This glossary includes essential terms from the fields of sales and marketing. It is designed to help understand and use these key concepts in a professional context. Each term is defined and accompanied by an example to better illustrate its role in sales and marketing strategies.
Adoption process
Noun phrase
Another way of saying "the being process". The stages a potential buyer goes through, from learning about a new product or service to either becoming a loyal customer or rejecting it. The potential buyer may or may not end up purchasing/adopting that product or service.
B2B
Adjective
Business 2 Business. B2B is a term that describes the transactional relationship between the provider and client where the provider is a business and the client is another business.
B2C
Adjective
Business 2 Consumer. B2C is a term describes the transactional relationship between provider and client where the provider is a business and the client is an individual consumer. e.g. "Our B2C marketing strategy targets new moms." See also: B2B.
Cold Calling
Noun
Making unsolicited calls in an attempt to sell products or services. It's also a very inefficient way to find potential customers.
Consumer
Noun
A person who uses a product or service. They may not be the actual buyer of that product; for example, if I buy my brother a pair of basketball shoes, then my brother is the consumer of those shoes, not me.
Decision-Maker
Noun
The person who, or role that, makes the final decision of a sale. They are often "guarded" by a gatekeeper.
Feature
Noun or verb
A function of a product that can solve for a potential buyer's need or pain point; usually a distinguishing characteristic that helps boost appeal.
Forecasting
Noun or verb
Estimating future sales performance for a forecast period based on historical data. Forecasted performance can vary widely from actual sales results, but helps sales reps plan their upcoming days, weeks, and months, and helps high-level employees set standards for expenses, profit, and growth. Learn more about sales forecasting here.
Lead
Noun
A person or company who's shown interest in a product or service in some way, shape, or form. Perhaps they filled out a form, subscribed to a blog, or shared their contact information in exchange for a coupon.
Generating leads is a critical part of a prospect's journey to becoming a customer, and it falls in between the second and third stages of the larger inbound marketing methodology, which you can see below.
Market Share
Noun
The percentage of the market for your product or service that you want to capture. The formula for market share is: a company’s sales / industry sales over the same time period. To improve market share, companies may focus on strengthening customer loyalty or innovating products and services. They may also buy key competitors.
Marketing Mix
Noun
The 4 “P”s: price, product, promotion, and place (point of sale). Your marketing mix covers these must-have elements when bringing a product to market. The marketing mix is inextricable from the marketing objectives in your business plan. Some companies add “P”s that are of high importance to them, such as packaging or positioning. Packaging and positioning arguably overlap with promotion, but calling out the extra “P”s can be useful in focusing your organization.
Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
Adjective
The stage that a lead enters after identifying a problem. Now they’re looking to conduct further research to find a solution to the problem. Typical middle of the funnel offers include case studies, product brochures, or anything that brings your business into the equation as a solution to the problem the lead is looking to solve.
Nofollow
Adjective
A meta tag in the HTML code of a web page that tells search engines to disregard the page. On pages such as blog posts that invite user comments, a nofollow link protects you from search engines ranking your page based on user comments you can’t control. Let’s say some users comment on your blog post to promote their own products and stuff your comments with keywords. You can use a nofollow tag to avoid search penalties.
Omnichannel Marketing
Adjective
Omnichannel marketing creates a cohesive, integrated shopping experience across a brand’s sales touchpoints—including brick-and-mortar locations, events, mobile devices, and online stores. It uses data and analytics to create consistency whenever shoppers encounter the brand. Let’s say you have a business that sells socks. With omnichannel marketing in place, a customer could find socks they love on social media, browse your online store selection, and receive a coupon to buy their favorite pair in your brick-and-mortar store.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Noun
An online advertising campaign that a company pays for only when users interact with the ads. Instead of paying for your ads to simply show up on a publisher’s website, you pay for user clicks. Pay-per-click (PPC) refers to a type of campaign. Cost per click (CPC) refers to the actual cost: the campaign fee / number of clicks = cost per click. For example, if you pay $1,000 for a campaign that receives 50,000 clicks, your CPC is $0.02.
Product Positioning
Noun Phrase
The image of your product or service that you want members of your target audience to have in their minds. Because first impressions of your brand count, it can be helpful to craft a positioning statement that communicates how your product or service fulfills customer needs. For example, Mailchimp helps small businesses become the brands they want to be with smarter technology built for big things.
Questionnaire
Noun
A set of questions about a topic that’s used for research purposes. Questionnaires are commonly used in digital marketing to get feedback on user experience (UX). For example, you might send one after a customer makes a purchase to find out if they experienced any confusion during the checkout process. Marketers also commonly use questionnaires after someone unsubscribes from a newsletter or other mailing list.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Noun Phrase
A calculation of the monetary value of an investment versus its cost. The mathematical formula is: (profit minus cost) / cost. If you made $10,000 from a $1,000 effort, your return on investment (ROI) would be 0.9, or 90%. ROI is often used to evaluate business strategy, including all advertising and marketing efforts. Return on ad spend (ROAS) is a similar metric, but it focuses more on specific tactics, such as an individual ad campaign.
Searching Engine Optimization (SEO)
Noun Phrase
Changes made to the content and structure of a website to improve ranking on a search engine results page (SERP). Search engines recommend search engine optimization (SEO) efforts that benefit both the user and page’s ranking (white hat SEO). These include the use of relevant keywords in headlines (H1) and subheads, “friendly” URLs with keywords rather than strings of numbers, and schema markup to make results richer and more detailed.
Tracking Code
Noun Phrase
A small piece of JavaScript placed on a website that sends data to Google Analytics. The tracking code is what enables Google Analytics to report information about your audience, including how they got to your website, how long they stayed, and what they did while they were there.