Your 2026 Company's A to Z Martech Glossary

Marketing teams use these technologies to make their organization more efficient by automating certain tasks. Also, they clearly spell out a company’s return on investment (ROI) on efforts, which is a limitation of offline marketing.

If you’re new to the world of digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), then we’ve got the help you need. This 2026 martech glossary will help you cut through the noise of confusing buzzwords and give you a basic understanding of martech terminology.

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How to use this martech glossary

The martech terminology below is sorted in alphabetical order. If you’re looking for a particular term, you can quickly and easily find it!

Martech glossary:

0-9

4 Ps of Marketing:

The marketing four Ps are product, price, place, and promotion. They are the key factors involved in marketing a product or service. In other words, the four Ps of marketing are the foundations of your marketing strategy.

A

Now, here’s our list of martech terms and martech acronyms:

A/B testing:

A/B testing is a technique to find the best performing email, landing page, advert, etc. of two choices. A/B testing works by experimenting with two versions of the same variable (page, element, etc.) to see which version drives the best results.

Account-based marketing (ABM):

ABM is a business-to-business (B2B) strategy focusing marketing resources on high-value accounts or prospects with a market. The strategy centers on the bottom line and which efforts will have the biggest impact on the bottom line.

ACV:

ACV is a metric that businesses use to calculate the total yearly income a customer’s contract generates. It’s frequently adopted in SaaS and telecoms, where clients sign contracts for specific periods.

Advertising cost of sales (ACoS):

Advertising cost of sales is how much money you spend on advertising for each dollar of revenue you earn.

Amazon Affiliate program:

The Amazon Affiliate Program — also called Amazon Associates — is essentially a system where Amazon pays businesses to market its products. In short, you’ll link to select Amazon product pages from your website, and Amazon pays you a commission in return.

Amazon advertising:

Amazon advertising is an ecommerce advertising solution that allows businesses to promote products directly on Amazon. Advertisers can increase product visibility by showing ads in Amazon search results and throughout the platform, helping drive traffic and sales.

Amazon attribution:

Amazon Attribution is an analytics platform that lets businesses see how their non-Amazon marketing campaigns perform and impact their Amazon store. This platform enables you to track strategies like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media advertising to see how they impact your sales on Amazon.

Amazon brand analytics:

Amazon Brand Analytics is an exclusive tool for Amazon Brand Registry members, also called Brand Owners. With Brand Analytics, businesses can access insightful reports and actionable data to inform their decisions when it comes to marketing, advertising, and selling on Amazon.

Amazon BSR:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank measures the sales frequency (or popularity) of a product on a scale of one to one million or more. A comparative metric, your BSR depends on the sales frequency of other products in your product’s category and sub-categories.

Amazon buy box:

The Amazon Buy Box refers to a white box that appears on the right side of a product detail page. Shoppers use the Buy Box to add products to their cart or to use one-click ordering. The seller that wins the Buy Box is the default choice when a user clicks, “Add to Cart,” or, “Buy Now.”

Amazon conversion rate:

Amazon conversion rate optimization uses split testing (also called A/B testing) to compare two versions of a product listing. This comparison, or test, aims to determine which one performs best, based on a predetermined metric, like orders.

Amazon custom:

Amazon Custom is a storefront on Amazon that offers customizable products from Professional Sellers. Shoppers can customize products on Amazon Custom with text, images, logos, or any other options provided by the seller.

Amazon listing hijacking:

Amazon listing hijacking is when another seller offers a counterfeit version of your product on your listing, which can decrease your sales and number of positive reviews. These knock-off products occupy your product listing’s Buy Box or appear in the “Other Sellers on Amazon” section of your listing.

Amazon negative keywords:

A negative keyword on Amazon prevents your ads from appearing in searches that include that specific term. It helps you exclude irrelevant search queries from triggering your ads.

Amazon posts:

Amazon Posts are cards or posts that promote your brand and products for free through lifestyle images, descriptive captions, and a link to the relevant product’s page. Posts appear across the Amazon app, including your brand’s feed, related product and category feeds, and your product’s listing.

Amazon product targeting:

Product targeting on Amazon is a targeting option available to Sponsored Display and Sponsored Products ads. With product targeting, you set your ads to appear when someone views product categories or specific listings similar to your promoted product.

Amazon vendor central:

Amazon Vendor Central is an invite-only program and platform for manufacturers and distributors operating on Amazon. Members of Amazon Vendor Central sell and supply their products to Amazon, which Amazon then resells under its name.

