2023 Marketing Terms You Need To Know

If you’re in charge of marketing for your company, chances are high that you already know what these terms mean. But if you don’t have a background in marketing or business and just want to learn more about how the field works, then this post is for you: it goes through the most important marketing terms that will help you manage your efforts in 2023.

Campaign

A campaign is a collection of ads and/or other marketing activities that you plan to run for a specific period of time. It's like a bucket for all your campaigns. The purpose of a campaign is usually to reach your business goals. For example, if you want to increase sales by 10% in the next year, then you might put together a campaign that includes social media ads, an email newsletter and an infographic about how to sell more effectively.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is a system that helps you to manage your customers and prospects. Sometimes, it's also used to track leads. It can be an all-in-one software package, or it can just refer to the company that provides the service. A good CRM will have many different functions, including:

• Managing information about customers and prospects
• Generating reports about sales history and trends
• Creating targeted marketing campaigns for specific groups of people

Growth Marketing

Growth marketing is a way of thinking about marketing that focuses on driving growth. Growth marketers look at the entire customer journey and optimize each step to drive more people through each stage. They use both data and intuition to guide their decisions, and they understand that many parts of the business need to work together to achieve success.

Growth marketing isn't just for start-ups anymore; it's been adopted by some of the world's largest companies because it unlocks growth opportunities in their existing markets as well as new ones.

Growth marketers understand that customers don't exist in a vacuum—they require support from other teams within an organization or company in order to make a purchase or become loyal brand advocates. In order to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness, growth marketers rely on various tools and techniques. They use data-driven marketing automation software to optimize their campaigns and drive business results. They also use inbound marketing strategies like content marketing, social media engagement and community building to attract new prospects and nurture them through the sales funnel.   

Sign up for a free CRM system for your business here. 

CMS

Content management system (CMS) is a software application that allows the user to create, organize, search, update, and publish content on their website. In simple terms, CMS helps users create, edit, and manage content for their website.

CMS is a must-have for any website that wants to offer its visitors appealing content. They are not only used by individuals, but also by businesses and organizations. A CMS can help you build a successful online presence by allowing you to create engaging content without the need of a full-time programmer.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is a system that automatically processes and responds to customer interactions. It gathers customer data, analyzes it, and generates automated responses in real time. This process can be repeated over and over again, allowing you to automate repetitive tasks so you can focus on more important things like making connections with customers.

Benefits of marketing automation:

• You'll save time by automating your lead generation process, letting you spend less time manually following up with leads and more time working with them once they opt-in or enter a sales funnel.
• You'll save money by reducing costs associated with hiring an assistant or intern who would otherwise handle these tasks manually for you.
• Your overall marketing strategy will become more efficient, helping you streamline processes across departments like sales or product development, so everyone is on the same page instead of wasting resources trying to figure out what's happening behind the scenes at any given moment (or worse yet—not realizing there are bottlenecks).

Top of Funnel (ToFU)

The first stage of the marketing funnel is called the "top of funnel." It's where you generate awareness and interest among potential customers. You can do this through content marketing, social media, paid advertising, and more.

As people move down the funnel towards purchase, they're more likely to buy from you if they've already heard about you or interacted with your brand in some way. If a customer doesn't know who you are yet—or hasn't seen any evidence that you offer a solution to their problem—they're unlikely to buy from you.

Middle of Funnel (MoFU)

The Middle of Funnel (MoFU) is the middle stage of your sales funnel, and it’s where you are trying to convert leads into customers. The goal of this stage is to educate your audience on why they should purchase your product or service. This process can take place through content marketing, social media posts and ads, or simply word-of-mouth from happy customers who have already purchased from you before.

Bottom of Funnel (BoFU)

The bottom of funnel is the final stage in the buyer's journey. For most businesses, it's where a prospect becomes a customer. The bottom of funnel can be divided into three stages:

• Acquisition (aka "Lead Generation")—This is where you're actively going after new leads and generating interest in your product or service. This might include advertising, email marketing, social media ads, and anything else that brings in leads.
• Nurture—Once you have someone at this stage, they need to be nurtured to take action to becoming customers (or clients) rather than just subscribing to your newsletter. Nurturing involves sending out emails with offers and incentives that encourage people to make purchases immediately or within a specific time frame, for instance by offering free shipping on an order if purchased within two weeks from now; or offering discounts on other products if purchased within one week from now; etc. If done properly this should help get more people through the bottom of funnel so they become customers instead of just adding them as subscribers who never convert into buyers/clients/etc.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A lead that is qualified by the sales team as having a good chance of closing. MQLs are usually generated via marketing automation tools, but they can be generated at any stage of the funnel—from website visitors to email subscribers to inbound leads on your site's contact form.
• Marketing Automation: The process of automating lead generation and nurturing for better quality and quantity results from your digital marketing efforts. It's like having a personal assistant who takes care of all your incoming emails, social media messages, and phone calls 24/7 so you don't have to worry about them ever again!

