Marketing is not an easy subject to get your head around.
In fact it can take years to understand and perfect all the different strategies and tactics involved.
And the language marketers use can be just as confusing. Which is why in this post I’ll explain some of the most common marketing jargon you’ll likely come across along the way.
So the next time you hear someone talking about funnels, lead magnets, nurture sequences and more, you’ll know exactly what we’re all talking about!
This is a resource taken directly from within the Pet Biz Thrive Online Club. Where members get a complete success path to marketing their businesses online, so they can grow their audience, their customer base and their bank balance.
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Lead magnet
A lead magnet is a free valuable piece of content you offer your audience in exchange for their email address.
This should be high value and solve a specific problem your audience is facing. Lead magnets can come in the form of a simple pdf, a video series, a 5 day challenge, a webinar and more. The options really are endless.
The person enters their details through a form on your website to receive access to your free piece of content. They are then added to your list where you can hopefully convert them into a customer down the road.
Funnels
A funnel is a process that guides a person to the next step of working with you. It takes them on an experience of you and your brand, eventually funnelling them into the sales process where they’ll hopefully buy from you.
For example:
- A person finds your website through Google.
- They then enter their details into a form for your lead magnet.
- They’re then taken to your thank you page where you invite them to join your free Facebook group where you can nurture that relationship with free content.
- At the same time they’re also added to your email list where you nurture the relationship and eventually invite them on a call.
- You then follow up with them via email where they decide to buy your services.
You’re essentially funnelling people through your marketing and sales processes, (and delighting them along the way) so they can purchase your products or services.
Cold lead
A cold lead is a person that may not know much about your business at all. And have never shown an interest in purchasing your products or services. These kinds of leads are much harder to sell to, but you can turn a cold lead into a warm lead by nurturing that relationship with great content.
Warm lead
A warm lead is someone that has previously shown an interest in your products or services before. But they aren’t necessarily ready to buy right now.
Hot lead
A hot lead is someone that is actively searching for the solutions you offer and they’ve taken the step to get in touch with you. These types of leads are much more likely to buy from you.
Click bait
Click bait is an attention-grabbing piece of content that entices people to click through to a specific web page. They often get a bad rap because the content is often sensationalised, deceptive and misrepresents the content on the page. For example, you may have seen headlines like, ‘This will blow your mind…’ or ‘You won’t believe what happened next…’
Click through rate
Click through rate is the measure of how well an ad or piece of content is performing. It helps you identify in percentage terms how often people clicked on your content compared to the number of people that actually saw it.
Bounce rate
You can find your bounce rate within your Google Analytics data. And this helps you understand how often people leave your site without looking at any other pages. A high bounce rate tells you people aren’t taking the time to explore your site and learn more about you. Which is not what we want. So we’re aiming for a low bounce rate. A bounce rate of between 40-60% is average.
Conversion
A conversion refers to the successful completion of an action you want visitors to perform. For example, a sale or an email sign up.
Conversion rate
Conversion rates help you measure how many of your website visitors are completing a specific goal. I.e. the conversion. This is a percentage you can calculate to identify how many people convert into a sale, for example. You can then test and tweak your content or design to improve your conversion rate.
Subscriber list
Your subscriber list is a list of people that have signed up to receive communications from you. For example, a website visitor enters their email address into a form on your website and are added to your list. Growing an email list should always be a priority for any business.
High ticket sales
This is a high-value, high-priced product or service. For example, a low-ticket sale could be a piece of content people can download for between £9-£99. High ticket sales could be a 1-1 coaching programme for £1000+.
Content marketing
Content marketing involves a strategy of sharing highly valuable content with your target audience. This can include anything from social media posts and video, to blogging, podcasts, lead magnets and images. It’s often about improving your brand awareness and increasing that know, like and trust factor.
Blog
A blog involves a library of useful articles that usually sits in a section of your website. They often involve valuable content in the form of how-to guides and tips, and can also include case studies, company updates and thought-provoking content. Blogs are usually conversational in style.
Backlink
A backlink is where another website links to a specific page on your website. Backlinks are great for your website as it helps Google recognise you as a credible source. And in turn will increase your rankings in the search engines.
Email marketing
This refers to any communications you send to your target audience via email. Email marketing allows you to build better relationships with your subscriber list through sharing useful tips, insights into you and information about your products or services.
Nurture sequence
A nurture sequence is an automated set of emails you send out to people on your subscriber list. Which is set up within an email marketing system like Mailchimp or Mailerlite. So when someone signs up to your list, they’re automatically sent an email each week and that relationship is then nurtured to encourage them to take a further action. Like getting on a call with you, or being directed to a sales page.
Automation
Automation helps you automatically share marketing communications with your audience across a variety of online channels so you can save time and resources. This includes any software or technology that helps you automate processes. For example, an email marketing system where you can set up a nurture sequence, as mentioned above. Or a social media scheduler to schedule out your social media posts across all your platforms each month.
Call to action
A call to action or (CTA) is a button or line of text that instructs people to take a specific action. For example, a ‘buy now’ button with a link to pay on your website. Or withing a social media post, a ‘Click to buy now’ CTA with a link to a sales page.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO involves the process of optimising your website to improve your visibility in the search engines. This is a complex process that involves considerations like keyword research and backlinking, that will help Google understand the value you offer and show your website to more relevant people in the search results.
Keywords
Relating to SEO, keywords are the words and phrases people enter into the search engines to find the solutions they’re looking for. And by targeting those popular and relevant keywords and using them within the content on your website, in theory you’ll rank higher for those search terms and attract more people to your website.
Indexing
Indexing simply refers to your website being added to the search engine’s database. Google crawls web pages and organises this information so only the most relevant pages appear in search results. Through this process your individual web pages are indexed within Google which determines your rankings.
Search engine ranking
This refers to the position of your website listing on a search engine results page.
Organic listings
Organic listings are the website pages that most closely match a user’s search query within the search results. The top spots are taken by websites that have been deemed most relevant to a person’s search query. Organic listings are free and you’ll find these just below the paid positions on Google.
Landing page
A landing page is a page someone lands on after they’ve clicked on your call to action. These often have a lead magnet form that will ask the visitor to sign up to a valuable piece of content in exchange for an email address. This then allows you to convert those visitors into leads which you can nurture and hopefully convert into a sale.
Algorithms
Algorithms are a set of mathematical rules that search engines and social media platforms use to sort content in order of relevancy. Both the search engines and social media channels want their users to receive the most relevant content possible. And the algorithms will prioritise content based on the likelihood that user actually wants to see it.
Plugin
This refers to the specific addons you can apply to a WordPress website. Plugins allow you to easily add different features to your website to enhance it. For example, adding a Facebook feed to your sidebar, or a like box. Or maybe a course platform or ecommerce space to sell products.
I hope you found these marketing jargon busters useful. If you want to know the explanations of any other terms, let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to the post.