ARR:

ARR is a business measure that calculates the predictable, recurring revenue that a company expects to generate over a year. This metric considers all types of regular income, such as subscriptions, maintenance fees, and other ongoing payments.

Assisted conversions:

Assisted conversions refer to marketing channels that help push users toward converting but aren’t the channels that give them the final push that makes them convert.

Audience intelligence:

Audience intelligence is about finding valuable insights about your audience through data and using those insights to market to them more effectively.

Audience profiling:

Similar to audience intelligence, audience profiling defines who your target customer is through customer buying behavior analysis.

Audience segmentation:

From profiling, marketers segment audiences to better target them in campaigns and market more effectively. This process identifies subgroups within a target audience based on demographics, customer type, or buying behavior.

Audience targeting:

Audience targeting, also known as crowd targeting, is the process of placing users into audiences based on demographic or behavioral data, and then targeting those audiences via ad campaigns, emails, and more.

Automated journey logic:

Automated journey logic is the process of automating the decision-making process for the customer journey. This technique uses an “if-then” logic to automate the customer’s journey, so businesses can anticipate changes in customer behavior and proactively adapt for them.

Average order value:

Average order value is the average amount customers spend when placing an order with your business. When you know the average value, you can better understand how customers shop on your site and which products need more promotion to boost sales for your business.

B

B2B Content Marketing:

B2B content marketing involves using content to reach your target audience, strengthen brand association, and drive leads and sales for your business. This content focuses on delivering information to companies and professionals from those companies, rather than consumers themselves.

B2B Martech:

B2B Martech, or marketing technology, refers to any software, platform, or tool you use to enhance your business-to-business marketing efforts. Its purpose is to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of your B2B digital marketing campaigns.

B2C Martech:

B2C Martech, or marketing technology, refers to any software, platform, or tool you use to enhance your business-to-consumer marketing efforts. Its purpose is to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of your B2C digital marketing campaigns.

Behavioral segmentation:

Behavioral segmentation is the process of segregating your customers or prospects based on their behavior patterns when interacting with your business, app, or website.

Behavioral targeting:

Behavioral targeting is a type of advertising that gathers data about a person’s online browsing history from many sources to advertise stronger ads to them. It’s especially popular with big-box realtors when trying to lure consumers away from competitors.

Big query:

BigQuery is Google’s serverless data warehouse. This scalable, enterprise data tool is a cloud data warehouse that helps companies store and query their data.

Black hat SEO:

Black hat SEO refers to unethical tactics used to manipulate search engine rankings, such as keyword stuffing, hidden text, and link schemes.

Brand architecture:

Brand architecture is the organizational structure of your company’s branding. It involves organizing assets like your products, services, and sub-brands. This structure shows consumers how sub-brands are part of a bigger organization and how these sub-brands relate to each other.

Brand awareness:

Our sixth term is brand awareness. Brand awareness is basically how familiar people are with your company. When you market to users at the top of the funnel, you’re usually trying to increase brand awareness.

Brand experience:

Brand experience is the impression you create for your company’s image. Your brand experience can impact thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of your company. This experience often creates a lasting feeling with your audience and affects their view of your brand.

Brand guidelines:

Brand guidelines — also known as a brand style guide — are standards that companies use to remain consistent across channels. These guidelines ensure that no matter where you see a brand, you can recognize it and trust that it came from the company.

Brand loyalty:

Brand loyalty is the dedication customers feel towards specific brands. This dedication drives those customers to repeatedly purchase from a specific brand, regardless of competing companies’ actions or offerings.

Brand management:

Brand management in marketing is a set of techniques that develops and maintains a company’s identity and reputation. It aims to elevate the perceived value of a company and its products or services.

Brand marketing:

Brand marketing is the process of promoting your products and services in a way that highlights your company’s unique style. In other words, instead of promoting individual products and services, brand marketing promotes your entire company image.

Brand storytelling:

Brand storytelling is the practice of using story to create a connection between your brand and its target audience. Brand storytelling examples include Dove’s Real Beauty campaign and Nike’s Just Do It campaign.

BrickSeek:

BrickSeek is a new tool for consumers to use to find the best prices on products. This application takes all the guesswork and effort out of price-checking.

Bricks-and-clicks business model:

A bricks and clicks, also sometimes called a click and mortar, business model describes a company with both a physical store location and an online website where consumers can purchase their products. These websites are also sometimes referred to as ecommerce websites.

Broad match modifier:

Broad match is a keyword match type that allows your ads to show in searches that include synonyms, related searches, or searches that share a similar meaning with your target keyword.

