Here is a list of the most important marketing terms, jargon, acronyms and abbreviations you need to know.
A
A/B Test
A/B Test compares two versions of a webpage, email, or ad by splitting traffic and measuring performance metrics to identify the variant that best boosts conversions.
Abandoned Cart
Abandoned Cart describes the scenario when online shoppers add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase.
Ad Copy
Ad copy is the written part of an ad appearing in headlines, descriptions, CTAs, or email subject lines and scripts. It aims to persuade the audience to take action, like clicking a link, buying a product, or signing up for a service.
Above the Fold (ATF)
Above the Fold (ATF) designates the portion of a webpage immediately visible without scrolling, which is crucial for capturing visitor attention and driving early engagement.
Ad Extensions
Ad Extensions add extra information to paid ads, such as contact details, offers, or sitelinks, enhancing visibility and offering users more reasons to click.
Ad Network
Ad Networks are platforms that connect advertisers with publishers, streamline ad placements, and target audiences across various websites and digital channels. The most popular ad networks are Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Microsoft Ads.
Advertising Budget
An advertising budget is the amount of money a business sets aside for marketing campaigns like SEO, content marketing, and PPC. These campaigns are designed to promote a business's products or services across various online channels.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing in which an individual or business markets another company’s products or services in exchange for a commission.
Audience Segmentation
Audience Segmentation refers to dividing your market into groups based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. This enables targeted campaigns that generate more engagement and conversions.
Alt Text
Alt text (alternative text) is a short written description of an image used in HTML to improve accessibility and help search engines understand what the image is about.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the part of a hyperlink that is clickable and visible to users. It tells users and search engines what the linked page is about, helping SEO performance and enhancing user navigation.
B
Backlinks
Backlinks are external links pointing to your site from other domains. They act as signals of trust and authority, helping improve your site’s rankings in search engines, generative AIs, and LLMs.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools is a free platform provided by Microsoft that helps website owners monitor and manage their site’s presence in Bing search results.
Bounce Rate
A bounce rate is a percentage that shows how many users landed on a webpage and then exited the website without having any interaction on the page.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness measures how familiar people are with your brand. It reflects how well your target audience recognizes and recalls your brand.
Breadcrumbs
A breadcrumb trail is a menu of text links that indicates the page's position in the site hierarchy, showing the path from the current page back to the homepage. Each step in the path is clickable. Breadcrumbs are usually located at the top of a page and used as a navigational aid.
Broken Link
A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a page or resource on the Internet that no longer exists. For this reason, it's sometimes called a 'dead link'.
Business to Business (B2B)
B2B marketing refers to businesses' strategies and tactics to promote their products or services to other companies through online channels.
Business to Consumer (B2C)
B2C refers to strategies businesses use to sell products or services directly to individual customers rather than other businesses. Examples include retail stores and eCommerce.
Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a detailed, research-based profile of your ideal customer, including their goals, challenges, behaviors, and demographics to guide marketing efforts.
C
Call to Action (CTA)
A Call to Action (CTA) is a prompt in marketing content (like Buy Now, Sign Up) urging users to take a specific step, such as signing up or purchasing, designed to drive engagement or conversions.
Canonical URL
A canonical URL is a special HTML tag (rel=“canonical”) added in the HEAD section of a page and specifies the preferred version of a set of web pages with highly similar or duplicate content. It is used to prevent duplicate content issues by guiding search engines to the correct version of your content.
Chatbot
A chatbot is an AI-driven tool that simulates human conversation. It is often used on websites or messaging apps to provide instant assistance and personalized support to enhance customer engagement online.
Churn Rate
Churn rate refers to the percentage of customers who stop using a product or service during a given time period. High churn signals poor retention and lost revenue.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is the percentage of people who click on a link, ad, or call to action after seeing it. It’s a key metric for measuring engagement and ad performance.
Cold Outreach
Cold Outreach is a proactive strategy where businesses initiate contact with potential customers without prior engagement with their brand, using emails or calls to spark interest or start a conversation.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating, publishing, and promoting relevant content to a pre-defined online audience to attract, engage, and retain target audiences and ultimately drive conversions.
Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate measures the percentage of users who complete a desired action, like a purchase or sign-up, out of the total number of visitors or leads.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
CAC is the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses, divided by the number of customers gained during that period.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
CPA is the amount you pay to get one conversion, like a sale or sign-up. It helps measure the cost-effectiveness of your marketing or advertising campaigns and is used in PPC platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks on their ad. It’s a common pricing model in paid advertising like Google Ads, Facebook Ads or social media.
