Need a marketing definition? We’ve all come across things we’ve needed to look up over the years. This is our way of paying it forward. To those of you using this table – we see you, we’ve been you, and one day you’ll get to be the one sending a visitor to Google!

FYI: All of the marketing definitions are arranged alphabetically, they are not clumped by context. We’ve also noted which ones are vital to remember!

Need a bit more detail? Hit up our Knowledge Base, which has a search function to help you find the article you need.

Marketing Definitions: A to I

Above the Fold: The portion of a webpage that is visible without scrolling, typically considered the most valuable space for content and ads. This marketing definition is vital to know for e-comm specialists!

Ad Banner: A rectangular graphic display that appears on websites or apps, used for advertising purposes, typically containing images, text, and a call-to-action.

Ad Campaign: A coordinated series of advertisements across many platforms with a unified theme and message, designed to achieve specific marketing goals. Also used to refer to families of ads on a theme in Google Ads.

Ad Set: A group of advertisements within a paid campaign that shares the same target audience, budget, and schedule.

Affiliate Marketing: A performance-based marketing strategy where businesses reward an external person or company (aka affiliates), for driving traffic or sales through the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action): A marketing model that describes the stages a consumer goes through before making a purchase, from becoming aware of a product to taking action to buy it.

B2B (Business-to-Business): Transactions or marketing efforts between businesses, such as a manufacturer selling to a wholesaler.

B2C (Business-to-Consumer): Marketing efforts or transactions between a business and individual consumers, like a retail store selling products to customers.

BoF (Bottom of Funnel): The final stage in the marketing funnel where prospects are ready to make a purchase decision and convert into customers.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page, indicating they did not engage further with the site. A score is often an indicator of poor content relevancy or poor loading speed. This marketing definition is vital to know for SEO specialists!

Brand Advocacy: When customers support and promote a brand through word-of-mouth, recommendations, and positive reviews.

Brand Ambassador: A person, often a celebrity or influencer, hired by a company to represent and promote its brand, typically through various marketing activities.

Brand Association: The attributes, qualities, and ideas that consumers connect with a brand, influencing their perception and behaviour.

Brand Awareness: The extent to which consumers are familiar with and recognise a brand and its products.

Brand Building: The process of creating and strengthening a brand’s identity, image, and perception in the market.

Brand Culture: The values, beliefs, and behaviours shared by a brand and its employees, shaping the brand’s identity and interactions with customers.

Brand Engagement: Refers to the level of interaction and emotional connection between a brand and its customers, often measured through activities like social media interactions, loyalty programs, and feedback.

Brand Equity: The value and strength of a brand based on consumer perception, recognition, and loyalty, often reflected in higher sales and profitability.

Brand Positioning: Strategically defining a brand’s place in the market and in consumers’ minds relative to competitors.

Canonical URL: A way to signal to search engines which version of a page is the “preferred” or “original” version when multiple pages have similar or duplicate content. This helps consolidate ranking signals and avoid issues related to duplicate content. Maybe not a marketing definition, but certainly one you want to know if you have a lot of interactions with a dev team, and/or you work a lot in SEO.

CMO (Chief Marketing Officer): The executive responsible for overseeing the marketing activities and strategies of an organisation.

CMS (Content Management System): Software that allows users to create, manage, and modify digital content on a website without needing specialised technical knowledge.

Commercial intent/keywords: Searches where users are researching products or services with the intent to make a future purchase. They are comparing options or gathering information before buying, like searching for “best smartphones 2024” or “reviews of noise-cancelling headphones.”

Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors to a website or recipients of a marketing message who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

Conversions: The actions taken by users that fulfil the desired goal of a marketing campaign, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a form.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition, or Cost Per Action): A metric used to measure the cost of acquiring a customer or driving a specific action. Consider it to be the cost per conversion- but CPC is already spoken for. This marketing definition is vital to know when driving sales!

CPC (Cost-Per-Click): The amount an advertiser pays for each click on their PPC ad.

CPM (Cost Per Mille): is the cost of 1000 impressions of an advertisement.

Creative Assets: The various visual and multimedia elements used in advertising, such as images, videos, graphics, and animations.

