Buyer intent refers to the likelihood of a prospective company to buy from a particular company. Buyer intent is essential for marketers to consider when strategizing. Understanding buyer intent helps marketers distinguish between potential clients and people who are researching with no intent to buy.

Created based on marketing research, a buyer persona is a profile of a fictional person who is, or is part of, your target audience. A buyer persona might include things like age, gender identity, education, job title, hobbies, and motivations. These profiles may also be called marketing personas, and serve to outline the ideal customers for your brand, helping to inform the strategy for your marketing campaigns.

A call to action (CTA) is something that prompts a consumer to take a specific action. This can occur in any type of advertisement, whether it be a print ad, television spot, or a button on a web landing page, blog, or banner ad. A CTA might say something like “call now!” or “learn more,” directing the consumer to a phone line or form to encourage further interaction.

Competitive analysis is a foundational business practice that can be applied to product strategy, go-to-market motions, pricing, and sales processes. Competitive analysis provides valuable insights into positioning of a brand, enabling marketing and business leaders to craft effective messaging that resonates with customers, create campaigns to reach a target audience, and build strategies suited to their strengths.

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on the creation and distribution of valuable content to increase website traffic. Content marketing often works hand-in-hand with search engine optimization to ensure that the content will rank well on search engines for better discoverability. Different types of content that may be included in a content marketing strategy include blog posts, landing pages, ebooks, case studies, and more.

A conversion is when someone takes the desired action on an ad or landing page. This can include clicking to view a website, signing up for an email list, or making a purchase. Conversions are tracked using a conversion rate. This can be calculated by taking the number of conversions and dividing it by the number of viewers or visitors. Conversion rate optimization is the act of increasing the number of conversions an ad or website receives.

“Converting” is what happens when your marketing does what it is designed to do, such as getting someone to purchase something from your company. Conversion rate (CVR) is the measurement of how much that happens. For example, if 100 people click on an ad for your patented Ultrawidget and 15 of them go on to buy the Ultrawidget, your conversion rate is 15%. You can then use this data to judge how effective your marketing is.

Customer acquisition is, very simply, the act of acquiring new customers. This involves creating buyer personas and a strategy, creating a marketing campaign, following a customer through the marketing funnel, and ultimately results in conversion. Customer acquisition cost takes this whole process into account to come up with the total cost of acquiring a new customer.

The customer journey/lifecycle refers to all of the touchpoints or interactions someone has with a business as they become a customer. The most common customer journey or lifecycle has five main phases: awareness, reach, acquisition, conversion, and retention. Marketers need to make sure each interaction with their business throughout the customer journey is a pleasant experience to help increase the chance a customer makes it to the end.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a type of software that manages all of a company’s relationships with both leads and existing customers. Sales teams will often use a CRM to manage the relationship with a new lead all the way until they’ve closed the deal. Marketing teams can use CRMs to create audience segments for targeting.

Customer retention refers to a company's ability to keep its existing customers over a specific period by fostering loyalty and ensuring satisfaction. It involves strategies and initiatives designed to reduce customer churn and encourage repeat business, such as personalized service, effective communication, rewards programs, and exceptional product or service quality. High retention rates indicate strong customer relationships and contribute to long-term profitability by minimizing acquisition costs and increasing the lifetime value of customers.

Demand generation is an upper sales funnel closely associated with inbound marketing. B2B marketing teams create opportunities for target customers to learn More About what a product or service does to benefit their business. Demand generation drives consumer interest down the marketing funnel, increasing brand awareness, and working to gain higher return on investment (ROI.)

Demographic refers to information discovered about the human population. Demographics are often used to help brands identify their target audience and which channels they should be using to reach that audience. Demographic data includes information like age, race, gender, income, education, and the like.

