Marketing is full of jargon, and most of it is explained badly. These are clear definitions of the 50 terms a small business owner actually runs into, each with why it matters and a worked example.
Brand awareness is the extent to which people in a target market recognise and remember a business, and can recall it when they have a need it could meet.
Content marketing is the practice of attracting and retaining customers by consistently creating and publishing genuinely useful or relevant material, such as a...
The customer journey is the complete sequence of interactions a person has with a business, from first becoming aware of it, through researching and choosing, t...
Lead generation is the process of attracting people who are interested in a business and capturing enough information from them, such as a name and contact deta...
A marketing funnel is a model of the journey a person takes from first becoming aware of a business, through considering it, to becoming a customer, with fewer...
A marketing strategy is a business's overall plan for reaching and winning customers, defining who the target customers are, what the business offers them, whic...
Organic marketing is visibility earned without direct payment, through SEO, content and social presence, while paid marketing is visibility bought directly, thr...
A target audience is the specific group of people a business focuses its marketing on, defined by characteristics such as location, needs, life stage or the par...
A Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is a clear statement of the specific benefit a business offers, who it is for, and why it is a better choice than the alternati...
A backlink is a hyperlink on one website that points to a page on another website, and search engines treat backlinks as signals of trust and authority when dec...
Domain Authority is a third-party score, most commonly on a scale of 1 to 100, that estimates how likely a website is to rank in search results based largely on...
A featured snippet is a box at the top of some search results where Google lifts a direct answer to the query from a web page, displaying it above the regular o...
A Google Business Profile is a free listing that lets a business control how it appears on Google Search and Google Maps, including its name, hours, location, p...
A keyword is the word or phrase a person types into a search engine, and in marketing it refers to the specific search terms a business chooses to optimise its...
Keyword cannibalisation happens when two or more pages on the same website target the same keyword, causing them to compete with each other in search results an...
The local pack, also called the map pack, is the block of results Google shows for location-based searches, featuring a map and usually three business listings...
Local SEO is the practice of optimising a business's online presence to rank for location-based searches, such as plumber near me or dentist in the suburb name,...
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific search phrase, usually three or more words, that has lower search volume than broad terms but typically carries c...
A meta description is a short snippet of text, usually around 150 to 160 characters, that summarises a web page and often appears beneath the page's title in se...
Organic search refers to the unpaid listings on a search engine results page and the traffic they send, earned through relevance and authority rather than paid...
Schema markup is structured data code added to a web page that helps search engines understand exactly what the content is, such as a business, a product, a rev...
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of improving a website and its online presence so it ranks higher in the unpaid results of search engines like...
A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the page a search engine shows in response to a query, made up of organic listings, paid ads, and features like the map p...
Search intent is the underlying goal a person has when they type a query into a search engine, generally grouped into informational, navigational, commercial an...
A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page, shown as the clickable headline in search results and in the browser tab, and used by sea...
Cost Per Click (CPC) is the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks one of their ads, set through an auction where advertisers bid against each other...
Cost Per Mille (CPM) is the price an advertiser pays for one thousand impressions of an ad, where mille is Latin for thousand, used as the standard pricing unit...
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a model of online advertising where the advertiser pays a fee each time their ad is clicked, rather than paying for the ad to be shown, u...
Quality Score is a rating from 1 to 10 that Google Ads gives each keyword, based on the expected click-through rate, the relevance of the ad and the quality of...
Retargeting, also called remarketing, is a form of advertising that shows ads specifically to people who have already visited a website or interacted with a bus...
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated by dividing the revenue attributed to a campaign by the amo...
A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a marketing element, such as a headline, an ad or a page layout, by showing each to a portion of the audien...
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who arrive on a website and leave without taking any further action, such as clicking to another page, filling in a fo...
Churn rate is the percentage of customers or subscribers a business loses over a given period, calculated by dividing the number of customers lost by the number...
Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click on a link, ad or search listing out of everyone who saw it, calculated by dividing clicks by impr...
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total amount a business spends on marketing and sales to win one new customer, calculated by dividing all acquisition spe...
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is the total revenue, or profit, a business expects to earn from a single customer across the entire time they stay a customer, fa...
An impression is a single instance of an ad, post or search listing being displayed to a person, regardless of whether they click it or interact with it in any...
Marketing attribution is the process of determining which marketing channels and touchpoints contributed to a customer taking action, so a business can credit r...
A call to action (CTA) is a prompt in marketing content that tells the audience exactly what to do next, such as Book a consultation, Call now or Get a quote, u...
Conversion rate is the percentage of people who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, booking a call or submitting an enquiry form, out of the t...
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the systematic practice of improving a website or landing page so that a higher percentage of visitors take the desired ac...
Core Web Vitals are a set of specific metrics Google uses to measure real-world page experience, covering how fast the main content loads, how quickly the page...
A landing page is a web page designed for a single, focused purpose, usually to convert a visitor into a lead or customer, often built as the destination for an...
Social proof is the influence that the actions and opinions of other people have on someone's decisions, used in marketing through reviews, testimonials, rating...
Customer retention is the set of activities a business uses to keep its existing customers coming back over time, and the rate at which it succeeds in doing so.
Email marketing is the practice of sending commercial messages, such as offers, updates and newsletters, to a list of people who have agreed to hear from a busi...
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3 term s.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is the percentage of people who interact with a piece of content, through likes, comments, shares, saves or clicks, out of the number who saw it...
Online Reviews
Online reviews are public ratings and written feedback that customers leave about a business on platforms like Google, used by other potential customers to judg...
Reach
Reach is the number of distinct, unique people who saw a piece of content at least once, in contrast to impressions, which count every individual time the conte...