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Marketing terms

The marketing terminology you meet when you look for customers, leads and creators, explained in plain English: what each term means, why it matters and what to do about it. Every technique is labelled white, grey or black hat.

  • White hatWithin platform rules and the law. Safe to use.
  • Grey hatAllowed in some places and easy to abuse. Check the rules first.
  • Black hatAgainst platform rules or the law. Risks bans, fines and your reputation.

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Marketing terms by topic

Marketing terms A to Z

A

Account-based marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing targets a short list of high-value companies with tailored campaigns, instead of casting a wide net for any lead.
Affiliate link
An affiliate link is a tracked URL given to a partner, so sales or sign-ups that come through it can be credited and paid as commission.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing pays partners a commission for each sale or sign-up they send through a tracked link or code, so you only pay for results.
AMA (Ask Me Anything)
An AMA, Ask Me Anything, is a live session where someone answers open questions from a community, popularised by Reddit’s r/IAmA.
AstroturfingBlack hat
Astroturfing is faking grassroots support: posts, reviews or comments made to look like they come from ordinary people when a brand is behind them.
Audience demographics
Audience demographics describe who follows a creator or brand: location, age range, gender split and language. They decide audience fit.

B

B2B lead generation
B2B lead generation is finding businesses that could buy your product and the right people inside them to contact, for longer, larger sales.
B2C lead generation
B2C lead generation attracts individual consumers who might buy, usually through content, ads, social media, creators and offers.
Beachhead market
A beachhead market is a small, specific first market a startup aims to dominate before expanding to neighbouring markets.
Beta testers
Beta testers are early users who try a product before its full release, report bugs and give feedback in exchange for early access.
Boolean search
Boolean search combines keywords with AND, OR, NOT and quotes to narrow results, for example a brand name without unrelated meanings.
Bootstrapping
Bootstrapping is building a company without outside investment, funding growth from savings and the revenue the business earns.
Brand ambassador
A brand ambassador is a creator, customer or employee who represents a brand over time, usually with ongoing perks, pay or commission.
Brand awareness
Brand awareness is how familiar your target audience is with your brand: whether they recognise it, remember it and think of it when buying.
Brand community
A brand community is a group of customers and fans who connect with each other around a brand, in forums, chat groups or events.
Brand mentions
Brand mentions are any time your brand is named online, in posts, comments, reviews, articles or videos, with or without a link.
Brand monitoring
Brand monitoring is tracking where and how your brand is mentioned online, from forums and social media to reviews and news.
Brand sentiment
Brand sentiment is the overall feeling people express about a brand online, the balance of positive, negative and neutral talk.
Build in public
Building in public means sharing your product’s progress, numbers, decisions and mistakes openly as you build, to grow an audience along the way.
Buyer persona
A buyer persona is a short, research-based description of a typical buyer: their role, goals, problems and how they make decisions.
Buying email listsGrey hat
Buying email lists means purchasing contact data from a vendor to email people who never heard of you. It is legal in places and risky everywhere.
Buying followersBlack hat
Buying followers means paying for followers to inflate a social account’s audience. They are fake or uninterested, and it breaks platform rules.