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is a lead that has been qualified by the sales team as a potential customer. The term “sales qualified” means that your sales team has manually evaluated the account and decided that it's worth pursuing.

In other words, if you're working in marketing automation, you'll want to know what SQLs are so you can use them for targeting and other purposes. A SQL is essentially a lead with some level of interest in your products or services who's passed through an automated process designed to measure its propensity to buy. It might have been scored based on factors like its industry, role within an organization, job title, location, and email history, or it could simply be someone who filled out a form asking for more information about your product or service and filled out another form checking off their interest in getting information from companies like yours (known as “opt-in”).

Conversational Qualified Lead (CQL)

• A CQL is a marketing qualified lead (MQL) who has engaged with your brand in a conversational way.

In this case, engagement means that the customer has interacted with you on another platform like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, or through live chat software like Drift or Intercom.

Buyers Journey

The buyer's journey is a concept that marketers use to understand the steps customers go through before they buy. It shows how they go from awareness, interest, evaluation, and purchase.

For example: You might start by seeing an ad for Google or Facebook on television or in print. Next you visit their website to learn more about them and see what else they offer. Then you create ads for clients using these platforms in order to reach new customers who may be interested in your services. It's all part of the buyer's journey!

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a fictional character that represents your ideal customer or prospect. In other words, it’s a way of putting a face on your target market and understanding who they are, what they want, and how to reach them.

Buyer personas can be useful for many reasons:

• you can use them to create marketing messages that resonate with your audience by speaking directly to their needs and interests.
• you can also use it to segment your audience into several different types/segments based on their demographics (e.g., age group), psychographics (e.g., personality traits) or geographic location.

The more detailed the information is about each persona, the better equipped you are going to be at reaching them with offers tailored specifically to them.

Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is a process that helps salespeople sell more effectively. It typically involves training, education, and support. Sales enablement can be used to help companies create better products and services through improved customer knowledge and increased productivity.

It can also be used to help companies make their sales process more efficient, effective, and profitable. If a company has not yet implemented a sales enablement initiative, it may be time for them to start one.

Wireframes

As the name implies, wireframes are basically the skeleton of your website or app. They outline what the layout should look like, where it will be placed, and what content is going to be included. Wireframes also help you determine if you need to include navigation links or buttons within your design.

Most people use wireframes in order to test out various ideas before actually building anything. They're an incredibly useful tool for design enthusiasts who want to get feedback from others before investing a lot of time and money into their project. Wireframes are especially helpful for people who aren't quite sure how all these different pieces fit together yet. Having something visual that shows how things relate can help clarify things immensely!

If we were going back in time 20 years ago (a scary thought), we might've been working with pencils on giant pieces of paper called "blueprints" because they're blue...and they're pretty much just like those thick blueprints today except now they're digital so there's no more erasing mistakes by hand.

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

The ideal customer profile is a picture of your ideal customer. It’s an image of the kind of person who will buy from you, and what they need to make that happen. Here are some questions you can ask yourself when building your ICP:

• What do they look like? Be specific!
• Where do they live? Are there any geographic restrictions to working with them? How far will they travel for a product or service like yours?
• What languages do they speak? Do any of these have to be translated into English or another language in order for them to understand it appropriately?
• What is their income level and where does this fall on the global spectrum, are they rich, poor, middle class, etc.?
• How educated are these people, what kind of schooling did they receive and what kinds of jobs did their parents hold before passing down those skillsets to them (if applicable), and how long has this been going on for in their society at large?

Account-based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy that focuses on selling to an individual or company, rather than to a segment or demographic.

In its simplest form, ABM is just a fancy way of saying "sales focus" or "customer focus". It's all about understanding who your ideal target customer is and how to reach them with relevant messaging across all channels, not just social media.

It's important not only because it makes sense from a strategic perspective but also because it's critical for marketers in the next decade: In 2020 alone, 87% of companies plan to increase their spending on targeted campaigns and 62% say they plan to increase their investment by 50% over the next five years.

Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop using your product in a given period. Churn rate is calculated by taking the number of customers who cancel their subscription within one month and dividing it by the total number of those who signed up during that period.

You can track churn rate over time to see how your business is doing—if you notice it going up, then that might be an indicator that something needs to change.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the sum of all marketing and sales expenses for a period divided by the number of new customers acquired during the same period. CAC is an important metric for customer acquisition because it helps you understand whether or not you're making money on your marketing activities and how much revenue each one generates in relation to its cost.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is a process of making your website more appealing to search engines so it will rank higher in the results when people are looking for something. This can increase traffic and conversions, but it's also important because Google is using its algorithms to determine which sites are trustworthy. The better you do in SEO, the more likely it is that Google will value your site as trustworthy and add it to the first page of results—and that can mean a lot more traffic for you!

