Marketing lingo you should know
Every industry has its own jargon, and it can be confusing trying to keep up with it all.
Whether you’re a new marketing professional or a business owner wanting to expand your knowledge, this one’s for you. We’ve created a list of must-know terms, acronyms, and definitions to take the guesswork out of your marketing journey.
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KPI – Key performance indicator
This is a type of performance measurement for a larger goal. For a simplified example, if you wanted to increase your engagement on Instagram, you would want to set KPIs that measure the number of likes, comments, shares, and saves you get on each post. This data will help you make decisions on how to adjust your social media strategy for more growth.CTA – Call to action
This is a prompt to encourage your audience to take a specific action. For example, if you make a social media post and your goal is to direct them to your website, you would put a CTA at the end of the caption, video, and/or carrousel that asks them to visit your website or “click the link in your bio” that has a direct link of where you would like to lead them.A/B Testing
This is the action of taking the same piece of content with a small variance (different captions, different call to actions, different email subject lines, for example), and testing to see which content performs best.Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a fictional character based on the characteristics of a target market. Creating personas makes it easier for marketers to develop content that resonates with their ideal audience.UGC – User generated content
UGC is content that is created by customers or digital creators rather than your business. UGC is doing exceptionally well in the social media space as it feels much more organic and allows consumers to see your product or service in action.Reach and Impressions
Reach is the number of users that saw your content. Impressions is the total number of times your content was seen; this includes views from the same user multiple times.Engagement Rate
Your engagement rate is the number of interactions you receive on a post, divided by the number of accounts it reached. This information can be found in the insights on each post of your business account. This metric is important as it tells you whether or not your content was well-received with your audience.Inbound engagement
This is the likes, comments, shares, saves, and messages you receive from other accounts on your social media content.Outbound engagement
This is the engagement that you perform on your own account on others’ posts. This includes when you like, comment, share, or save content on accounts other than your own.KLT Factor – Know, Like, Trust Factor
The KLT Factor is a traditional marketing term that refers to you audience knowing, liking, and trusting your brand. If you have earned the KLT factor from your audience, they are far more likely to buy from you. This is an important term to consider when marketing your business on social media as social channels allow you to showcase your brand’s personality more than anywhere else.Brand awareness
This one is as simple as it sounds – it is how aware a consumer is of your brand. Utilizing social media for your business is a great way to increase brand awareness and communicate directly with consumers and build the KLT factor. -
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
SEO utilizes keywords in content on social media, websites, or blogs to help increase organic traffic. Good quality SEO will help rank your content or website higher in the search results on search engines like Google.Marketing Funnel
This is a visual or written representation of your customer’s journey from the time they first encounter your brand to the time they make a purchase.Top, Middle, and Bottom of Funnel
The top of the marketing funnel represents the awareness stage of a buyer’s journey. This is when they first hear about your business and begin to build curiosity about what you have to offer.
The middle of the marketing funnel represents the consideration stage. This is where potential customers have seen or heard of your brand a few times, and begin to decide whether or not your product or service would be beneficial to them.
The bottom of the marketing funnel represents the action stage. This is the part of the customer’s journey where they have made the decision to make a purchase from your business.
There are many versions of the marketing funnel, and the one described above is in its simplest form. Other versions may take into account the post-purchase journey that include advocacy for your product or service and loyalty to your brand.
Bounce Rate
This is the percentage of visitors who navigate away from a website after viewing only one page. This indicates a lack of engagement.CTR - Click-through rate
This is the percentage of viewers that click on an ad, link, or piece of content.Conversion rate
This is the percentage of viewers that complete a desired action, like signing up for an email list, downloading a freebie, or fill out an inquiry form. This goes hand in hand with your CTAs and KPIs and is a great way to measure if your content is working for you.Keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that consumers enter into the search function of social media platforms or search engines like Google to get more information on that topic. Businesses use keywords in SEO to attempt to appear at the top of the search results.Mobile Optimization
This means to create a smart phone or tablet friendly version of a piece of content or webpage to ensure consumers have the best experience possible. Approximately 60% of all website traffic comes from mobile device users, so it is incredibly important to ensure that your content is optimized (StatCounter, 2023).PPC or CPC – Pay per click or cost per click
Businesses and advertisers pay each time their ad is clicked, rather than paying a flat fee. This can be done through many platforms, but the most popular options are through your google ad account or Meta Business Suite.Inbound Marketing
This is a form of marketing that focuses on attracting potential customers organically through valuable content and experiences rather than paid ads.Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing is another term for paid advertising. Some examples of this would be paid ads on social media, cold calling, radio or TV ads, or direct mail.Target Market
Your target market is the single most important piece of your marketing puzzle. The target market is a group of people that would be considered your ideal buyer, and will be made up of information like demographics, psychographics, behaviouristics and geographics. Businesses can have primary, secondary, and tertiary target markets and can adjust their marketing efforts based off of each group they are trying to reach.Website Crawler
This term refers to a search engine bot that gathers information from every page on internet for the purpose of providing search results. You can often find an option in the back-end of your website builder that allows you to select whether or not you would like your site to allow crawlers or “indexing”.Meta Pixel or Facebook Pixel
A Meta Pixel is a piece of code or extension that you can add to the back end of your website and allows businesses to track the actions of users for the purpose of advertising and analytics.UVP - Unique value proposition
This is a unique statement or claim that explains the benefits and value of your product or service and why it is unique compared to others. In other words, this is your unique selling point.Social proof
This is a psychological phenomenon in which people are more likely to trust or purchase from a brand if they’ve heard positive reviews from their friends or peers.Trust Symbol
Similar to social proof, trust symbols are indications that build trust between the brand and the potential buyer. Some examples of this are verified social media accounts,
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