In this glossary, I will present important marketing terms that can be useful in a business environment. I chose these terms because understanding sales vocabulary is important for people working in marketing and sales. It will include definitions and examples to know how to use each term correctly.
Brand
The experience a customer has with a product or service that makes it different from others in the same category. More than just a name, a brand is where features, benefits, and customer perceptions meet. Successful brands have a unique identity, image, and emotional connection with their customers. It’s why we choose a brand over another every day.
Example: Apple and Samsung
Brand Image
How your customers perceive your products, services, and company. This is ultimately something you can’t control. But the goal of raising awareness of your brand, improving recognition, nurturing favorability, and winning affinity is to grow market share. A solid brand identity and relentless brand management are 2 keys to success.
Contact Form
A page on a website that contains a brief questionnaire that allows users to provide information about themselves and indicate an interest in being contacted about your products or services. Common form fields are first name, last name, email address, and area of interest. Essential elements of a contact form are a statement confirming the user is giving you permission to make contact and a link to your privacy policy.
Digital Marketing
Any marketing that uses electronic devices to convey promotional messaging and measure its impact. In practice, digital marketing typically refers to marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, phone, tablet, or other device. It can take many forms, including online video, display ads, and social media posts. Digital marketing is often compared to “traditional marketing” such as magazine ads, billboards, and direct mail. Oddly, television is usually lumped in with traditional marketing.
E-commerce Website
A website that allows people to buy and sell physical goods, services, and digital products over the internet rather than at a brick-and-mortar location. Through an e-commerce website, a business can process orders, accept payments, manage shipping and logistics, and provide customer service.
Eye Tracking
Measuring and recording the movement of eyes as they look at a web page. In digital marketing, eye tracking is often used to figure out what parts of a web page or email people look at first or spend the most time looking at, which is often displayed as a heat map. Marketers use this data to strategically place elements, such as call-to-action buttons, where they are most likely to be seen and clicked on.
Facebook Profile
Your personal home on Facebook. This is similar to a Facebook business page but designed for a human—or the occasional pet—rather than a business. It typically includes basic information such as your name, location, and profile picture. Your Facebook profile is where your timeline, shared photos and videos, and other Facebook content lives. Profiles can be fully public or only visible to certain people based on your privacy settings.
Google Ads
Google Ads is the software platform Google uses to power its ad network. Advertisers choose which keywords are most relevant to their products and how much they want to pay for their campaigns. The ads appear at the top of Google’s search engine results page (SERP) or on third-party websites and apps when someone searches for one of these keywords. Advertisers are billed on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, which means you’re only charged if someone actually clicks on your ad.
Hashtag
A hash or pound sign (#) used after a word or phrase to label content and make it easier to find. Hashtags are common on social media and used to connect posts on related topics. For example, if you click #Mailchimp on Twitter, it will bring up a list of tweets that include that hashtag. Hashtags can combine multiple words and are often styled with internal capitalization so they’re #MuchEasierToRead.
HTML
Hypertext markup language (HTML) is the coding language used to create web pages. With the help of CSS and JavaScript, HTML tells a web browser how to format, style, and link together text and images on a page. For example, the
tag is used to separate a block of text into paragraphs. HTML tags can also include attributes and values that tell the web browser what to do with the content.
IP Address
Internet protocol (IP) address, a unique number much like your street address that uses commas and periods to identify a device accessing the internet. Your personal desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone each have a different IP address each time you log on. Each of your business devices may have its own static address that doesn't change. See domain name system (DNS).
Keyword
A word or phrase in the content of your web pages that matches the words and phrases users are entering into search engines as closely as possible. The idea is to speak the same language as users when they make their search queries so you rank higher in their organic search results based on relevance. Mailchimp.com keywords include: marketing platform, email marketing, landing pages, and automation tools. The keyword is the cornerstone of search engine optimization (SEO).
KPI
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures that help businesses evaluate their progress toward achieving important objectives. Although different businesses use different metrics, KPIs are always central to understanding how your company is performing and how you can improve that performance.
Leads
A person who has shown interest in your company's product or service. “Lead” is a term used more often in the sale of business-to-business (B2B) products and services than retail or consumer packaged goods. Leads can come from website users who complete a contact form, trade show attendees who provide contact information in person, or lists you purchase from another company such as a list broker. Sales and marketing professionals further vet, or “qualify,” leads to prioritize their fit with the company’s buyer profiles.
LinkedIn Profile
Your individual landing page on LinkedIn. Like a resume, professional bio, or CV, the purpose of your LinkedIn Profile is to describe your experience, education, and skills in a succinct format for potential employers or business partners. LinkedIn members searching for “someone like you” will have an easier time finding “you” if you incorporate relevant keywords into your content and maximize the number of profile features you use, such as uploading a photo and linking to publications.
Marketing Analytics
A math-based discipline that seeks to find patterns in data to increase actionable knowledge. Analytics employs statistics, predictive modeling, and machine learning to reveal insights and answer questions. Weather predictions, batting averages, and life insurance policies are all the result of analytics. In the world of digital marketing, analytics is critical to understanding and predicting user behavior and optimizing the user experience (UX) to drive sales.
Marketing Mix
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.
Nonprofit Marketing
Marketing with objectives that advance a nonprofit organization’s cause versus driving a business’s profitability. This is also referred to as “cause marketing.” Common goals for nonprofit marketing initiatives include raising awareness, increasing donations, and growing the number of volunteers.
PDF
A Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file that looks like a printed document and is compatible across computer systems. Adobe Systems developed the .pdf format, which allows people to view, download, save, share, and print the file regardless of their computers’ operating systems or software. Business-to-business (B2B) promotions such as white papers and e-briefs are typically provided to prospects and customers in a PDF.