Marketing Terms Every Small Business Owner Should Know
A lot of acronyms and jargon gets quickly thrown about when you get any marketer going (myself included.) I often forget that the average small business owner doesn’t live and breathe or even care remotely about marketing as much as I do. So I put together a basic list broken down by category with some general marketing terms you’ll hear myself and most other marketers reference at some point or another.
GENERAL BUSINESS TERMS
B2B (Business-to-Business): Business-to-Business means one business makes a transaction with another business.
B2C (Business-to-Consumer): Business-to-Consumer means a business is selling their products directly to consumers.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Software-as-a-Service is a type of software licensing and delivery that can be accessed online through a subscription service.
Small-to-Medium Business (SMB): Small-to-Medium Business means a small business that has 100 or less employees and medium sized business that employs between 100-999 people.
Top of the Funnel: Top of the Funnel is the first step in a sales funnel where a company focuses on increasing brand awareness to hopefully generate new leads.
Middle of the Funnel: Middle of the Funnel is the second step in the sales funnel where educating and engaging with prospects about your brand is the main focus.
Bottom of the Funnel: Bottom of the Funnel refers to the last step in which the lead decides to biome a consumer or buy from a competitor.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Customer Relationship Management is the maintenance of interactions with past customers as well as new, potential customers.
MARKETING TERMS & TACTICS
A/B Testing: A/B Testing is also called Split Testing. This is a testing method where two versions of an app or webpage are tested to see which has more conversions.
Ebook: An ebook is an electronic version of a printed book.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is the process of increasing the website traffic to your sight by search engines.
Word-of-Mouth (WOM): Old school marketing. Word-of-mouth meaning refers to consumers talking about their experience with a product or company.
Workflow A workflow is another way to describe a lead nurturing campaign.
PPC PPC, (or Pay-Per-Click): PPC is an advertising strategy that is used to increase traffic on websites that advertisers pay the publishers each time the ad is clicked.
On-Page Optimization: On-Page Optimization refers to the resources within a website being optimized to improve the website’s rank.
Off-Page Optimization: Off-Page Optimization refers to all the ways the website can improve in rankings using resources not already within the website.
Native Advertising: Native Advertising is paid advertising in which the ad itself matches the feel and function of the content of the media on which it is appearing.
Marketing Automation: Technology that sends out automated marketing messages across multiple platforms such as email, social, web, and text messages.
Lead Nurturing Sometimes called workflows (like in a tool like HubSpot): Lead Nurturing is the act of developing relationships with your leads and nurturing these relationships through the sales process.
Evergreen Content: Evergreen content is content that is continually relevant and doesn’t go out of date.
Buyer Persona: Buyer Persona refers to a detailed description of what your target audience is.
Social Proof: Social proof occurs when members of your selected audience verifies an element of your point of view.
Call-to-Action: A call-to-action is a marketing prompt used to spark an immediate response from the consumer.
CAN-SPAM: The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 is an act that protects consumers from spam emails from brands.
Dynamic Ads: Dynamic ads are ads that constantly change on a rotation to ensure that consumer is targeted with what they want to see.
Hashtag: A hashtag is a symbol used on various social media platforms that help identify specific social content.
Keyword: A keyword is a word or phrase of significance.
Long-Tail Keyword: A long-tail keyword is a keyword that is a longer word and is more specific for search engines that will yield a higher conversion rate.
DESIGN TERMS
HTML: HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is the language used for a page to be displayed on a web page.
Responsive Design: Responsive design refers to how displays on screens adapt to the different devices used to view the content.
User Experience (UX): User experience is the consumer’s overall experience using a specific product.
User Interface (UI): User interface refers to the screen where humans interact with their devices.
Mobile Optimization: Mobile optimization refers to ensuring your website can be viewed on mobile devices.
Content Management System (CMS): Content management system is a type of software that manages the creation of digital content.
Application Programming Interface (API): An Application programming interface refers to a system of tools that allows software applications to be developed.
Landing Page: A landing page is the first page consumers see when they click on a website.
ANALYTICS & METRICS TERMS
Return on Investment (ROI): A return on investment is a ratio between the cost of investment and net profit.
Bounce Rate: A bounce rate is a percentage of visitors to a website that leave the website after only viewing one page.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): The net promoter score is the percentage of customers rating their likelihood to recommend a certain company, product, or service to their peers.
Lifetime Value (LTV): Lifetime value is the estimated average revenue a customer will spend at a company based off of their company-client relationship and their current spending trends.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): KPI refers to a measurable value that evaluates how well a company is achieving its key business objectives.
Engagement Rate: An engagement rate is a metric system put in place to evaluate how frequently your content is interacted with.
Cost-per-Lead (CPL): CPL is an online payment model that is based off of the quantity of qualified leads that are generated.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Customer acquisition cost refers to the cost of winning over a prospective client to purchase a product or service.
Conversion Rate: A conversion rate is the percentage of people that visit your website & complete a desired goal out of the total number of people that visit your website.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR): CTR is the number of clicks an advertisement receives per number of impressions.