C

CAN-SPAM ActWhite hat
The CAN-SPAM Act is the US law on commercial email: honest headers and subjects, a physical address and a working, honoured opt-out.
Case study
A case study is a detailed story of how a customer used a product to solve a problem, with the situation, the solution and the results.
Churn rate
Churn rate is the share of customers who stop using or paying for a product in a period, such as a month. Lower is better.
Cold calling
Cold calling is phoning potential customers who have not asked to be contacted, to introduce a product and book a next step.
Cold emailWhite hat
A cold email is a first message sent to someone you have no prior relationship with, to start a business conversation. It must follow anti-spam law.
Cold outreach
Cold outreach is contacting people who do not know you yet, by email, phone, social message or in communities, to start a conversation.
Cold start problem
The cold start problem is when a product needs many users to be valuable but cannot attract users until it is valuable, as with marketplaces.
Comment spamBlack hat
Comment spam is posting promotional or irrelevant comments, often links, on posts, videos, blogs and forums, usually at scale or by bots.
Community marketing
Community marketing is taking part in, or building, communities where customers gather, and earning attention by being genuinely helpful.
Community-led growth
Community-led growth is growing a business through a community of users who help, teach and recommend each other, with the company as host.
Competitor analysis
Competitor analysis studies rivals’ products, pricing, positioning and customer feedback to find where you can stand out and win.
Content creator
A content creator makes videos, posts, newsletters or podcasts for an online audience and often earns from ads, sponsors and products.
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the share of people who take a desired action, such as signing up, replying or buying, out of all who could have.
Cost per engagement (CPE)
Cost per engagement is what you pay for each like, comment, share or save a sponsored post or ad receives: total cost divided by engagements.
CPM (cost per mille)
CPM, cost per mille, is what you pay for every thousand impressions or views. It lets you compare the price of creators and ad channels.
Creator economy
The creator economy is the market of independent creators earning from audiences through brand deals, subscriptions, ads, products and tips.
Creator marketplace
A creator marketplace is a platform where creators list themselves for brand deals and brands browse, contact and pay them in one place.
Crisis management
Crisis management is preparing for and responding to events that threaten a brand’s reputation, from outages to viral complaints.
CRM (customer relationship management)
A CRM is software that keeps every lead, customer and conversation in one place, so a team knows who to contact and what was said.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition cost, CAC, is the average amount spent on sales and marketing to win one new customer in a given period.
Customer development
Customer development is a method for startups to find a repeatable business by testing assumptions with customers step by step, before scaling.
Customer discovery
Customer discovery is talking to potential customers to learn their problems and test whether your idea solves something they care about.
Customer lifetime value (LTV)
Customer lifetime value, LTV, estimates the total revenue or profit a customer brings over their whole relationship with a business.

D

Dark social
Dark social is sharing that happens in private channels, such as messaging apps, DMs, email and private groups, where it is hard to track.
Data enrichment
Data enrichment adds external facts to records you already have, such as company size, location or industry, to make them more useful.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
DKIM adds a cryptographic signature to your emails, published in DNS, so receivers can verify the email came from your domain unaltered.
DMARC
DMARC is a DNS policy telling receivers what to do with email that fails SPF or DKIM for your domain, and where to send reports.

E

Early adopters
Early adopters are the first customers to try a new product, accepting rough edges because the problem matters to them and they like new things.
Earned media value (EMV)
Earned media value estimates what the attention from organic or influencer content would have cost to buy as advertising.
Email bounce rate
Email bounce rate is the share of sent emails that could not be delivered, because the address is invalid or the receiving server refused them.
Email deliverability
Email deliverability is how reliably your emails reach the inbox rather than spam, shaped by authentication, reputation and content.
Email finder
An email finder is a tool that looks up a business email address for a person or company, from public sources and known address patterns.
Email list
An email list is a set of people who agreed to receive your emails, such as newsletter subscribers, customers or product users.
Email verification
Email verification checks whether an address exists and can receive mail before you send, so fewer emails bounce and your reputation stays healthy.
Email warm-upGrey hat
Email warm-up is gradually increasing how many emails a new domain or address sends, so mailbox providers learn to trust it.
Engagement podsBlack hat
Engagement pods are groups that agree to like and comment on each other’s posts to game the algorithm, inflating engagement artificially.
Engagement rate
Engagement rate measures how much an audience interacts with posts: likes, comments and shares divided by followers or views, as a percentage.

F

Fake followersBlack hat
Fake followers are bot or inactive accounts that inflate a profile’s follower count without being real people interested in the content.
Fake reviewsBlack hat
Fake reviews are reviews that do not reflect a real customer’s honest experience: written by the business, paid for, or posted to attack rivals.
Firmographics
Firmographics are facts about a company, such as industry, size, revenue, location and age, used to segment and qualify B2B leads.
Follow for followGrey hat
Follow for follow is agreeing to follow accounts that follow you back, to raise follower counts without real interest in each other’s content.
Follow-up email
A follow-up email is a short message sent after an earlier email got no reply, to remind the recipient and add something useful.
Follower audit
A follower audit checks whether a creator’s audience is real and engaged, looking for bought followers, bots and suspicious growth.
Forum marketingWhite hat
Forum marketing is taking part in online forums where your customers gather, helping with questions and mentioning your product where it fits.
Founder-led sales
Founder-led sales is when a startup’s founders sell the product themselves in the early days, before hiring a sales team.
FTC disclosureWhite hat
FTC disclosure is the US rule that creators must clearly say when they have a paid or material connection with a brand they promote.