Digital marketing, or online marketing, means any marketing effort that happens on the internet. That means this marketing occurs through digital channels like search engines, websites, email, social media platforms, and on mobile devices. Digital marketing tactics vary widely and include things like newsletters, landing pages, sponsored content, and banner ads

Dynamic ads are digital ads that automatically change and adapt to show the target customer the most relevant content. Dynamic ads can adjust to show different imagery, ad copy, or landing pages based on the individual viewer. The ads look at individual users’ demographics, geolocation, browsing activity, and other data to decide which content to show them.

Ecommerce (short for electronic commerce) refers to the buying and selling of goods online. Brands can create their own online stores, upload product photos and information, set prices, and start selling. This is a great way for brands to start selling products without needing overhead for a brick-and-mortar store.

Email marketing is a specific marketing channel that falls under the umbrella of digital marketing. Used to promote a brand in general or specific products and services from that brand, email marketing campaigns may include things like special offers, newsletters, and new product announcements, often with a call to action (CTA).

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan detailing how a brand is going to launch a new product or service into the market. Steps include identifying the target audience, building a launch and marketing plan, conducting a competitive analysis, and putting together a sales strategy. This will ensure the new product launch goes smoothly and establishes its place in the market.

Growth marketing is a data-driven approach to marketing that focuses on increasing user acquisition, engagement, and retention in order to drive long-term growth for businesses. It involves optimizing the entire customer journey from acquisition to retention, and applying strategies such as A/B testing and analytics to measure and improve performance.

Similar to buyer persona, an ideal customer profile (ICP) is more frequently used in business-to-business marketing (B2B). Here, you outline the ideal characteristics of a company you would like to market to, such as type of business, location, employee numbers, and revenue. While your end goal may be to sell to specific buyer personas within an ICP, your planning would start with outlining the ideal customer profile before you lay out buyer personas.

Inbound marketing is an approach that involves creating valuable content and experiences to attract potential customers to your brand. It focuses on building relationships and trust through channels like social media, blogs, and search engines. Outbound marketing, on the other hand, involves pushing messages to a wider audience through methods such as cold calling, and direct mail. It aims to interrupt people's daily lives to get their attention and generate leads.

A key performance indicator (KPI) is any measurement used to demonstrate how a key business objective is performing over time. This provides actionable insight that helps the business manage and achieve goals. Many terms in this glossary can be used as KPIs, including return on investment (ROI), conversion rate (CVR), bounce rate, and brand awareness data.

A marketing lead is someone who shows interest in what is being sold, and information on leads may come in the form of direct contact info or demographic data that helps a company understand who their target audience is. Marketing lead generation, then, is the creation of leads by initiating consumer interest in the product or service that is being marketed. This is often done through website landing pages, web content and advertisements.

Market share refers to the percentage of a market or industry’s sales one single company owns. In other words, market share is a company’s total revenue share out of the entire industry’s revenue. This data is important to calculate as it shows how competitive a business is in its market.

Market segmentation is a process involving researching, profiling, and planning how to reach different target audiences for a product or service. Market segmentation helps to reduce acquisition costs, create better campaign ROI, and increase direct sales and ad revenue.

Marketing churn—also known as attrition—refers to the number of customers who stop using a product or service over a specific period. Churn occurs when users opt out of receiving a product or service, as one example of many. Measuring churn is important for businesses because regularly churning customers results in companies losing monthly, quarterly, or annual recurring revenue.

Multichannel campaigns refer to marketing strategies that use multiple channels or platforms to reach and engage with a target audience. This can include a combination of traditional channels such as television, print, and radio, as well as digital channels like social media, email, and search engines. The goal of a multichannel campaign is to create a cohesive and consistent message across all channels to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and ultimately drive conversions.

If you have ever seen an article in a magazine or section on a website that looks just like the content around it but is sponsored, that’s native advertising. This form of advertising straddles the line between content and ad, blending with the look and feel of the media it appears in while promoting the marketer’s product or service.

Objective-based advertising is a LinkedIn-specific type of digital advertising campaign. This type of campaign leads with objectives. Brands are able to first pinpoint their ad objective before choosing ad formats and features that support their chosen objective.