Bot marketing:

Bot marketing is the process of integrating bots into your digital marketing efforts, particularly on your website. Those bots can carry out a few different kinds of tasks related to your marketing campaigns.

Bottom of funnel (BOFU):

And at the very bottom of that funnel, BOF (abbreviated) or BOFU. These are the people who are ready to buy — all you have to do is convince them to take action. You want to retarget these users with marketing that directly encourages them to buy, such as a promotion.

Business Intelligence (BI):

Business intelligence (BI) is the use of technology to analyze data and derive insights that help inform business decisions. The process involves collecting, preparing, analyzing, interpreting, presenting, and using data. Business intelligence for marketing is using BI to assist with marketing decisions and improve marketing processes and outcomes.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO):

Business process outsourcing, or BPO, refers to a system where companies outsource specific business tasks and processes to other companies that specialize in those areas. In the context of marketing, specifically, BPO involves outsourcing some (or all) of your marketing strategies to an external agency. The agency will handle all the work of running your campaigns, rather than you having to manage it yourself.

Buying Signal:

A buying signal is a prospect’s action or behavior that indicates interest in a business’s product or service. Buying signals give marketing and sales teams an idea of a prospect’s level of interest in the business.

C

Call tracking:

Call tracking is a method of recording information about phone calls a business receives. Call tracking can monitor who calls a business when they call, who they represent, what the caller is interested in, where they are located, and even a phone call transcript.

Channel sales:

Channel sales, also known as indirect sales, is a sales strategy where the parent company sells its products through another business. This business is often referred to as a partner, distributor, or affiliate.

Chatbot:

Chatbots are automated pieces of technology that enable you to program responses to people’s queries. This technology often involves using artificial intelligence to craft responses to people’s questions. Chatbots can be used with your site’s chat function, but they’re mainly used with Facebook Messenger.

Click-through rate (CTR):

Click-through rate, or CTR, it is the percentage of people who, after seeing your marketing content, actually click on it.

CMO dashboard:

A CMO dashboard is a comprehensive overview of your marketing performance based on key performance indicators (KPIs). It’s a centralized area that gives you a broad snapshot of how your marketing campaigns drive results for your company.

Conversational marketing:

Conversational marketing is based on targeting audiences through conversations they’re having and engaging them one-on-one. The goal is to convert users with personalized conversations and is usually seen through social media sites like Twitter.

Conversion rate (CVR):

Conversion rate, CVR for short, is the percentage of people who take a desired action from your marketing campaigns, like making a purchase or calling you.

Content marketing:

Content marketing is the creation and distribution of online material like blog posts, videos, and guides to attract, engage, and educate readers about a topic, product, or business. Distribution methods for content marketing include social media, paid advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Content syndication:

Content syndication is the practice of publishing your content on third-party websites to increase its reach. Companies use content syndication to help a wider audience discover their content, especially if it doesn’t initially reach a broad audience.

Cost per lead (CPL):

Cost per lead, or CPL, is the amount that you pay for each lead you earn.

Contextual targeting:

Contextual targeting, also known as contextual advertising, describes a targeted and automated form of digital advertising. Advanced ad platforms, like Google Ads, select and serve contextual ads based on the user’s identity and the surrounding content on the page.

Cookies:

Cookies are text files saved by browsers and stored on a user’s device to track your information. This info helps the site identify its visitors and help improve the user experience by saving passwords or keeping track of items in a user’s cart.

Conversational marketing:

Conversational marketing is the practice of interacting with prospective and existing clients through live chat, social networks, instant messengers, and chatbots. It’s an excellent approach to building trust and streamlining the purchasing process.

Conversion:

A conversion is basically whenever someone completes an action that you wanted them to complete. Often, that means buying something. But signing up for your email list or trying a product demo could also count as a conversion.

CRM retargeting:

CRM retargeting is the process of using first-party data from your CRM platform to re-engage prospects and keep them interacting with your business. CRM pipeline retargeting enables you to use the data you collect to deliver personalized marketing materials that will get people to learn more about your products or services.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC):

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is your total expenses incurred to acquire a paying customer at a given time. CAC covers your marketing fees, sales costs, and your staff’s wages and taxes.

Customer data management (CDM):

Customer data management (CDM) is the process of acquiring, organizing, and using customer data to better understand your audience and ultimately inform your marketing strategies.

Customer journey map:

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the stages customers go through when interacting with your business — from identifying their needs to finding your company, purchasing from you, and requesting after-sales support.

