Marketing Glossary

A

A/B Testing

Comparing two versions to see which performs better.

General

ABM

Account-Based Marketing – targeting specific high-value companies rather than broad audiences.

General

ACV

Annual Contract Value — the annualized value of a customer contract, excluding one-time fees.

General

AI Optimization

Using artificial intelligence to automatically improve marketing campaign performance.

Ai

Anomaly Detection

Identifying unusual patterns or outliers in data.

Ai

AOV

Average Order Value – the average amount spent per transaction.

Analytics

API

Application Programming Interface – how different software systems connect and share data.

General

ARPU

Average Revenue Per User – average revenue generated per customer or user.

Analytics

ARR

Annual Recurring Revenue – the yearly value of subscription revenue.

Analytics

Attribution

Determining which marketing touchpoints get credit for conversions.

Analytics

Audience Signals

Hints that help Google's AI find the right audience for Performance Max campaigns.

Paid Media

B

B2B

Business-to-Business – companies that sell products or services to other businesses.

General

B2C

Business-to-Consumer – companies that sell directly to individual consumers.

General

Backlink

A link from another website to yours, important for SEO authority.

Seo

Bid Strategy

The approach used to set bids in digital advertising auctions.

Paid Media

BOFU

Bottom Of Funnel – marketing focused on conversion and closing sales.

General

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page.

Analytics

Brand Mentions

Any online reference to your brand, whether tagged or untagged.

Social Media

Broad Match

A keyword match type that shows ads for searches related to your keyword, including variations.

Paid Media

C

CAC

Customer Acquisition Cost – the total cost to acquire one new customer.

Analytics

Canonical URL

The preferred URL for a page when multiple URLs access the same content.

Seo

Cart Abandonment

When shoppers add items to cart but leave without completing purchase.

Analytics

Catalog Sales

Facebook/Instagram campaign objective optimized for purchases from your product catalog.

Paid Media

Chatbot

Automated software that simulates conversation with users for support or sales.

Ai

Checkout Rate

The percentage of shopping cart sessions that complete the purchase.

Analytics

Churn

The rate at which customers stop buying, subscribing, or renewing over a given period.

General

Churn Rate

The percentage of customers who stop doing business with you over a given period.

Analytics

Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)

The percentage of email openers who clicked a link—measuring content effectiveness.

Email

CMS

Content Management System – software for creating and managing digital content.

Content

Community Management

Building and nurturing engaged communities around your brand on social platforms.

Social Media

Computer Vision

AI that interprets and analyzes visual content.

Ai

Consent Management

The process of collecting, storing, and honoring user consent for marketing, analytics, and advertising tracking.

General

Content Audit

A structured review of existing content to assess performance and gaps.

Content

Content Calendar

A schedule that organizes when and where content will be published.

Content

Content Distribution

The process of promoting content across channels to reach the right audience.

Content

Content Marketing

Creating valuable content to attract and engage your target audience.

Content

Content Strategy

A plan for how content supports business goals across the funnel.

Content

Conversational AI

AI technology enabling natural, human-like dialogue between users and software.

Ai

Conversion Funnel

The sequence of steps a visitor moves through from first touch to lead, purchase, or signup.

General

Conversion Rate

The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action.

Analytics

Conversions API

Server-side conversion tracking that sends events directly from your server to ad platforms.

General

Core Web Vitals

Google's metrics for measuring page loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

Seo

CPA

Cost Per Acquisition – how much you pay to acquire one customer or conversion.

Paid Media

CPC

Cost Per Click – the amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad.

Paid Media

CPL

Cost Per Lead – the cost to generate one qualified lead.

Paid Media

CPM

Cost Per Mille (thousand impressions) – what you pay for 1,000 ad views.

Paid Media

Crawl Budget

The number of pages search engines will crawl on your site within a given time.

Seo

Creative Automation

Using technology to automatically generate, adapt, and optimize marketing creative.

Ai

Creative Fatigue

The performance decline that happens when an audience has seen the same ad too many times.

General

Creator Economy

The ecosystem of independent content creators who monetize their audiences and skills.