Cost Per Thousand Views (CPM)
CPM is the cost an advertiser pays for every 1,000 impressions (views) of an ad. It’s commonly used in brand awareness and display advertising campaigns.
D
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a form of marketing used to promote and sell products or services on the Internet. It’s the process of leveraging different online marketing channels, like search engines, social media networks, and email, to reach your target audience.
Digital PR
Digital PR is a marketing practice that uses online strategies, such as outreach and press coverage, to reach an online audience, raise brand awareness, earn backlinks, and promote a company's products or services.
Display Ads
Display Ads are visual online advertisements, like banners, images, or videos, shown on websites, apps, or social media designed to engage users, attract attention, drive traffic, and promote products or services.
Drip Campaign
A drip campaign is a series of automated marketing messages sent over time to nurture leads, onboard users, or guide customers through the buyer journey.
E
Ecommerce Marketing
Ecommerce marketing is the practice of driving traffic to online stores using strategies like SEO, email, social media, and paid ads to boost sales and customer retention.
Ecommerce Website
An e-commerce website is an online platform where businesses sell products or services, allowing for browsing, purchasing, and payment transactions. The most popular platforms for building Ecommerce websites are Shopify and WooCommerce.
Email Automation
Email automation is the process of sending automated email messages to your subscribers based on pre-defined rules. The rules might relate to your subscribers' actions while interacting with your emails or visiting your website.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the digital marketing process of communicating with an audience via electronic mail messages (email) to promote products, build relationships, and drive customer actions like purchases, sign-ups, or downloads.
F
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are paid ads businesses run on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other Meta platforms to reach targeted audiences, promote products, drive traffic, or generate leads and conversions.
Facebook Marketing
Facebook marketing is the process of using Facebook to showcase your business to potential buyers. This involves using posts or ads to reach, engage, and convert your target audience.
G
Generative AI
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content like text, images, videos, or code based on prompts or patterns it has learned. For example, tools like ChatGPT can write blog posts or email copy, while DALL·E can generate unique images. Marketers use generative AI to save time, brainstorm ideas, and scale content production efficiently.
Google Ads
Google Ads is a PPC platform that allows you to advertise your business on Google (Google Search, Gemini, Gmail, Discover, YouTube) and its partner websites. It's the most popular advertising network, allowing you to reach billions of users through text, display, and video ads.
Google Ads Specialist
A Google Ads specialist is a professional who plans, creates, and manages paid advertising campaigns on Google to increase traffic, leads, and ROI for businesses.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free analytics platform by Google that allows you to track traffic and user behavior on your website or app. You can create reports detailing how users use your website or app, what pages they visit, and what actions they take while on your properties.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is an advertising platform that helps website owners earn money from their online content. It works by displaying ads relevant to the website's content and visitors. AdSense publishers get paid when users view or click the ads on their sites.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is a free tool that enables local businesses to manage their online presence on Google Search and Maps. It ensures accurate information and enhances local search visibility to attract customers to your storefront or service area.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google that helps website owners monitor, maintain, and improve their site’s presence in Google Search results.
GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer)
GPT is a type of AI model that understands and generates human-like text. Tools like ChatGPT use GPT to help write, summarize, and automate content creation.
Growth Hacking
Growth hacking is a marketing approach usually used by startups to rapidly grow a business by expanding its user base and revenues using cost-effective, data-driven practices.
H
H1 Tag
An H1 Tag is an HTML element that defines a webpage’s main heading. It guides both users and search engines in understanding the page's primary topic. It is usually the first header tag visible on a page. The H1 value is enclosed in <h1></h1> tags when viewed in HTML code.
Hashtag
Hashtags or hashtagging is a way to add metadata to content you publish on social media so that it is easier for people and social media sites to find. A hashtag starts with the # symbol, followed by a word or words without spaces.
I
Impressions
Impressions count the number of times your content or ad is displayed on a screen, regardless of whether it was clicked or interacted with. This metric provides insights into potential reach and overall visibility even when users don’t click.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is the marketing process that helps businesses connect with their potential customers through valuable content and experiences. It emphasizes creating and sharing helpful content with a target audience rather than relying on paid ads.
Infographic
An infographic is a visually engaging graphic that presents data or complex information clearly, allowing audiences to grasp key insights quickly.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a marketing process involving hiring influencers to promote or recommend products to their online audience. It's an effective method because influencers have developed high trust with their followers.