Omnichannel marketing is an integrated approach to marketing that ensures a consistent experience across all channels and devices. It leverages multiple channels, such as web, email, social media, and mobile, to reach customers and prospects wherever they are. It is designed to create a seamless customer journey, from browsing to purchase.

Online advertising is a form of marketing using both mobile and desktop platforms to deliver trackable and measurable campaigns via social media, search engines, video streaming channels, and email to reach targeted customers. Online advertising allows businesses to engage more deeply with target audiences through online ad campaigns to help increase brand awareness, generate high-quality leads, and drive sales or ecommerce conversions.

Product/Market fit refers to the successful alignment of a product or service with a target market, resulting in a mutually beneficial, profitable relationship for both the customer and the company.

Responsive design is a web design and development strategy that ensures a website is usable on both desktop computers and mobile devices. The website will not only adjust to fit smaller screens, but will make sure that spacing isn’t altered, links and navigation aren’t hidden or hard to find, and other key factors that ensure the website is fully usable on mobile. Responsive design is a major component in search engine optimization.

A metric that provides a window into profitability, return on investment (ROI) measures the money made from an investment against the money put into that investment. ROI helps inform marketing decisions by giving a snapshot of what types of marketing spend have the best balance of cost and effectiveness. Think of it as the formal term for “bang for your buck.”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving a website and its content to increase the amount of website traffic generated by search engines. The ultimate goal is to get a website’s landing pages and blog posts ranking on the first page of Google for their target keywords, as that’s the most popular place users click from.

Social media marketing is the practice of using social media platforms to market a business. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok can be great places to promote a business and increase its overall customer base. Social media platforms have features that let brands sell products, host live broadcasts, interact with customers, and more.

In digital marketing language, a sponsored post is a post on social media or another platform that is paid for by a brand. This may occur in influencer marketing, where a social media personality receives compensation to talk about the brand in a post, and may also be called a sponsored ad. This can also apply to longer-form content like blogs in the context of native advertising, which is when a website publishes sponsored content that looks similar to their own content.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis is a method often used in business and marketing plans to help companies discover their place in the market as well as where they may need to improve. These are formatted as a square table with four cells—one for each of the four items to analyze.

Thought Leadership is the ability to influence and shape conversations in an industry or field through thought-provoking ideas and insights. It involves identifying opportunities, developing solutions, and inspiring others to take action.

Total addressable market (TAM), also sometimes called “total available market,” is a term used for the overall revenue opportunity for a set of products or services. Essentially, this is the most revenue a brand can make by selling its products or services. This can be calculated through a top-down approach, which is based on industry data, or through a bottom-up approach, which is based on past sales data (and is a more accurate depiction).

A unique visitor is a website analytics metric. This term refers to the actual number of people who have visited a website. Unique visitors are counted only once in the selected time frame, regardless of if they have visited the website multiple times. This helps a business understand how many individual people are visiting their website in a given time period.

User experience (UX) refers to the overall experience someone accessing a website or app has. This can cover anything from ease of use and navigability to content relevancy. Brands can regularly gather feedback from customers to discover if there are ways to improve their website or mobile app and create a better user experience.

Video ads are a type of digital ad that uses video to explain a product or service and convince the viewer to take the desired action. There are many different types of videos that can be used in a video ad—explainer videos, quick promo videos, branded short films, tutorials, etc.

A wireframe, also known as a schematic or blueprint, is a visual representation of how a website or app will be built. There are three different levels of wireframes: low-fidelity, medium-fidelity, and high-fidelity. These different levels indicate how in-depth the wireframe appears. For example, low-fidelity wireframes are black-and-white with boxes indicating where designs will live while high-fidelity wireframes are identical mockups of what the end result will look like.

Word-of-mouth marketing is a form of advertising in which customers discuss products and services with their friends and family, either in person or online, influencing the purchasing decisions of those in their network.