Social Media

Creator Whitelisting

Running ads through a creator's handle to leverage their credibility.

Social Media

CRM

Customer Relationship Management – software for managing customer interactions and data.

General

CRO

Conversion Rate Optimization – systematically improving the percentage of visitors who convert.

General

CTR

Click-Through Rate – the percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it.

Paid Media

Customer Journey

The complete experience a customer has with your brand, from discovery to purchase and beyond.

General

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The total revenue a customer generates throughout their entire relationship with your business.

Analytics

D

D2C

Direct-to-Consumer – brands that sell directly to customers, bypassing retailers.

General

DMP

Data Management Platform – software for collecting and organizing audience data.

Paid Media

Domain Authority

A score (0-100) predicting how well a website will rank in search engines.

Seo

Domain Rating

Ahrefs' metric (0-100) measuring the strength of a website's backlink profile.

Seo

Double Opt-In

An email signup process that requires users to confirm their subscription.

Email

Drip Campaign

An automated series of emails sent on a schedule based on triggers or time intervals.

Email

DSP

Demand-Side Platform – software that automates digital ad buying across multiple sources.

Paid Media

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)

Automatically assembling personalized ads from creative components in real-time.

Ai

Dynamic Remarketing

Retargeting ads that automatically show products users previously viewed.

Paid Media

E

Editorial Calendar

A timeline for publishing content across channels.

Content

Email Automation

Using software to send targeted emails automatically based on triggers, behaviors, or schedules.

Email

Email Bounce Rate

The percentage of emails that couldn't be delivered to recipients.

Email

Email Click-Through Rate

The percentage of email recipients who click a link in an email.

Email

Email Deliverability

The ability of your emails to successfully reach recipients' inboxes.

Email

Email List Growth

The rate at which your email subscriber base increases over time.

Email

Email Personalization

Tailoring email content based on subscriber data or behavior.

Email

Email Segmentation

Dividing your email list into groups based on shared characteristics for targeted messaging.

Email

Email Warmup

The process of gradually increasing email sending volume to build sender reputation.

Email

Embeddings

Numerical representations of text or images used to compare similarity.

Ai

Engagement

User interactions with content, ads, or social posts, including clicks, likes, comments, shares, and saves.

General

Engagement Rate

The percentage of people who interact with your content (likes, comments, shares, clicks).

Social Media

Exact Match

A keyword match type that shows ads only for searches very closely matching your keyword.

Paid Media

F

Featured Snippet

A highlighted answer box that appears at the top of Google search results.

Seo

Fine-Tuning

Training an AI model on a specific dataset to improve performance on a narrow task.

Ai

First-Party Data

Data collected directly from your customers and website visitors.

Analytics

Frequency

The average number of times each person saw your ad.

Paid Media

Funnel

The stages a customer moves through from awareness to purchase.

General

G

GA4

Google Analytics 4 – Google's latest analytics platform for measuring website and app activity.

Analytics

Geo Targeting

Advertising and content targeting based on a user’s country, region, city, or proximity to a location.

General

GTM

Google Tag Manager – a tool for managing tracking codes without editing website code.

Analytics

H

Hallucination

When an AI model generates information that is incorrect or fabricated.

Ai

Hashtag Strategy

A plan for selecting and using hashtags to increase content reach.

Social Media

Hreflang

An HTML attribute that tells search engines which language or regional version of a page to show.

Seo

I

Impression

Each time your ad or content is displayed, whether or not it's clicked.

Paid Media

Influencer Cost

The total cost of working with an influencer, including fees and production.

Social Media

Influencer Marketing

Partnering with social media personalities to promote your brand to their audiences.

Social Media

Internal Linking

Links between pages on the same website that guide users and search engines.

Seo

K

Keyword Cannibalization

When multiple pages on your site compete for the same keyword.

Seo

Keyword Density

The percentage of times a keyword appears on a page.

Seo

Keyword Difficulty

A score estimating how hard it is to rank for a keyword.

Seo

Keyword Research

The process of identifying valuable search terms your audience uses to find content.

Seo

KPI

Key Performance Indicator – a measurable value that shows how effectively you're achieving objectives.