G

GDPR
GDPR is the EU’s data protection law. It governs how personal data, including contact details used for outreach, may be collected and used.
Go-to-market strategy (GTM)
A go-to-market strategy is the plan for bringing a product to customers: who it is for, how it is positioned, priced, marketed and sold.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a free Google service that emails you when new pages it indexes match your keywords, such as your brand name.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is a business’s free listing on Google Search and Maps, with its address, hours, phone, website, photos and reviews.
Google Maps scrapingGrey hat
Google Maps scraping means extracting business listings from Google Maps in bulk. Using Google’s official Places data is the safer route.
Growth hacking
Growth hacking is fast, experiment-driven marketing that looks for cheap, scalable ways to grow, often using product, data and creativity.
Guerrilla marketing
Guerrilla marketing uses low-cost, unconventional and memorable tactics, such as stunts, street campaigns and clever online moves, to get attention.

H

Hacker News
Hacker News is Y Combinator’s community news site for technology and startups, where links and Show HN launches are voted on and discussed.

I

Ideal customer profile (ICP)
An ideal customer profile, ICP, describes the kind of company or person that gets the most value from your product and is best to sell to.
Impressions
Impressions count how many times content was shown on screen, including repeat views by the same person, unlike reach, which counts people.
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing attracts customers who come to you through useful content, search, communities and referrals, rather than cold outreach.
Indie Hackers
Indie Hackers is an online community of founders building profitable, often self-funded internet businesses, sharing numbers and lessons openly.
Influencer brief
An influencer brief tells a creator what a sponsored piece should achieve: key messages, deliverables, dates, dos and don’ts and disclosure.
Influencer contract
An influencer contract sets out a creator deal in writing: deliverables, dates, payment, usage rights, exclusivity, approval and disclosure.
Influencer gifting
Influencer gifting is sending creators free products with no obligation to post, hoping they like them and share them with their audience.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is paying or partnering with creators who have an engaged audience so they show your product to the people who trust them.
Influencer marketing platform
An influencer marketing platform is software for finding creators, checking their audience, managing outreach and tracking campaign results.
Influencer outreach
Influencer outreach is finding creators who fit your brand and contacting them with a clear, personal proposal to work together.
Influencer rate card
An influencer rate card lists a creator’s prices for each type of content and extra, such as videos, stories, usage rights and exclusivity.
Intent data
Intent data is a signal that a person or company is researching a purchase now, such as searching a topic or asking for recommendations.

J

Jobs to be done (JTBD)
Jobs to be done is a way to understand demand: customers "hire" a product to make progress in a situation, not because of who they are.

K

KOL (key opinion leader)
A KOL, key opinion leader, is a person whose expertise makes their views trusted in a field, such as a doctor, analyst or well-known engineer.

L

Lead
A lead is a person or business that might buy from you: someone who showed interest or fits your ideal customer, with a way to contact them.
Lead enrichment
Lead enrichment adds missing details to a lead, such as a work email, company size, website or role, so it can be qualified and contacted.
Lead generation
Lead generation is finding and attracting potential customers and collecting a way to contact them, so sales can start a conversation.
Lead list
A lead list is a set of potential customers with contact details and notes, built from research or data sources, ready for outreach.
Lead magnet
A lead magnet is something useful offered for free, such as a guide, template, tool or trial, in exchange for a visitor’s email.
Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing keeps in touch with leads who are not ready to buy, sending useful content until they are, so they choose you when the time comes.
Lead scoring
Lead scoring gives each lead points for fit and interest, such as company size or pages viewed, so sales talks to the most promising first.
Local citations
Local citations are mentions of a business’s name, address and phone on other sites, such as directories, maps and review platforms.
Lurker
A lurker is a community member who reads regularly but rarely posts. In most online communities, lurkers are the large majority.

