for cross-selling and upselling.

Pinterest is a visual social network typically used by e-commerce marketers, but not without its fair share of top-notch B2B and B2C content marketers.

Product Differentiation

What makes your product or service different and more appealing to clients than other options in your category?

Product Lifecycle

The stages a product goes through during its time on the market. For example, raising awareness of a new product may be more important than raising awareness of a mature product.

Product Matrix

A product matrix is a chart that describes the various products a business offers and the features that apply to each product.

Product Positioning

The image of your product or service that you want members of your target audience to have in their minds.

Product Range

A set of versions of one product from the same brand, each tweaked to appeal to a different audience segment.

Promotional Mix

The combination of promotions (advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, publicity) you use to deliver marketing messages to your target audience.

Promotions

Marketing communications are designed to inform target audiences about products or services and persuade them to buy them.

Psychographics

Your target audience values, beliefs, and behaviors relevant to your product or service.

QR Code

A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera telephones.

Qualified Lead

A contact who opted in to receive communication from your company became educated about your product or service and is interested in learning more.

Quality Score

A Google Advertisements metric that rates how relevant your pay-per-click (PPC) ads and landing pages are to your chosen keytext. Google doesn‚Äôt reveal its exact calculation, but your estimate is based on ad relevance to key text, expected click-through rate (CTR), and landing page experience. If you want to improve your quality score, Google recommends optimizing your ads and landing pages and revisiting your keyword plan.

Questionnaire

A set of questions about a topic that is used for research purposes.

Redirect

They sent a user to a web page different from the one they requested with a URL.

Referral

When a website sends traffic to another website.

Responsive Design

This is the practice of developing a website that adapts to how someone views it.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) / Return on Investment (ROI)

The ratio of the revenue generated by an ad campaign to its cost.

Retweet

A re-posting of a tweet posted by another user on Twitter.

Robots.txt

A file placed on a web server that gives instructions to search engine crawlers, which are the robots that index web pages for search engines.

RSS

Really simple syndication (RSS) packages a website’s content into a feed that can be easily displayed on other websites.

Schema Markup

Bits of code are added to a web page that helps search engines understand the page’s content.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Paid advertising on a search engine results page (SERP).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Changes were made to a website’s content and structure to improve its ranking on a search engine results page (SERP). These include using relevant key text in headlines (H1) and subheads, friendly URLs with key text rather than strings of numbers, and schema markup to make results richer and more detailed.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

A search engine returns the page after a user submits a search query.

Search Engines

Search engines are software used to find information and websites on the Internet. They display results based on the key text in the search query. Search engines play an important part in inbound marketing through search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).

Search Query

The string of text consumers enter into a search engine to receive a result. Search queries are the raw text that people type into the search engine.

Sender Score

An email marketing term that refers to the reputation rating from 0 to 100 for every outgoing mail server IP address.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

For marketers, an SLA is an agreement between a company’s sales and marketing teams that defines Sales’s expectations for Marketing and vice versa.

Sitelink

An ad extension that places more than one link in a paid search ad.

Sitemap XML

A list of pages on a website that search engines should index.

Small-to-Medium Business (SMB)

Usually defined as companies that have between 10 and 500 employees.

Smarketing

A fun phrase used to refer to the practice of aligning Sales and Marketing works. But since this isn’t always how the cookie crumbles, it is essential for marketing and sales to align and impact the bottom line the best they can through coordinated communication.

Snapchat

A social app allowing consumers to send and receive time-sensitive photos and videos known as “snaps,” which are hidden from the recipients once the time limit expires.

Social Media

The ratio of the revenue generated by an ad campaign to its cost.

Social Media Marketing

We use social media to advertise a brand, products, or services.

Social Proof

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon in which people seek direction from those around them to determine how they should act or think in a given situation.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Any software hosted by another company stores your info in the cloud.

SSL

A secure socket layer (SSL) is a method of encryption that protects data sent between websites.

Target Audience

The people you want to reach with your marketing works.

Title Tag

An HTML tag that designates a page’s title. Title tags are essential to search engine optimization (SEO) and should contain one or more keywords to help with search engine ranking.

Top of the Funnel

Sometimes called TOFU, the top of the funnel is the first stage of the buying process.

Tracking Code

A small piece of JavaScript is placed on a website that sends data to Google Analytics.

Twitter

For the sake of creativity, I’ll define Twitter in 140 characters or less: “Twitter is a platform allowing consumers to share 140-character long messages publicly.

Unique Visitor

A person who visits a website more than once within a period.

URL

This is short for Uniform Resource Locator. URLs are important for on-page SEO, as search engines scour the included text when mining for crucial text. If a keyword you want to get indexed for is in the URL, you get brownie points from search engines (but no real brownies, unfortunately).