Customer lifetime value (CLV):

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is how much monetary value you can expect a customer to bring to your business over their lifetime.

Customer satisfaction:

Customer satisfaction is a key performance indicator (KPI) of how well your business fulfills or exceeds its consumers’ expectations. It’s the outcome of how a client perceives the value received for the money they spend.

D

Data activation:

Data activation is the process of using captured data to make business decisions. Activated data is anything that your company uses to guide processes, while a data activation platform primarily transfers information from one platform to another.

Data-driven marketing:

Data-driven marketing uses customer data to create targeted messaging for a better marketing campaign. Considerable ROIs develop from this type of marketing since marketers now target the right customers.

Data lake:

A data lake is a system that allows you to store all of your data at any scale. Data lakes can help you collect unorganized, raw data in any size that you can analyze later.

Data management platform:

Data management platforms (DMPs) are platforms that handle customer data. These platforms can collect and manage the information, helping businesses pinpoint audience segments and improve the overall ad targeting.

Data segmentation:

Data segmentation is the process of sorting your company data — particularly your marketing, sales, and customer data — into different groups. These groups are based on shared characteristics — for example, if you’re sorting customer data, you might divide it up based on location. You then perform analytics and reoptimization separately for each group.

Data silos:

Data silos are large bulks of information within your company that are limited solely to one team or department.

Data stack:

A data stack is a set of tools and technologies used to gather, process, store, and analyze data in a cloud-based data platform.

Data strategy:

A data strategy is a business plan for managing the data that your company acquires — how to gather, store, categorize, and use it. Overall, it’s simply a plan for managing your business data.

Data transformation:

Data transformation is the process of converting and structuring data into a new format that a business can analyze, process, and use for growth.

Digital Asset Management (DAM):

Digital Asset Management or DAM is a system that manages and organizes digital assets like images or videos.

Deep learning:

Deep learning is a powerful technology that allows computers to learn and make decisions like humans, using complex algorithms and neural networks.

Demand generation:

Demand generation is a type of marketing that focuses on tactics like brand awareness and general product interest. Basically, it’s about getting people interested in what you sell.

Demand-side platforms:

Demand-side platforms, or DSPs, are programmatic tools or software that advertisers and ad agencies use to purchase ad space. With DSPs, you can buy a variety of advertisements, including search, social, and video ads, to promote your products and services.

Digital marketing:

Digital marketing is where you promote your business through any sort of digital channel, like a website, an online ad, a search engine, or social media.

Digital marketing audit:

An Internet marketing audit is an in-depth review of your online marketing campaigns. A good audit looks at how your campaigns are set up and what results they’re currently driving. The end goal is to discover any weak spots and figure out how to improve them.

Direct response marketing:

Direct response marketing is the process of creating ads that evoke an immediate response from your audience. This strategy encourages your audience to take action on your ad through enticing offers.

Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI):

Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) is an advanced feature available through Google Ads that enables you to update your ad text to match the search terms that customers input. It allows you to increase the relevancy of your ad copy, so searchers are more likely to click on your ads.

View Marketing Analytics Glossary

E

Ecommerce Martech:

Ecommerce martech, also known as ecommerce marketing technology, includes any digital tool created to assist businesses with marketing their ecommerce websites online. These tools increase efficiency and help automate the marketing process.

Email blast (eblast):

An email blast is an email marketing strategy that involves sending a single email to many recipients. You can send an email blast to your entire subscriber list or a segment of your subscriber list.

Email marketing:

Email marketing is a strategy where you send out mass emails to promote your business and your content. You don’t just send emails to anyone — you let people sign up for your e-newsletter on your site, and then you send the emails to those people.

Enhanced cost per click:

Enhanced cost per click is a Google Ads bid strategy that optimizes your manual bids to maximize conversions. It’s a form of Smart Bidding, which is where Google makes automatic adjustments to your bids rather than you having to do it all manually.

Enterprise Martech:

Enteprise martech, also known as marketing technology, refers to any tools and software that assist in optimizing, tracking, and managing a business’s marketing campaign.

ESP:

Email service providers manage and send marketing emails to a list of subscribers.

ETL:

Extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) is a procedure that copies and combines data from multiple sources into a single system data warehouse.

Expanded text ads:

Expanded text ads are a type of search ad, available through Google Ads. Unlike display ads which show on sites within Google’s advertising network, they appear directly in Google search results. With an expanded text ad, you can create three headlines, two descriptions, and a display URL. These features allow you to share additional information with viewers, which can lead to a click from a qualified member of your target audience.