M

Macro influencer
A macro influencer is a creator with a large following, usually from about 100,000 to a million, often working with brands professionally.
Marketing channels
Marketing channels are the routes a business uses to reach customers, such as search, social, email, communities, creators, ads and sales.
Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
A marketing qualified lead, MQL, is a lead whose fit and interest meet marketing’s bar to be handed to sales for follow-up.
Media kit
A media kit is a creator’s one-page profile for brands: audience size and demographics, engagement, past partners and how to work together.
Mega influencer
A mega influencer has a very large following, usually over a million, and reaches a broad audience much like a celebrity.
Micro influencer
A micro influencer is a creator with a mid-sized following, usually between about 10,000 and 100,000 followers, in a focused niche.
Minimum viable product (MVP)
A minimum viable product, MVP, is the simplest version of a product that lets you test your core idea with real users and learn quickly.

N

Nano influencer
A nano influencer is a creator with a small, close audience, usually under about 10,000 followers, who often posts about one personal interest.
NAP (name, address, phone)
NAP stands for name, address and phone number: the core business details that should be identical everywhere a business is listed.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score asks customers how likely they are to recommend you from 0 to 10, then subtracts detractors from promoters.

O

Online community
An online community is a group of people who interact around a shared interest online, in forums, subreddits, chat servers or social groups.
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing reaches out to people who have not asked to hear from you yet, through cold outreach, ads, events and direct mail.
Outbound sales
Outbound sales is when sellers find and contact prospects first, by email, phone or social messages, instead of waiting for inbound leads.

P

Paid partnership
A paid partnership is a platform’s built-in label for sponsored content, showing viewers that a creator was paid or rewarded by the named brand.
Positioning
Positioning defines what a product is, who it is for and why it is the best choice for them compared with the alternatives they consider.
Pre-launch
Pre-launch is the period before a product is publicly available, used to build an audience, collect sign-ups and validate demand.
Product Hunt launch
A Product Hunt launch is posting a new product on Product Hunt for a day, where the community upvotes, comments and ranks the day’s launches.
Product seeding
Product seeding is sending products to many chosen creators at once, often before a launch, to spark organic posts and word of mouth.
Product-led growth (PLG)
Product-led growth is a strategy where the product itself drives acquisition and expansion, usually through free trials, freemium and sharing.
Product-market fit
Product-market fit is when a product clearly satisfies a real market need: customers want it, use it, keep using it and tell others.
Promo code
A promo code is a discount code customers enter at checkout. Unique codes per creator also show which creator drove each sale.
Prospecting
Prospecting is searching for and qualifying potential customers, then making first contact to start a sales conversation.

Q

Quora marketing
Quora marketing is answering questions on Quora related to your expertise and product, so readers find you through genuinely useful answers.

R

Reach
Reach is the number of unique people who saw a piece of content or a campaign at least once, as opposed to impressions, which count views.
Reddit karma
Reddit karma is a score reflecting the upvotes your posts and comments received. Many subreddits require some karma before you can post.
Reddit marketingWhite hat
Reddit marketing is reaching customers on Reddit by joining relevant subreddits, helping in discussions, and posting or advertising within the rules.
Referral marketing
Referral marketing rewards existing customers for bringing in new ones, for example with credits or discounts for both sides.
Reputation management
Reputation management is monitoring and improving how a brand or person is seen online, through reviews, replies and search results.
Review gatingBlack hat
Review gating is asking customers how they felt first and only inviting happy ones to post a public review, hiding negative feedback.
Review management
Review management is collecting, monitoring and responding to customer reviews on sites such as Google, G2, Trustpilot and app stores.