Creative Copy: The written content in advertisements designed to persuade or inform the target audience.

Creator: A person who produces and shares original content, such as videos, blogs, or social media posts, often building a dedicated audience around their work. See also; Influencer.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management): The art of nurturing and managing relationships with customers to foster loyalty and drive sales.

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation): The practice of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

CTA (Call to Action): A strategic prompt that encourages users to take immediate action, like ‘buy now’. This marketing definition is vital to know!

CTR (Click-Through Rate): This measures the percentage of people who click on a specific link in a post or an ad.

CX (Customer Experience): The overall perception and experience a customer has with a brand across all touchpoints and interactions.

Display Ads: Visual advertisements that appear on websites, typically in the form of banners, images, or videos, aimed at increasing brand awareness or driving traffic to a website.

Dwell Time: The amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage before returning to the search results, reflecting the page’s relevance and engagement level.

Experiential Marketing: Experiential Marketing creates immersive experiences that engage customers on a personal level, with ‘proof’ being shared somewhere online. Like the Barbie boxes in cinemas for the movie launch.

EGC: Employee generated content. More commonly seen on LinkedIn and Tiktok in the absence of UGC.

Google Analytics: A web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic and user behaviour. It provides insights into how visitors interact with your site, helping you analyse performance and make data-driven marketing decisions. 

Google My Business: A free Google feature that allows businesses to manage their online presence on Google, including search results and maps, by providing essential information such as business hours, location, and customer reviews.

Google Search Console: A tool that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website’s presence in Google Search results. It provides insights into search performance, indexing status, and potential issues affecting your site’s visibility. It does not give as much detail as Google Analytics.

Google snippet: This appears at the top of search results where possible.It’s a brief summary or excerpt of content from a web page that appears in Google search results. Snippets are designed to give users a preview of what they can expect if they click through to the full page. Google is beginning to roll out AI overviews here where they can.

Google Tag Manager: A tag management system used to update and manage marketing and analytics tags on your website without needing to modify the code directly. It streamlines the process of deploying tracking pixels, scripts, and other tags.

Google Tag: A piece of JavaScript code used to collect and manage data for marketing and analytics purposes. It can be implemented directly on your website or through Google Tag Manager to track user interactions, such as page views and conversions, and to deploy various marketing and analytics tags.

Guerilla Marketing: Guerilla Marketing is a creative, unconventional approach to promoting a product or service. Sometimes likened to ‘distruptor’ behaviour in other industries.

Impressions: The number of times an ad or content is displayed to users, regardless of whether it is clicked. This is the broad marketing definition, but it’s worth clarifying what each specific platform you use means by it. This marketing definition is vital to know as your clients will ask!

Influencer: An individual with a significant online following who can affect the opinions and purchasing decisions of their audience through endorsements and content. See also; Creator.

Informational intent/keywords: Searches where users seek answers or information about a topic. They are looking to learn or understand something, such as searching for “how to bake a cake” or “benefits of yoga.”

ITTT (If This Then That): A digital tool or platform that allows users to create automated workflows and integrations between different applications and services based on conditional statements. Also a process of decision making.

Marketing Definitions I to Q

Keyword cannibalisation: This refers to a situation where multiple pages or pieces of content on the same website compete for the same keyword or phrase. This can dilute the effectiveness of the site’s overall SEO strategy and negatively impact its search engine rankings.

Keyword stuffing: Excessively and unnaturally inserting keywords into web content in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. This outdated SEO tactic can harm user experience and result in penalties from search engines for attempting to deceive or spam search results.

Keywords: Words or phrases that users enter into search engines, which marketers target in their content and ads to attract relevant traffic.

KPI (Key Performance Indicators): These are crucial metrics that help businesses measure the success of specific goals and objectives.

Lead Gen (Lead Generation): The process of attracting and converting prospects into leads, typically for sales purposes, through various marketing tactics.

Local Ads: Ads targeted to users in a specific geographic area, promoting local businesses, products, or services to nearby potential customers.

Long tail keywords: More detailed and specific phrases that typically have lower search volume but higher intent and less competition. They are used to target niche markets and attract more qualified traffic to a website.