F

Facebook Pixel helper:

Facebook Pixel Helper is a Google Chrome browser extension that serves as a troubleshooting tool for the pixel. This tool will help you check to make sure your Facebook Pixel is embedded into your website correctly. The Facebook Pixel Helper enables you to ensure that your Facebook ad tracking pixels are active and working correctly. It also provides you with information about errors — allowing you to edit your pixel and ensure that it’s working correctly. It’s a free and valuable tool for anyone who utilizes the Facebook tracking pixel for their advertising campaign. This tool is great for helping you monitor your Facebook Pixel and ensuring it’s actively tracking information from your audience, so you can deliver a better ad experience.

Flywheel marketing:

Flywheel marketing is an inbound marketing strategy that places customers at the center of your marketing efforts. Your customers then become the momentum or mechanical energy that drives your business forward.

Frequency capping:

Frequency capping is an advertising feature that limits the number of times an ad is shown to a single person. This setting helps campaigns become more effective by not wasting budget on a person who isn’t likely to convert.

Full-stack digital marketing:

Full-stack digital marketing is a form of digital marketing that encompasses a wide variety of marketing types rather than focusing on a single strategy.

G

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

The General Data Protection Regulation is a privacy and security law that establishes guidelines on how the collection of personal data by companies is handled.

Global marketing:

Global marketing involves expanding your products and services to other countries — but there’s a lot more to it besides simply offering your current products in new places. You have to do a lot of work and research to understand different markets and create a marketing strategy to appeal to that market.

Gmail ads:

Gmail ads are a type of paid ad you can run through Google that appears in Gmail users’ inboxes. Like other paid ads in Google, you can launch them in Google Ads. Gmail ads appear in a format very similar to normal emails, starting out in a collapsed form at the very top of users’ “Promotions” tab. When clicked on, they expand into a full email. They typically contain an image, a specific offer or promotion, and a call to action (CTA).

Google Ads Creative Studio:

Google Ads Creative Studio is a hub that allows agencies to build, preview, and test their ads in one place. Google combined all their tools under one roof in the Google Suite so advertisers can have a seamless process for creating online ads.

Google Ads customizers:

Google ad customizers use custom parameters to dynamically alter ad copy based on the context of a user’s search. Google ad customizers allow you to adjust your search ads based on attributes you define.

Google Ads Manager:

Google Ad Manager is a platform that combines the functionalities of DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) and DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) into a single, comprehensive ad management system. It aims to simplify advertising efforts by providing a complete platform for advertisers.

Google Ads Performance Planner:

Google Ads Performance Planner is a tool that enables you to create plans to forecast how changes and budget adjustments would impact your critical metrics and ad performance. This tool helps you identify the suitable spend amounts and determine how to maximize your budget most effectively.

Google Ads Smart Bidding:

Smart Bidding is a digital advertising tool from Google Ads that uses machine learning and campaign and user data to optimize your ad campaigns so you can meet your business goals. With Smart Bidding, you choose a bidding strategy specifically designed to achieve your business goals and get the best return on investment (ROI) for your strategy.

Google answer box:

The Google answer box is a box that appears at the top of organic search results. Also known as the featured snippet or “Position 0,” the answer box provides a brief answer to a user’s query, using content from the site occupying the box. Google answer boxes can include text, images, videos, lists, and tables.

Google Feed Ads:

Google Feed Ads are an advertising option from Google that appear in the Google Feed, a curated selection of news articles based on a user’s search and browsing history. These ads are currently in beta testing and appear only on Android devices in the U.S.

Google Marketing Platform

Google Marketing Platform is a unified advertising and analytics platform that Google announced in June 2018, merging its marketing products like Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick. It aims to provide smarter marketing and better results by integrating both ads and data.

Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center is a digital platform that allows you to upload and advertise products your business sells, so users can browse and shop your inventory on Google. You can upload products that you sell online or at your brick-and-mortar location.

Google Business Profile categories:

Google Business Profile categories are labels that help your business appear in relevant search results. Google enables you to add up to 10 categories — including one primary category — that describe your business. The list of Google Business Profile categories contains nearly 4000 options.

Google Responsive search ad:

Responsive ads are the newest addition to Google Ads, Google’s advertising platform. These ads adapt to your audience so that your ad shows the most relevant message to your customers. Create multiple headlines and descriptions for your ad and Google automatically tests different combinations. You can even create responsive display ads.