Analytics

L

Landing Page

A standalone page designed specifically to convert visitors from a marketing campaign.

General

Large Language Model

A machine learning model trained on vast text data to generate and understand language.

Ai

Lead Scoring

Ranking leads based on their likelihood to become customers.

General

Link Building

The process of acquiring backlinks from other websites.

Seo

List Hygiene

The practice of maintaining a clean, engaged email list by removing inactive or invalid addresses.

Email

List Hygiene

The practice of keeping email lists clean and up to date.

Email

LLM

Large Language Model – AI systems trained on text data that can understand and generate human language.

Ai

Local SEO

Optimizing your online presence to attract customers from local searches.

Seo

Localization

Adapting messaging, creative, offers, and landing pages for different markets, languages, and cultural contexts.

General

Lookalike Audiences

Targeting people similar to your existing customers or website visitors.

Paid Media

LTV

Lifetime Value – the total revenue a customer generates over their entire relationship.

Analytics

M

Machine Learning

AI systems that improve automatically through experience without explicit programming.

Ai

Marketing Automation

Software that automates repetitive marketing tasks like emails, social posts, and workflows.

General

Meta Description

The summary text shown under a page title in search results.

Seo

Meta Tags

HTML tags that provide metadata about a page to search engines and social platforms.

Seo

Mobile-First Indexing

Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing.

Seo

Mobile-First Indexing

Google's approach of using the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking.

Seo

Model Drift

When an AI model's performance degrades as real-world data changes.

Ai

MOFU

Middle Of Funnel – marketing focused on consideration and evaluation.

General

MQL

Marketing Qualified Lead – a lead that marketing has identified as sales-ready.

General

MRR

Monthly Recurring Revenue – the monthly value of subscription revenue.

Analytics

N

Native Advertising

Paid ads designed to match the look and feel of the platform they appear on.

Paid Media

Natural Language Processing

AI techniques that enable machines to understand and analyze human language.

Ai

Negative Keywords

Keywords that prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches.

Paid Media

O

Open Rate

The percentage of email recipients who open your email.

Email

Organic Reach

The number of unique users who see your content without paid promotion.

Social Media

Organic Traffic

Visitors who find your website through unpaid search engine results.

Seo

P

Page Speed

How quickly a webpage loads and becomes usable for visitors.

Seo

Paid Reach

The number of unique users who see your content through paid advertising.

Social Media

Payback Period

The time it takes for a customer’s gross profit or contribution margin to repay acquisition cost.

General

Personalization

Tailoring marketing messages and experiences to individual users based on their data.

Email

Personalization Engine

Software that delivers individualized experiences across channels based on user data.

Ai

Phrase Match

A keyword match type that shows ads for searches including the meaning of your keyword.

Paid Media

Pillar Content

A comprehensive page that covers a topic and links to related content.

Content

Pixel

A piece of code that tracks user behavior on your website for advertising platforms.

Analytics

Post Scheduling

Planning and automating the timing of social media posts.

Social Media

PPC

Pay-Per-Click – advertising where you pay only when someone clicks your ad.

Paid Media

Predictive Analytics

Using historical data and machine learning to forecast future outcomes and behaviors.

Ai

Preview Text

The snippet of text shown after the subject line in an email inbox.

Email

Privacy

The set of practices that protect user data and control how it is collected, stored, shared, and activated.

General

Product Feed

A structured file containing product data used for shopping ads and marketplace listings.

Paid Media

Product-Led Growth

A growth model where the product experience itself drives acquisition, activation, expansion, and retention.

General

Programmatic Advertising

Automated buying and selling of digital ads using technology and data.

Paid Media

Prompt Engineering

The skill of crafting inputs to get optimal outputs from AI language models.

Ai

Prompt Injection

A technique that manipulates AI prompts to produce unintended outputs.

Ai

Q

Quality Score

Google's rating (1-10) of your ad's relevance and quality.

Paid Media

R

RAG

Retrieval-augmented generation that combines AI with a knowledge base.

Ai

Reach

The number of unique users who saw your ad or content.