S

Sales cadence
A sales cadence is a planned sequence of outreach touches, such as emails, calls and messages, spread over days or weeks for each prospect.
Sales development representative (SDR)
A sales development representative, SDR, researches and contacts prospects to book qualified meetings for the people who close deals.
Sales funnel
A sales funnel describes how many people move from first hearing about you to buying, stage by stage, narrowing at each step.
Sales pipeline
A sales pipeline shows every open deal by stage, from first contact to closed, so you can see what is likely to close and what is stuck.
Sales qualified lead (SQL)
A sales qualified lead, SQL, is a lead that sales has checked and confirmed as a real opportunity worth a direct sales conversation.
Self-promotionGrey hat
Self-promotion in communities is posting about your own product. Many communities limit or ban it, so check each one’s rules first.
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis classifies text as positive, negative or neutral, so you can see how people feel about a brand across many mentions.
Shadowban
A shadowban hides a user’s posts from everyone else without telling them, usually because a platform flagged the account as spam or abusive.
Share of voice (SOV)
Share of voice is your brand’s portion of the conversation in a market: your mentions compared with competitors’, as a percentage.
Show HN
Show HN is a type of Hacker News post where people share something they made themselves, for the community to try, discuss and critique.
Social listening
Social listening is tracking public conversations about your brand, competitors and market, then learning from and acting on what people say.
Social media analytics
Social media analytics is measuring how social content and accounts perform, such as reach, engagement and growth, to guide decisions.
Social media monitoring
Social media monitoring is collecting mentions of your brand or keywords across social networks and responding to the ones that need it.
Social proof
Social proof is the tendency to trust what others do and say: reviews, testimonials, user counts and creator recommendations that reassure buyers.
SockpuppetBlack hat
A sockpuppet is a fake online identity used to praise, defend or vote for oneself or a brand while pretending to be someone else.
SpamBlack hat
Spam is unsolicited, irrelevant or bulk messaging sent without regard for the recipient, by email, in comments, DMs or community posts.
Spam traps
Spam traps are email addresses used to catch senders with poor list practices. Hitting them can damage your domain’s sending reputation.
Spark Ads
Spark Ads are TikTok ads that boost an existing organic post, a creator’s or the brand’s own, keeping its likes, comments and profile link.
SPF record
An SPF record is a DNS entry listing which servers may send email for your domain, so receivers can reject forged messages.
Sponsored post
A sponsored post is content a creator publishes because a brand paid or gave them something for it, and it must be disclosed as an ad.
Subreddit
A subreddit is a community on Reddit dedicated to one topic, such as r/smallbusiness, with its own rules, moderators and culture.

T

Technographics
Technographics describe the technology a company uses, such as its website platform, CRM or analytics tools, to target and qualify leads.
Testimonial
A testimonial is a short statement from a real customer about their experience with a product, shown to build trust with prospects.
Total addressable market (TAM)
Total addressable market, TAM, is the total revenue opportunity for a product if it won every possible customer. SAM and SOM narrow it down.

U

UGC (user-generated content)
UGC, user-generated content, is content about a brand made by customers or creators rather than the brand: reviews, photos, videos and posts.
UGC creator
A UGC creator makes natural, customer-style videos and photos that brands pay for and post on their own ads and channels.
Unique selling proposition (USP)
A unique selling proposition, USP, is the specific benefit that sets a product apart from competitors and gives customers a reason to choose it.
Unlinked brand mentions
Unlinked brand mentions are pages that name your brand without linking to your site, often a chance to ask for a link or a correction.
Usage rights
Usage rights say where, how and for how long a brand may reuse a creator’s content, for example in ads, on its website or in email.

V

Value proposition
A value proposition is a clear statement of the benefit a product delivers, for whom, and why it is better than the alternatives.
Viral coefficient
The viral coefficient, or K-factor, is how many new users each user brings in on average. Above 1, a product grows on its own.
Viral loop
A viral loop is a cycle where using a product brings in new users, who use it and bring in more, such as invites or shared content.
Voice of customer (VoC)
Voice of customer is gathering what customers say they need and feel, in their own words, from interviews, surveys, reviews and conversations.
Vote manipulationBlack hat
Vote manipulation is artificially changing votes on a post, by buying upvotes, using multiple accounts or asking groups to vote together.

W

Waitlist
A waitlist collects sign-ups from people interested in a product before it is available, to gauge demand and launch to an audience.
Warm outreach
Warm outreach is contacting someone who already knows of you, through a referral, a past conversation or engagement with your content.
Web scrapingGrey hat
Web scraping is extracting data from websites with software. It is legal in many cases but limited by terms of service, copyright and privacy law.
Whitelisting
Influencer whitelisting lets a brand run paid ads through a creator’s account, so ads show the creator’s name and content to new audiences.
Word-of-mouth marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is when customers recommend you to others, and the work a company does to make that more likely and easier.

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