Google Search Console:

Google Search Console is a free web service provided by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website’s presence in search results on Google. It provides several metrics and insights into your website’s search performance and user experience to help your improve you site for more traffic.

H

Header bidding (HB):

Header bidding is an alternative process to Google’s Waterfall method. Publishers use header bidding to offer ad space to multiple demand sources and ad networks via SSPs.

HTTPS:

HTTPS is a secure protocol that encrypts data transmitted between a user’s browser and a website, ensuring a safer online experience.

HubSpot:

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing and sales software designed for inbound marketing. HubSpot comprises five hubs that offer unique services: CRM, Marketing, Sales, Service, and CMS Hub.

I

iBeacons:

Included with the iOS7 update in 2013, iBeacons are the Apple trademarked name for Bluetooth-enabled devices that communicate with nearby Bluetooth-enabled smartphones by sending messages and notifications.

In-app marketing:

In-app marketing, or mobile app marketing, refers to any advertising or promotional campaigns you display while people actively use your app. Software as a service (SaaS) companies and product marketers use in-app marketing for a variety of reasons, like:

Integrated marketing:

Integrated marketing is a type of promotion that involves spreading a specific campaign via multiple channels.

Interactive marketing:

Interactive marketing is a marketing strategy that uses visuals, videos, games, and other formats to encourage your audience to engage with your content. When executed well, it captures your audience’s attention and provides a delightful customer experience.

Internet of things (IoT):

The Internet of things or IoT is a term used to describe a system of physical devices and objects that can all be digitally connected without the aid of human contact. So-called “smart homes” are great examples of this, with everything from the fridge to the locks being run by Alexa or Google Home.

J

Journey orchestration:

Journey orchestration is a means of tailoring customer buyer journeys based on past behavior. Teams and tech come together to anticipate individual needs.

K

Key performance indicator (KPI):

Key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you see how effective your marketing is.

KPI Dashboard:

With a KPI dashboard, your business can centralize all of your most important KPIs so they’re all in one place and easy to access. KPI dashboards allow businesses to make smarter, data-driven business decisions and more accurate sales forecasts.

Keyword match types:

Keyword match types, also known as Google Ads match types, determine how closely a keyword needs to match a user’s search query for an ad to be considered for the auction. In other words, keyword match types give you more control over which keywords trigger your ads to appear in search results.

L

Lead:

A lead is someone you have a name and contact of in your databases, but hasn’t actually decided to buy from you yet. Someone might become a lead by signing up for your email, downloading a guide, or trying out a free product demo.

Marketing-qualified lead

A marketing-qualified lead or MQL is someone who you have contact info for but they are not ready to dive into a demo or even consider purchasing your product or service.

Sales-qualified lead

A SQL is a sales-qualified lead, this is a higher qualified lead who is primed to purchase and is ready for a demo or phone call or to talk business.

Lead attribution:

Lead attribution is a specific type of marketing attribution that enables you to identify which marketing channels and strategies get the credit for generating a lead.

Lead generation:

Lead generation is the process of attracting a customer’s interest in your business and eventually nurturing them into a sale. Many times companies will encourage them to share data so sales teams follow up with them.

Local marketing:

Local marketing is a set of strategies you use to promote your company in a specific area. If you run a local business, you’ll want to use local marketing to reach the customers most likely to shop with you.

M

Marketing:

Marketing is the action of promoting and selling your products or services. It can include advertising, market research, competitor analysis, and more. You can use multiple channels to promote your products or services to your target audience with marketing. Your target audience is made up of the consumers who are most likely to purchase from you. As a result, a marketing strategy is crucial to increase sales and revenue for your business.

Marketing attribution:

Marketing attribution is the process of determining which of your marketing strategies get the credit for generating traffic, leads, or conversions. It can help you track the progress of your marketing goals, like increasing brand awareness.

Marketing automation:

Marketing automation uses software to run your marketing efforts by automating certain marketing tasks efficiently.

Marketing collateral:

A term referring to marketing materials used to promote your business. Specifically, though, it relates to content-based materials.

Marketing development strategy:

A market development strategy is a business plan to boost sales of an already-available service or product in a new market. This strategy entails finding untapped geographic or consumer categories and creating a marketing plan to target them.

Marketing expansion:

Market expansion — sometimes also called territory expansion — is a process where businesses begin marketing and selling to people not included in their original target market. When this happens, the businesses still retain their original market, they simply expand it to incorporate new groups of people.