Paid Media

Recommendation Engine

AI system that suggests relevant products or content based on user behavior and preferences.

Ai

Repeat Purchase Rate

The percentage of customers who make more than one purchase.

Analytics

Retargeting

Showing ads to people who previously visited your website or engaged with your brand.

Paid Media

Retention

The ability to keep customers active, buying, subscribed, or renewing over time.

General

ROAS

Return On Ad Spend – revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.

Paid Media

Robots Directives

Instructions that tell search engines which pages or files to crawl.

Seo

Robots.txt

A file that tells search engines which pages they can or cannot crawl.

Seo

ROI

Return On Investment – the profitability of your marketing investment.

Analytics

RTB

Real-Time Bidding – automated auction system for buying and selling ad impressions instantly.

Paid Media

S

Schema Markup

Structured data code that helps search engines understand your content better.

Seo

SEA

Search Engine Advertising – same as SEM, primarily used in Europe.

Paid Media

Search Intent

The underlying goal or purpose behind a user's search query.

Seo

Search Intent

The underlying goal behind a user's search query.

Seo

SEM

Search Engine Marketing – paid advertising on search engines like Google.

Paid Media

Send Time Optimization

Using data to determine the best time to send emails.

Email

Sender Reputation

A score email providers use to determine whether your emails should reach the inbox.

Email

Sentiment Analysis

Using AI to determine the emotional tone and opinion expressed in text content.

Ai

SERP

Search Engine Results Page – the page Google or other search engines show after a query.

Seo

Server-Side Tracking

Sending data directly from your server to platforms instead of through browser pixels.

Analytics

Session

A group of user interactions on your website within a given time period.

Analytics

Share of Voice (SOV)

Your brand's visibility in the market compared to competitors.

Social Media

Shopping Ads

Product-based ads showing images, prices, and merchant names in search results.

Paid Media

Site Speed

How quickly your website loads and becomes interactive.

Seo

Smart Bidding

Google's automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to optimize for conversions.

Paid Media

Social Commerce

The ability to buy products directly within social platforms.

Social Media

Social Engagement Rate

The percentage of followers or viewers who interact with your social content.

Social Media

Social Listening

Monitoring social media for mentions of your brand, competitors, and industry topics.

Social Media

Social Media Analytics

The measurement of performance across social channels and content types.

Social Media

Social Media ROI

The return generated from social media investments.

Social Media

Social Proof

Signals that others trust or use a product, increasing credibility.

Social Media

Spam Complaint Rate

The percentage of recipients who mark your email as spam.

Email

Spam Score

A rating predicting how likely your email is to be flagged as spam.

Email

SQL

Sales Qualified Lead – a lead that sales has verified has genuine purchase intent.

General

SSP

Supply-Side Platform – software that helps publishers sell ad inventory programmatically.

Paid Media

Structured Data

Code that helps search engines understand and display your content with rich results.

Seo

Subject Line

The headline of an email that influences whether it is opened.

Email

T

Technical SEO

Optimizing website infrastructure and code to help search engines crawl and index content.

Seo

Third-Party Cookies

Cookies set by domains other than the one you're visiting, used for tracking across sites.

Analytics

TOFU

Top Of Funnel – marketing focused on awareness and reaching new audiences.

General

Topic Cluster

A group of related content pieces linked to a central pillar page.

Content

Transactional Email

Automated emails triggered by user actions, like order confirmations or password resets.

Email

U

UGC

User-Generated Content – content created by customers or users, not the brand.

Content

Unsubscribe Rate

The percentage of email recipients who opt out of your mailing list.

Email

UTM

Urchin Tracking Module – parameters added to URLs to track campaign performance.

Analytics

V

Viral Coefficient

The number of new users generated by each existing user.

Social Media

Virality

When content spreads rapidly through social sharing, reaching audiences far beyond original distribution.

Social Media

W

Welcome Series

An automated email sequence sent to new subscribers to onboard and engage them.

Email

X

XML Sitemap

A file listing all important pages on your site to help search engines discover content.

Seo

XML Sitemap

A file that lists site URLs to help search engines crawl and index pages.

Seo