J
JavaScript SEO
JavaScript SEO refers to the process of optimizing websites built with JavaScript so they can be properly crawled, rendered, and indexed by search engines. It involves ensuring that dynamic content is accessible, improving load times, and using best practices so bots can understand the site's structure and content.
K
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
KPIs are measurable metrics that show how well a campaign or business activity performs against specific goals, such as sales or website traffic. They guide data-driven decisions and campaign optimization.
Keyword
A keyword is a word or phrase of significant importance. In marketing, keywords are associated with terms people type into search engines. It helps guide content creation and SEO optimization, improving a site’s organic ranking to attract relevant traffic.
L
Landing Page
A landing page is a web page designed to convert visitors by focusing on one specific goal, like signing up, downloading, or buying.
Lead Generation
Lead Generation is the marketing process of attracting and converting prospects into potential customers through strategic content and targeted marketing campaigns.
Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is a free resource (like a guide, checklist, or webinar) or incentive offered to potential customers in exchange for their contact information, typically an email address.
Lifetime Value (LTV)
LTV is the total revenue a business expects to earn from a customer over the entire span of their relationship.
LLM (Large Language Model)
A large language model (LLM) is an advanced type of AI trained on vast amounts of text data to understand, generate, and respond in human-like language. ChatGPT and Google Gemini are examples of LLMs used for tasks like answering questions, writing content, summarizing text, and automating customer support.
Local SEO
Local SEO is a strategic process for improving the visibility of brick-and-mortar and service-based businesses for local searches on Google, Maps, and other search engines.
M
Marketing Mix
Marketing Mix refers to the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. It includes strategies businesses use to meet customer needs and drive sales.
Marketing Plan
marketing plan is a strategic document that describes in detail how to promote a company's products or services online. It outlines the business’s marketing goals, target audience, budget, tactics, and timeline for connecting with an online audience to drive traffic and increase conversions.
Marketing Research
Marketing research is the process of gathering and analyzing data about customers, markets, or competitors to make informed business decisions and create marketing strategies.
N
NAP
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. It's a critical element of local SEO because consistent NAP information across directories, websites, and listings helps search engines verify the legitimacy and location of a business, improving its visibility in local search results.
Natural Link
A natural link is a backlink that is given freely by another website without any payment, request, or manipulation. These links are earned based on the quality and relevance of your content and are favored by search engines for SEO rankings.
Nofollow
Nofollow is an HTML attribute (rel="nofollow") added to a hyperlink to tell search engines not to pass link equity or follow that link for ranking purposes. It’s commonly used for paid links, comments, and untrusted content.
Noindex Tag
A noindex tag is an HTML meta tag (<meta name="robots" content="noindex">) used to prevent search engines from indexing a specific page. It’s useful when you want to keep certain pages out of search engine results, such as thank-you pages or duplicate content.
O
Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel marketing refers to a customer-centric approach that delivers a seamless brand experience across all channels, including physical stores, online, and mobile.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO (on-site SEO) is the process of optimizing a webpage's content for higher rankings in the SERPs. It includes techniques to help search engines understand the meaning and context of content.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to techniques for improving a website's authority, ranking, and online reputation. It involves SEO tactics such as link building, social media marketing, brand mentions, and online reviews.
Organic Search
Organic search refers to the results shown for a search query that excludes paid ads. Organic search results are based on several ranking factors, including relevance to the user’s search query, incoming links, domain authority, device, user location, and many others.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the number of visits to a website coming from a search engine’s organic results and not paid ads.
Outbound Link
An outbound link (external link) is a hyperlink that points from one domain to another. In other words, when you create an external link, you're directing visitors from your website to another website (or resource) on the internet.
P
Page Views
Page views are popular metrics used in Google Analytics and other tools to count the number of times users load a specific page on your website. A page view is recorded every time a page on your website loads or reloads. It measures how many times your content is seen, regardless of who is viewing it or how often.
Paid Search
Paid search is a digital advertising strategy in which businesses pay to show ads in search engine results, usually based on keywords and user intent.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, is a form of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a fee every time someone clicks on their ads. The most well-known form of PPC marketing is ads placed on top of organic results in search engines like Google and Bing.
Pillar Page
A pillar page is a comprehensive, in-depth piece of content that covers a core topic broadly and links to related subtopics or supporting blog posts.