Marketing funnel:

Basically, it’s a visualization of the way people become customers. Picture a funnel, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. At the top of the funnel, you have a lot of prospects who are just getting to know you. Eventually, some of those prospects move to the bottom of the funnel and become customers.

Marketing performance management (MPM):

MPM encompasses the technical aspects of monitoring your marketing performance. While you might notice an uptick in sales or conversions on your own, MPM software gives you tools for more in-depth tracking. Outside of purchases, MPM tools can also help you track external channels like social media, phone calls, emails, and even mobile apps.

Marketing technology:

Marketing technology, or martech, is pretty much just what it sounds like. It’s technology that helps you streamline and enhance your marketing. That could include things like email automation software, personalization software, or tools that store and organize customer information, like a CRM.

Market share:

A company’s market share is the proportion of its revenues it accounts for within a given market or sector. It is the percentage of overall industry revenue attributable to the sale of your company’s goods and services. Competition comes from both market giants and smaller businesses.

Martech stack:

A martech stack is a group of marketing tools which, when brought together, cover all the major areas of marketing to help improve your campaigns. A good marketing technology stack will include tools that manage everything from paid ads to analytics. In short, a martech stack helps you automate multiple aspects of your marketing without paying for overlapping tools.

Media planning:

Media planning is the process of figuring out the what, where, when, who, and how of your marketing. It involves answering questions like:

• What are you marketing?
• Which channels will you use to market it?
• When will you market it (time period and frequency)?
• Who are you targeting?
• How will you market your business, products, or services?

This process is critical for any marketing campaign, especially given the many online options available.

Micro-moment marketing:

According to Google, micro-moment marketing revolves around intent-rich moments. In these moments, users turn to a device, like a tablet or a smartphone, to act on a specific need. A need can include going somewhere, plus knowing, doing, or buying something.

Microsoft Dynamics 365:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a suite of apps that can improve company-wide efficiency and customers’ experience with a business. It includes a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software and an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform that you can integrate into different departments’ functions

Middle of funnel (MOFU):

A middle-of-funnel user (often abbreviated to MOF and MOFU)  is someone in the middle of your marketing funnel. They’ve gotten to know your business a little bit, and they’re kind of starting to think about buying, but they’re still not ready to become a customer yet. This is a great trust building phase where you can establish thought leadership with these users and expand your relationship with them so that when they are ready to buy they will choose you.

Multi-channel marketing:

Multi-channel marketing is when businesses promote themselves using multiple strategies to get the best possible results. These strategies can be both online and offline to reach customers no matter where they are – it’s a business owner’s way of finding as many customers as possible at any time.

O

Objectives and key results (OKRs):

Objectives and key results (OKRs) are specific goals you set for your marketing campaigns, along with the metrics you plan on using to measure them.

Omnichannel marketing:

Omnichannel marketing is a strategy that connects all of your marketing channels into one cohesive, efficient system. With an omnichannel marketing strategy, you can reach your customers at each sales funnel stage to drive more conversions and sales for your company.

Omnichannel platform:

An omnichannel platform is a tool that helps you unify your marketing channels to simplify the omnichannel marketing approach. Some platforms feature automation, making the process even easier.

Online paid advertising:

In contrast to earned and owned advertising, online paid advertising (also called paid advertising) requires the real-time purchase of ad spots to attract Internet traffic. The featured ads show up on designated websites, and marketers or companies bid against their competition for keywords that pertain to their services or products.

Out of the box (OOTB):

Out of the box is a term used to describe the situation when a product works immediately upon removal from a box and doesn’t need a manual setup.

P

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC):

PPC is where you run paid ads online and pay for each click on these ads (hence the name pay-per-click). Sometimes those ads are on third-party websites, and sometimes they’re at the top of Google search results.

People-based marketing:

Also known as person-based marketing, people-based marketing means targeting audiences with relevant messaging wherever they are by collecting customer data from online and offline sources.

Performance branding:

Performance branding is a cross-departmental strategy that blends driving conversions with building brand awareness. Performance branding targets multiple stages of the funnel to achieve macro- and micro-conversions.

Performance creative:

Performance creative is an approach to creative marketing tasks that involves using data to track performance and shape the development or distribution of creative marketing assets. These creative tasks include things like designing visuals for ads, planning videos, and writing copy for blog posts.

Persona segmentation:

Persona segmentation is identifying and categorizing similar personas together. You can use varying segmentation methods according to your business and your objectives.

Personal branding:

Personal branding is the image and perception you create of yourself. In some cases, the persona is grander or simpler than others.

