Glossary69 termsFree quiz
Every marketing term, in plain English.
Marketing people love a three-letter word. Here's what all of them actually mean, with no jargon hiding behind the jargon.
By Lance Wagner ·
The short version
You do not need to learn marketing vocabulary to run a good business. You do need it to tell whether someone is selling you something useful. Every term below is grouped by where it shows up in your business, defined in one sentence, and most come with a real example. Anywhere you see a blue i on our site, that same definition is one tap away.
Money & Numbers
- Attribution
- Deciding which ad, post or search actually deserves credit for a sale.
- Average Order ValueAOV
- The average amount a customer spends in one visit or one order.
- Benchmark
- A typical number for businesses like yours, used to judge whether yours is good or bad.
- Customer Acquisition CostCAC
- What it costs you, on average, to win one new customer.Spend $1,000 on ads, get 20 new customers, your CAC is $50.
- Lifetime ValueLTV
- All the money one customer spends with you over the whole time they stay a customer.A client who spends $60 a month for two years has an LTV of $1,440.
- LTV to CAC ratio
- How many dollars a customer brings in for every dollar you spent getting them. Three to one or better is healthy.
- Margin
- The money left over from a sale after you pay what it cost you to deliver it.Sell a haircut for $40, pay $10 in supplies and time, your margin is $30.
- Payback period
- How long it takes a new customer to pay back what you spent to get them.
- Return on Ad SpendROAS
- How much revenue each ad dollar brought back. 4x means $4 in sales for every $1 spent.
- Return on InvestmentROI
- Whether the money you put in came back bigger than it left.
Customer Experience
- Churn
- The share of customers who stop buying from you in a given period.
- Customer journey
- Every step a person takes from first hearing about you to buying again.
- Merchandising
- How you arrange and display products so people notice and buy them.
- Net Promoter ScoreNPS
- A 0 to 10 question that asks how likely someone is to recommend you, turned into one score.
- Reputation management
- Getting reviews, answering them, and fixing what keeps coming up.
- Retention
- Keeping the customers you already have so they come back.
- Touchpoint
- Any moment a customer bumps into your business. A sign, a call, a text, your front door.
- Wayfinding
- Signs and layout that help someone figure out where to go without asking.
Digital & Website
- A/B test
- Showing two versions to different people to see which one wins.
- Above the fold
- The part of a page you see before scrolling.
- Bounce rate
- The share of people who land on a page and leave without doing anything.
- Call to ActionCTA
- The button or line that tells someone exactly what to do next.
- Conversion
- When a visitor does the thing you wanted: books, calls, buys or fills out a form.
- Conversion rate
- Out of everyone who visited, the percentage who took action.100 visitors, 3 booked. Your conversion rate is 3%.
- Heatmap
- A picture of where people click and how far they scroll on a page.
- Landing page
- A single page built for one offer, so the visitor has one clear choice.
- Page speed
- How fast your site loads. Slow pages lose customers before they see anything.
- User ExperienceUX
- How easy and pleasant your site is to actually use.
Advertising
- Click-Through RateCTR
- Out of everyone who saw your ad, the percentage who clicked it.
- Cost Per ClickCPC
- What you pay each time someone clicks your ad.
- Cost Per LeadCPL
- What you pay, on average, for one person who raises their hand.
- Cost Per Thousand ImpressionsCPM
- What you pay to have your ad shown 1,000 times, whether or not anyone clicks.
- Frequency
- How many times the same person sees your ad. Too high and they tune out.
- Geofencing
- Only showing ads to phones inside an area you draw on a map.
- Impression
- One time your ad appeared on someone's screen.
- Negative keywords
- Words you tell Google to ignore so you stop paying for the wrong searches.
- Pay Per ClickPPC
- Ads where you only pay when someone clicks.
- Quality Score
- Google's grade for how relevant your ad and page are. Better grade, cheaper clicks.
- Retargeting
- Showing ads to people who already visited you once.
Search & Local
- Answer Engine OptimizationAEO
- Writing so AI assistants and search summaries can quote you as the answer.
- Backlink
- A link from someone else's site to yours. Google reads it as a vote.
- Citation
- Any other site that lists your business name, address and phone.
- Google Business Profile
- Your free Google listing with hours, photos, reviews and directions.
- Keyword
- The words someone types into search when they are looking for you.
- Local SEO
- Showing up when someone nearby searches for what you sell.
- Map pack
- The three local businesses Google shows on the map at the top of results.
- NAP consistency
- Your name, address and phone written the exact same way everywhere online.
- Schema markup
- Hidden labels on your page that tell search engines what each thing is.
- Search Engine OptimizationSEO
- Making your site easy for Google to understand so you show up without paying for ads.
- Search results pageSERP
- The page of results Google shows after a search.
Email, Text & CRM
- Customer Relationship ManagementCRM
- The system that keeps your customer list, their history and what to do next.
- Deliverability
- Whether your email actually lands in the inbox instead of spam.
- First-party data
- Customer info you collected yourself. Nobody can take it away from you.
- Nurture sequence
- A set of messages that go out over time to warm someone up until they are ready.
- Open rate
- The percentage of people who opened your email.
- Opt-in
- Someone giving you permission to contact them.
- Segmentation
- Splitting your list into groups so each one gets a message that fits.
Commercial & Sales
- Close rate
- Out of the people you quoted, the percentage who said yes.
- Commercializing
- Turning something you're good at into something you can reliably sell.
- Cross-sell
- Offering something that goes with what they're already buying.
- Funnel
- The path from lots of people looking to a few people buying.
- Go To MarketGTM
- Your plan for how you'll actually reach buyers and sell to them.
- Lead
- A person who showed interest and gave you a way to reach them.
- Marketing Qualified LeadMQL
- A lead who looks interested enough to be worth a real follow-up.
- Pipeline
- All the deals you are working on right now, and what they are worth.
- Positioning
- The one clear reason someone should pick you instead of the shop down the street.
- Sales Qualified LeadSQL
- A lead who is ready to talk price and timing.
- Upsell
- Offering a bigger or better version of what someone is already buying.
- Value proposition
- What you do, who it's for, and why it's worth the price, in one sentence.
The IDK Series
IDK. Let's find out.
One long quiz was a slog, so we broke it into five short ones. Six questions each, about two minutes, no signup. Your progress saves as you go.
- IDK My BrandDo you actually know what makes your business different?
- IDK My WebsiteIs your site helping people buy or making them work for it?
- IDK My Marketing BudgetWhat should you actually be spending?
- IDK My CustomersDo you know why people choose you?
- IDK What Google WantsLocal search without the alphabet soup.
Now put the words to work
Knowing what CAC means is step one. Knowing yours is step two. Our free tools do the math for you.
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