LTV (Lifetime Value): The total revenue a business expects to earn from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship. Maybe not the marketing definition but certainly an acronym e-commerce marketers need to know.

Market Share: The portion of a market controlled by a particular company or brand, usually expressed as a percentage.

MoF (Middle of Funnel): The stage in the marketing funnel where prospects are considering a brand or product and are being nurtured through more detailed information and engagement.

Multi-Channel: A marketing strategy that uses multiple channels to reach customers, such as social media, email, and physical stores, but without necessarily integrating the experiences across them. Similar but ultimately different to omnichannel.

Navigational intent/keywords: Searches where users are looking for a specific website or web page. The goal is to reach a particular site, such as searching for “Facebook login” to access the Facebook homepage.

Negative Keywords: Specific words or phrases that prevent ads from being shown to users who include them in their search queries, ensuring ads reach a more relevant audience.

Niche: A niche is a specific segment of the market that caters to a unique set of needs or preferences. ‘Find your niche’ is a common phrase to hear this word in.

Off-Page SEO: Improving a website’s search engine rankings through activities outside the website itself, such as backlinks, social media engagement, and influencer outreach.

Omnichannel: An integrated approach to marketing and sales that provides a seamless customer experience across all channels and touch points, both online and offline. This marketing definition is vital to know as it’s increasingly the way forward!

On-Page SEO: The practice of optimising individual web pages to improve their ranking in search engine results, involving content, HTML source code, and site structure.

OOH (Out-Of-Home): Advertising that reaches consumers when they are outside their homes, such as billboards, transit ads, and digital screens in public places.

Performance Marketing: Performance Marketing focuses on measurable results data, like click through rate, leads, and sales.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click): An online advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. Normally used to describe Google Ads, sometimes used to describe paid social media ads.

Programmatic: Automated buying and selling of online advertising using software and algorithms to target specific audiences.

Marketing Definitions R to Z

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): A metric that measures the revenue generated for every pound spent on advertising.

ROI (Return on Investment): A measure of the profitability of an investment, calculated as the net profit divided by the cost of the investment, typically expressed as a percentage.

Seed keywords: Basic, broad terms that form the foundation of a keyword strategy. They represent the core concepts or main topics of a business and are used to generate more specific, related keyword ideas.

Segmentation: Segmentation involves dividing a target market into distinct groups based on specific criteria, like purchase behaviour or geographic location.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing): A form of online marketing that involves promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results through paid advertising and optimisation. See also; SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): The process of optimising a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). See also; SEM. This marketing definition is vital to know and understand, and to understand it’s not just about keywords!

SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The page displayed by a search engine in response to a user’s query, listing the results that match the search terms.

SMM (Social Media Marketing): Using social media platforms to promote a brand, engage with customers, and drive traffic to a website or other digital presence. Sometimes used as an abbreviation for a Social Media Manager.

ToF (Top of Funnel): The initial stage in the marketing funnel where potential customers become aware of a brand or product.

Top of Funnel Marketing Campaign: This is the initial phase of a marketing strategy focused on attracting and engaging potential customers at the beginning of their purchase (or equivalent action) journey.

Transactional intent/keywords: Searches where users are ready to make a purchase or complete a specific action. They are looking to buy a product or service immediately, such as searching for “buy running shoes online” or “subscribe to a streaming service.”

Transition Words: Words or phrases used in writing to connect ideas and ensure a smooth flow, improving readability and comprehension. On-page SEO often demands a percentage be in each body of copy.

UGC: User generated content, normally video, of customers talking about your product/services. See also EGC.

USP: A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what sets a product or service apart from its competitors.

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module): A snippet of code added to the end of a URL to track the performance of online campaigns. UTMs are used to monitor the effectiveness of campaigns by identifying the source, medium, and other attributes of the traffic coming to a website. They are often monitored in Google Analytics, and have nothing to do with Victorian street urchins. This marketing definition is vital to know as attribution of traffic is premium data!

White Label: The marketing definition as well as the manufacturing one: Products or services produced by one company but rebranded and sold by another company as their own.