Predictive analytics:

Predictive analytics uses statistics, data, machine learning, and algorithm techniques to make predictions of outcomes or performance based on historical data.

Prescriptive analytics:

Prescriptive analytics is the practice of analyzing data to provide recommendations for what your company can do next to improve your marketing results. In other words, it enables you to analyze the results of your marketing strategies and identify your next steps to optimize your campaigns to drive more revenue for your company.

Product life cycle:

The product life cycle is the journey a product or brand goes through from its creation to its extinction. It begins the moment a product launches, and ends when that product is finally taken off the shelves for good.

Programmatic advertising:

Programmatic advertising is a form of advertising where you use automated tools to help you buy or sell advertising space.

Q

Qualitative research:

Qualitative research is a method used to collect non-numerical and non-statistical data to gain in-depth insights into people’s opinions and attitudes. It aims to describe a topic rather than measure it, seeking to understand the “why” behind concepts and behaviors.

Quantitative research:

Quantitative research is focused on collecting numerical data to measure variables, get a general overview of trends, and predict outcomes. It’s a structured, statistical, and systematically analyzed approach that yields objective and conclusive results. Common methodologies include surveys, questionnaires, polls, and website analytics tools.

R

Real-time Bidding:

Real-time bidding (RTB) is an automated digital auction process that allows advertisers to bid on ad space from publishers on a cost-per-thousand-impressions, or CPM, basis.

Request for information (RFI):

Request for information or an RFI is a standard business practice of collecting written information about the capabilities of various suppliers that help support buying decisions.

Request for proposal (RFP):

Request for proposal or an RFP is a formal document request for a quote or proposal from a vendor or supplier.

Return on ad spend (ROAS):

Return on ad spend is how much money you earn for your investment in paid advertising.

Return on investment (ROI):

ROI is a metric for evaluating how much value you get for what you spend on your marketing. Marketing costs money, and ROI helps you see if you’re earning back the money you spent with a decent-sized profit.

Revenue intelligence:

Revenue intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing data about your sales and product usage to drive more revenue.

Revenue operations (RevOps):

Revenue operations is a business strategy that involves increasing coordination between revenue-driving teams to help businesses earn more.

S

Sales accepted lead (SAL):

Sales accepted leads, or SALs, are prospects who have been accepted by the sales team and moved through the sales pipeline.

Sales Automation:

Sales automation is the process of streamlining manual, time-consuming tasks in the sales process.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM):

SEM, or search engine marketing, is a strategy that involves running paid and targeted ads that appear on search engines. These ads appear at the top of search results above the organic listings.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

SEO is a strategy where you try to get your website ranking in Google search results. The goal is for people to find your site when they search for stuff related to your industry. Then they visit your website to learn more, and they end up getting interested in what you sell.

ServiceTitan:

ServiceTitan is a field service management (FSM) software application designed for service contractors. That means it helps contractors manage business data, complete tasks, and do many other things involved in running a business. Basically, it’s a one-stop shop for all your business management needs.

SMB Martech:

SMB marketing technology refers to software programs and tools used to improve marketing tasks. These tools help you implement, create, manage, and optimize digital marketing campaigns.

SMS compliance:

SMS compliance is the process of adhering to laws regulating SMS marketing texts. Spam texts are both highly annoying and privacy-violating, so there are laws regulating how businesses are allowed to engage with users through SMS.

SMS marketing:

SMS marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves sending promotions to current and potential customers through text messages. It’s also sometimes referred to as text marketing.

Social media marketing:

Social media marketing is where you promote your business and engage with your audience on social media. You can create an account for your business and post content there. You can also run social media ads to get in front of your target audience, even if they don’t follow you.

T

Top of funnel (TOFU):

A top-of-funnel user, or TOF or TOFU, is a cold audience that doesn’t know you yet and the goal of the campaign is to introduce these people to your brand, product or service. They’re most likely not ready to buy yet.

Twilio Segment:

Twilio Segment is a customer data platform, which means it helps you gather and organize data about your customers (mostly first-party data, which means it comes from your company’s own interactions with those customers). Twilio Segment can also help you draw insights from that data.

W

Web design and development:

Web design and development is building and maintaining your website. Web design focuses more on the way your site looks and feels. Development is more focused on how your website functions, although it can overlap with design in several areas.

Learn more about martech with these glossaries

Check out these glossaries to build your martech dictionary:

• Marketing Terms
• PPC Terms
• SEO Glossary
• Marketing Buzzwords
• Digital Marketing Terms

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