marketing glossary

15 marketing vocabulary terms

this is a glossary of fifteen marketing words.

Advertorial
Advertising and editorial content combined. If you think of a traditional printed magazine or newspaper, the line between ads and editorial articles is distinct—and often literal. An advertorial brings the 2 formats together to educate readers about a product through an editorial-esque storytelling experience. They’ve become a popular online advertising tactic that is typically labeled "sponsored" or "paid" so as not to mislead users about the source of the information.
Breadcrumbs
If you’re thinking "Hansel and Gretel," you’re right. This fairy tale duo left a trail of breadcrumbs as they ventured into the forest so they could find their way back home. Digital breadcrumbs serve the same purpose. They’re a form of website navigation that shows users the sections they’ve visited in the order they visited them so they can retrace their steps easily.
Churn Rate
A metric that measures how many customers you retain and at what value. To calculate churn rate, take the number of customers you lost during a certain time frame, and divide that by the total number of customers you had at the very beginning of that time frame. (Don't include any new sales from that time frame.)
en: taux de désabonnement
Cross-Selling
When a sales rep has more than one type of product to offer consumers that could be beneficial, and s/he successfully sells a consumer more than one item either at the time of purchase or later on. An example is when Apple sells you an iPhone and then successfully sells you an Apple iPhone case or a pair of Apple headphones. In this case, a sales rep identifies a need the customer has, and fulfills that need by recommending an additional product.
en: vente croisée
Domain
A domain or domain name is what comes between the @ in your email address and the .com, .org, .net, etc. (For example, yourname@domain.com.) Domains help your customers find and remember where your business is located on the internet. A subdomain is a portion of your domain—sales.domain.com or marketing.domain.com—that can be used to help increase deliverability of your email marketing.
Drip Campaign
A series of automated emails sent to people who take a specific action. For any given action, you can choose how many emails to send and the rate at which to send them. These emails can be personalized with data like the contact’s name, and specific references to the action they took. You might send a drip campaign to someone who signs up for your online course, for example. Or you could send a drip campaign to people who add an item to their online cart without buying it.
Dropshipping
An e-commerce model where the seller doesn’t own any inventory or handle any of the shipping responsibilities. When a customer makes a purchase, the seller processes the order and transfers it to a third-party supplier—like a wholesaler or manufacturer, for example—who prepares and ships the order. The seller only pays the supplier for an item after someone buys it, which makes dropshipping a popular option for entrepreneurs who want to start an online store quickly and with minimal overhead.
Error 404
File not found, an error your web browser flags. A 404 error message can be the fault of the user (if they mistyped the URL, for example) or the publisher of the website. This can happen when a web page has been deleted and no longer exists, which is also called a broken link. To prevent these errors, create a redirect to take the user to the new location of the page. Setting up a standardized error 404 page for your domain can help improve your users’ experience, especially if you provide a search bar or list of similar content.
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. Gross rating points (GRPs) are commonly used in television ad buying to help media planners decide when and where to place their ads. Though the math is a bit too complicated for this short description, GRPs can be calculated for online ads as well. Some planners find this helpful when determining their media mix of TV and online advertising.
List Broker
A business that specializes in sourcing contact lists that direct marketers can rent for an email or marketing campaign. List brokers typically have access to a huge variety of lists and existing relationships with list owners. They also have expertise in recommending the best lists to use based on your target audience, brand, and marketing goals. In exchange for you renting a list, the list broker typically charges a commission, which the list owner pays for.
Pain Point
A prospect's pain point, or need, is the most important thing for a sales rep to identify in the selling process. Without knowing a prospect's pain points, they can't possibly offer benefits to help resolve those pain points.
en: point sensible
Smarketing
Used to refer to the practice of aligning Sales and Marketing efforts. In a perfect world, marketing would pass off tons of fully qualified leads to the sales team, who would then subsequently work every one of those leads enough times to close them 100% of the time. But since this isn't always how the cookie crumbles, it’s important for Marketing and Sales to align efforts to impact the bottom line the best they can through coordinated communication.
Sound Bite
A series of words or phrases sales reps use to respond to and overcome a customer objection.
Up-Selling
When a sales rep sells an existing customer a higher-end version of the product that customer originally bought. For example, if you bought a cell phone plan and a sales rep successfully persuaded you to upgrade to a plan with more minutes or data, then that's an up-sell.
Webhooks
Webhooks are a way for one application to provide other applications with real-time information. They allow one application to send a notification to another application when a certain event occurs rather than constantly polling for new data. This can help save on server resources and costs.