There are many different elements involved in optimizing your site for search engines like keywords, backlinks (when another website links back to yours), and content marketing (writing blog posts about topics related to your business). These elements all help show Google what kind of information you want visitors who search certain terms or phrases on Google or other search engines like Bing or Yahoo!

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

• A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric you use to measure the success of a campaign. KPIs are used to determine whether or not your marketing efforts are working, and they can be either qualitative or quantitative.
• Examples of qualitative KPIs include: how many people liked your post on Facebook? How many times did someone share that post?
• Examples of quantitative KPIs include: what was your conversion rate for this ad campaign? What was the click-through rate on those ads? How much did each acquisition cost us compared with our average COA in past campaigns like this one?

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the net profit generated from the entire relationship with a customer. It’s calculated by using the average recurring profit per sale, multiplied by the number of sales.

The CLV should be considered in terms of both your average order size and your repeat purchases. If a customer typically buys from you once and never comes back, their CLV will be low because there are no future sales to make up for that initial payment. On the other hand, if a customer buys from you repeatedly over their lifetime, then their CLV will be high as long as each purchase generates more profit than it costs to make.

Go To Market Strategy (GTM)

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a marketing plan for your product or service. It includes the marketing mix, which is comprised of the four Ps: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

It also includes the marketing budget and channels—what you'll spend money on in order to promote your brand and product. You should also consider how you will communicate with customers about what they're purchasing and why they should buy it.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

An MVP is a product that has been launched with only the bare minimum functionality needed to test and validate an idea. In some cases, this may mean just enough features to get by in order to get feedback from customers.

The purpose of an MVP is to provide evidence of market need for your product or service. By launching early and then iterating based on customer feedback, you can avoid wasting time and money building something that no one wants or needs.

A MVP should not be confused with MMF: the Minimum Marketable Feature set is defined as “the smallest number of functions that customers would be willing to pay for”, in other words, it’s what a user needs most right now out of any given app or website feature set (think email forwarding).

Channel

A channel is a way of reaching customers. You might use social media, email marketing or other channels to reach your target audience. The channel you choose will depend on the type of product or service you are selling. For example, if you're selling B2B software then you'll probably want to focus on direct mail marketing because it's a great way to reach decision makers in companies that deal with software products like yours.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of users who take a specific action on a website, such as purchasing an item or signing up for a newsletter. The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors to your site. This can be calculated for a specific page or for an entire website.

Cost per acquisition (CPA)

Cost per acquisition (CPA) is the average amount spent to acquire a new customer. It’s an important metric for marketers to understand because it helps them determine whether their marketing campaigns are having the desired effect on their bottom line.

While CPA can be used as an overall gauge of success for your business, it isn’t always 100% accurate in its measurement of exactly how much money you spend or make with each campaign. This can occur if customers are cross-sold products or services after they’ve already purchased from you, which could add additional costs into your CPA calculation even though they were not included in your original budgeted expenses.

Fortunately, there are ways to account for these discrepancies so that you can keep track of how well your campaign is performing with more confidence going forward.

Click through rate (CTR)

A click-through rate (CTR) is a measure of the effectiveness of your online advertising campaign. In simple terms, it's the ratio of how many people click on an ad to how many people see it. If you have 100 impressions and 5 clicks, your CTR would be 5%.

To calculate this metric, simply divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions: (number of clicks / total number of impressions) x 100 = click-through rate

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning is all about how you position your product to the market. Your brand positioning is the foundation of your marketing efforts and helps differentiate you from your competition. Brand positioning can be a way to communicate your brand values to the world, too.

If you're looking for a quick refresher on what it means to have a strong brand, we've got you covered with these five essential marketing terms that every business owner should know.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a strategy that helps you attract potential customers, convert them into customers and retain them.

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy. You’re not going to see immediate results, but if you have patience and stick with it, inbound marketing can be an effective tool for growing your business.

Inbound marketers focus on creating content that attracts potential customers (and helps them find you) by providing value through blogs, videos, guides and more.

Brand Awareness

In marketing, brand awareness is the ability of a brand to be recognized by consumers. It's important to understand that brand awareness isn't the same as mindshare or top-of-mind awareness.

Brand awareness is achieved through advertising, public relations, and other marketing activities such as sponsorships, events, and social media marketing. A strong branding strategy will help you create a strong presence in the market and improve your company’s image among your target audience.

Flywheel

The flywheel is a concept that describes the process of building momentum in a business. It was first introduced by Eric Ries in his book, where he described it as "a structure that builds acceleration by starting with small wins."