Psychographics
Psychographics analyzes consumer lifestyles, attitudes, and interests to tailor marketing strategies and craft messages that resonate with specific audience segments.
Public Relations (PR)
Public Relations (PR) is a marketing process for managing how a brand is perceived by the public. It includes strategies for building a positive brand image through communication, media outreach, and reputation management.
Q
Quality Score
Quality Score is a metric used in Google Ads (and other PPC platforms) that measures the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. It affects the ads' ranking position and cost per click.
R
Reach
Reach is the total number of unique people who see your content or ad. It shows how far your message is spreading across your target audience.
Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is the process of growing your customer base through word of mouth. It involves encouraging existing customers to refer new ones by giving them incentives.
Retargeting
Retargeting is a type of paid advertising in which ads are shown to people who have previously visited your website or are already familiar with your brand on social media networks.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
ROAS measures the revenue earned for every dollar spent on advertising. It helps assess the effectiveness of paid marketing campaigns like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. For example, if you spend $100 on ads and earn $500, your ROAS is 5x.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI shows how much profit you make from your marketing efforts compared to what you spend. It’s a key metric for measuring business performance. For example, if you spend $200 and make $600, your ROI is 200%.
Rich Snippets
Rich snippets, or rich results, are enhanced versions of regular search snippets that usually include graphical elements like images, review stars, and other visual enhancements. Google gets this data from structured data code found in the page's HTML.
S
Sales Funnel
A marketing sales funnel is a framework that represents the steps a user goes through before purchasing a product or service online. A typical marketing sales funnel has five stages: awareness, discovery, consideration, conversion, and retention.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing is the digital marketing process of increasing traffic from search engines primarily through paid ads or organically. The overall goal of SEM is to increase visibility in search engines by achieving higher rankings in organic search results or top positions for ad placements.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO stands for Search engine optimization. It is a set of rules for optimizing your website to achieve higher rankings in search engine's organic results. With SEO, you increase the visibility of your website for searches related to your content.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
A SERP is the page you see after typing a query into a search engine. It includes organic results, ads, AI-generated overviews, featured snippets, local packs, rich snippets, and other elements.
Social Media Manager
A social media manager is responsible for creating and publishing content across social media platforms to enhance a company's online presence and engage with its audience.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the strategy of using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and LinkedIn to build brand awareness, promote content, engage audiences, and drive traffic or sales.
Social Proof
Social Proof uses reviews, testimonials, and endorsements to build trust and influence purchasing decisions, enhancing your brand’s credibility online.
T
Thin Content
Thin content is content published solely to get traffic from search engines and adds no real value to the user. It's not authentic, and no special care has been taken to make it meaningful and useful to users.
Title Tag
The title tag is an HTML element used to specify a webpage's title. It is shown in the SERPs, the browser tab, and link previews for the page. It is also referred to as SEO Title.
Topic Cluster
A topic cluster is a method of organizing related pages on a website. It includes a pillar page, which provides an in-depth overview of the topic, and several cluster pages covering specific subtopics.
U
User Experience (UX)
UX refers to how users feel when interacting with your website or app. A good UX is simple, fast, and helpful, improving satisfaction and conversions.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content (UGC) is content created by users rather than brands. It includes customer reviews, photos, and posts that add authenticity, build community, and boost brand engagement across channels.
V
Value Proposition
A Value Proposition succinctly outlines your product or service's unique benefits, setting you apart from competitors and attracting customers.
Vibe Coding
Vibe coding is an AI-assisted programming method where developers describe desired functionalities in natural language, and large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, or Claude AI generate the corresponding code.
Vibe Marketing
Vibe marketing is a marketing strategy that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and automation tools to create marketing campaigns that resonate deeply with target audiences.
Video Marketing
Video marketing involves using video content to engage, entertain, educate, and inform audiences about your brand and products. Platforms include YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and websites.
W
White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is the process of using search engine approved practices to improve webpages' rankings in search engines' organic results.
X
XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is an XML file that lists all the pages of your website that search engine crawlers should know about. The sitemap is submitted to search engines to facilitate faster crawling.
Y
YouTube Marketing
YouTube marketing is the process of promoting a business through a YouTube channel. It can involve publishing videos to rank in YouTube search results, running different types of YouTube ads, or even promoting your channel through other mediums like Google Search.
Z
Zero-Party Data
Zero-party data is data that a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. This can include preferences, personal information, and how the individual wants the brand to recognize them. Unlike third-party data, it’s highly accurate, making it valuable for personalized marketing.