The flywheel is an iterative loop of continuous improvement, with every step adding weight to the next one until you're gaining momentum. In order to keep a flywheel spinning, you need three key components:

• A strong internal engine (this is what makes people want to work for your company).
• A large number of external customers (the more customers you have, the more loyal they'll be).
• A network effect (the more people who use your product/service, the more value it has).

Cost per click (CPC)

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. It’s calculated based on cost and number of clicks, so if you pay $1 for 100 impressions and get 10 clicks from that ad, your CPC would be $0.10.

The difference between CPC and cost-per-impression (CPM) is that CPM is calculated with impressions instead of clicks. This means you’re paying for how many people see your ads rather than how many people click through to your site or app. This metric can be used to determine whether an ad campaign is effective at driving real business results like sales conversions or brand awareness and when it isn't working well enough, it's easy to adjust accordingly!

Cost per action refers specifically to eCommerce businesses where conversions are measured throughout the purchase funnel process. You may have heard this referred to as conversion optimization because it allows companies like yours find what factors influence consumers most effectively along each step toward making a purchase decision.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the average amount you expect to earn from a customer over the course of their lifetime. It's calculated by multiplying the average sale price per item by the number of times that customer will buy, and then dividing this total by some measure of time (usually years).

To understand CLV, imagine that you have 100 customers who each spend $100 with you today. Tomorrow, it's likely that some of these customers will buy again—so if everyone returns next year and spends another $100 on average, then your CLV would be ($100 x 101 = $10,100). However, if half of them return but only spend half as much ($50), then your CLV would actually increase: ($50 x 50 = $2,500).

Funnel

A funnel is a metaphor for the process of moving people from one point to another in a sales process. The top of the funnel is where you find new people and move them through your sales process. The bottom of the funnel is where those who were not interested in your offer are filtered out, leaving only people who want what you have to offer.

Your marketing efforts should be focused on increasing traffic at both ends of the funnel, at acquiring new prospects and converting them into paying customers, so they can achieve their goals (like selling more products or services).

Impressions

Impressions is the number of times your ad is displayed on a publisher's site, search engine, social media platform or mobile app.

For example: If a publisher has 100 visitors to their site and you have an ad that displays 10 times per day over the course of 30 days then you'll have 30,000 impressions for that particular placement.

Keyword(s)

A keyword is a word or phrase that users type into search engines to find information on the web. Keywords are used to create ads, landing pages, and content. They're also used to find the right audience by focusing on topics you're interested in and making sure people who are interested in those topics see your ads.

Lead generation (generate leads)

You've probably heard of lead generation. You may even use it yourself. It's the process of getting in touch with potential customers and gaining their trust, so they'll give you their contact information and buy your product or service.

You can generate leads in a number of ways: by using social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, by sending out an email newsletter, through paid advertising on search engines (like Google), or by hosting an event where potential clients can meet you face-to-face.

There are two types of leads: warm and cold. Warm leads are prospects who have already expressed interest in your company's services; cold ones haven't yet warmed up to your brand but could be persuaded if handled correctly. The goal is always to convert these people into paying customers!

Lookalike audience (find lookalikes)

Lookalike audiences are a marketing tactic used to reach new customers who are similar to your existing customers. The idea behind lookalike audiences is that if people behave similarly (even if they're not actually related), it's likely they'll have similar tastes, too.

The most common way of generating a lookalike audience is by using the email addresses and other contact information of your existing customers as seeds for finding potential new buyers on Facebook or Instagram.

Remarketing / retargeting (retarget custom audiences)

Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is a way to reach visitors who have already visited your site. Retargeting allows you to target specific groups of people who have shown interest in your product or service by tracking their activities and showing them ads when they visit other websites or apps.

Return on investment (ROI)

Return on investment (ROI) is a measure of profitability. It's the ratio of net income to investment. In other words, it answers the question, "How much money did I make for every dollar I spent?"

If you had an investment of $1,000 and made $500 in profit from that investment, your ROI would be 50%. This means that for every dollar you invested in this project, you made 50 cents back as profit.

Webinars

A webinar is a live presentation that's delivered over the Internet, usually through a website or an app. It's like an online seminar or workshop that you host at any time of day, from anywhere in the world. People can join by clicking on a link in an email invitation or by visiting a web page. You can also create a QR code that attendees can scan with their smartphones to join the event.

Webinars are a great way to build your audience and communicate with them in real time. They're often used for training purposes, but they can also be used as a sales tool or even as an event registration system where attendees pay for access to specific webinars at different prices based on length.

If you want to learn more about growing your business through digital marketing we encourage you to sign up for our free webinars here. 

Conclusion

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about some of the most important marketing terms and concepts that will help you get your brand to where it needs to be in 2023. As always, we’re here to help if you have any questions at all!