Empowered Marketer: Marketing 101 Terms to Master SEO, Content, & Social Media

The world of marketing has expanded quickly over the past decade. There are a lot of marketing 101 terms to know to become an empowered marketer these days. This includes content marketing terms, online advertising terms, social media terms, email marketing terms, search engine marketing terms, website optimization terms, and more.

To help you navigate the many empowered marketer terms alphabetically, we included A-Z navigation bars above each letter section, so you can skip to the marketing term you’re interested in reading.

Below is a comprehensive list of empowered marketer terms to help you understand and improve your marketing 101 knowledge

 

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A/B Testing

A test in which one compares two instances of the same variable to see which instance will improve marketing success the most. This type of testing is used in email marketing (changes in the subject line or copy), calls-to-action (changes in color and wording), and landing pages (changes in content). An example of A/B testing would be to see which tasted better on a sandwich: American cheese or cheddar cheese!

Analytics

Analytics is essentially the discovery and visualization of important patterns in data. In the context of marketing 101 terms, it is looking at the data of one’s metrics (website visitor reports, social, PPC, etc.), noticing trends within that data, and then creating insights that can be utilized when making marketing decisions. Popular analytics services include Google Analytics, Hubspot, Mixpanel, Kapost, and Kissmetrics among many others.

Application Programming Interface (API)

APIs are programming tools that allow one to extract information and data from another are application or data analytics. Through the use of several rules or commands that the creator of the API has put in place, the API calls upon another’s application and bring you information that you can use in your own product.

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B

B2B (Business-to-Business)

B2B is used to describe a company that sells to other companies. Some examples of B2B companies include IBM and J.P Morgan.

B2C (Business-to-Consumer)

One of the empowered marketer used to describe a company that sells directly to consumers. Some B2C examples include Adidas, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Backlink

A backlink is a link that is on another site, that links to your own site. This can sometimes be referred to as an “Inbound link.” A backlink is almost a cross-reference of sorts – search engines see it as a good indicator of how popular a site is because of how many other sites are linking to it. Sites that have a lot of these backlinks are more likely to rank higher in search engines.

Blogging

Blogging, in the context of empowered marketer, is the action of creating short-form articles for your website. Blogs, which is short for weblog, usually includes some sort of commentary on a subject, event descriptions, or even videos and photos. Blogging is one of the key pillars of an inbound marketing strategy creating these articles can accomplish several goals simultaneously. The constant flow of new, unique content to your site will help increase web traffic, lead generation, and thought leadership.

Bottom of the Funnel (BOTF)

The “Bottom of the Funnel,” in the context of empowered marketer, refers to a stage of the buyer process funnel. In this stage, leads and about the make the transition into becoming new customers. The customer has determined what their problem is, has looked for a solution, and are very close to buying your product. Some typical steps at this bottom of the funnel stage include a conversation with a sales representative, a demo, or a consultation, depending on what type of product your company has created.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of a website, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the percentage of people that land on a page on your site but then leave without interacting with anything else on your site. A high bounce rate generally leads to poor conversion rates (See Conversion Rates), because nobody is staying on your site long enough to interact with your content or convert through a landing page. An email bounce rate refers to the percentage of emails that are unable to be delivered to a recipient’s inbox. A high email bounce rate may mean that your email lists are not up-to-date and include invalid email addresses. Email bounces are not necessarily bad. There are generally two types of email bounces: hard and soft. A hard bounce is when there is a permanent problem with the address, and the email cannot be delivered. A soft bounce is a temporary issue with the address and may eventually be resolved. If a soft bounce exists for long enough, it is considered a hard bounce.

Business Blogging

Business blogging is just like regular blogging, but with an extra element of marketing strategy! By creating content on a specific field/topic, marketers can increase traffic to their website, then convert that traffic into leads. By creating more and more blog posts on a given topic/field, your company can become a thought leader (See Thought Leader), which will drive even more traffic to your site. In business blogging, the post should be keyword optimized and include some sort of call-to-action (See Call-to-Action). A call-to-action at the end of a post will provide you useful information that will help you transform traffic into leads, and will provide a metric that can measure how effective the blog is at converting traffic.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona, in the context of empowered marketer, is an idealistic representation of what kind of customer your business is looking for. This representation is usually created from market research and data about your current customers. Accurately determining your buyer personas will allow your business to allocate resources accordingly and appropriately.

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C

Call-to-Action (CTA)

A call-to-action, in the context of the empowered marketer, refers to any link/test that encourages site visitors to visit your landing page and engage in an action like filling out a form to get a premium offer such as a free ebook, white paper, etc. Every successful business blog post needs some sort of call-to-action to help convert readers into leads. An example of a call-to-action would be the banner image on this very page! Take a look at the sidebar!

Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)

CASL is a Canadian law that was passed in 2014 that requires that companies receive consent from potential recipients before sending any form of “commercial activity” to them. This “commercial activity” covers emails, texts, instant messages, etc.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

CSS goes hand in hand with HTML and JavaScript to help make your website look like what it looks like. CSS specifically gives your site its style, color, fonts, and background images. Good CSS techniques and conventions are crucial to creating an attractive webpage that won’t repulse visitors! CSS is also what allows websites adapt to mobile devices and other types of screens.

Chatbot

A chatbot is a program on a company’s website that visitors can talk to get information or receive some customer service. Simple chatbots have pre-programmed responses to common questions and can help keep your visitors engaged. If there are not enough resources available to have live customer support at all times, a chatbot can be a good alternative. It will take some coding know-how, however, as creating a chatbot can be a daunting endeavor!

Churn Rate

A churn rate, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the metric that measures how many customers your company retains, and what the value of those customers are. To calculate churn rate you take the number of customers that you lost during a certain period, and divide that by the total number of customers that you had at the beginning of that period. For example, if at the beginning of December you had 500 customers, and by the end of December, you have 400 customers, that churn rate can be calculated by the following: (500-400)/500 = 20%. That’s really high! The lower the churn rate for your company is, the better! If your company is a recurring revenue company, having a low churn rate is crucial.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

The clickthrough rate, in the context of empowered marketer, that refers to the measurement of what percentage of your audience is advancing from one part of your site to the next step in your marketing campaign. To calculate a CTR, it is the total number of clicks that were received divided by the number of opportunities that people had to click.

Closed-Loop Marketing

Closed-Loop Marketing is marketing that relies on data and trends that were gathered through following a visitors journey through the site. By using this data, marketers are better able to determine where the most traffic is being received and shift the strategy accordingly. If done correctly, you will be able to see how successful your marketing investment is in bringing in new business prospects. An inbound marketing strategy enables a business to engage in closed-loop marketing.

Content

Content, in the context of empowered marketer, is information that exists to be engaged with by the reader, inform them, and then be shared by them. This type of content usually comes in the form of blog posts, videos, social media posts, etc. In an inbound marketing strategy, content is one of the most important tools in converting website visitors into leads.

Content Calendar

Another marketing 101 term is content calendar. A content calendar is a release schedule of your content. For an inbound marketing strategy to be effective, you need a regular stream of content to your site, so that readers have enough material to be informed and to create a connection of trust. By scheduling content instead of releasing it on a whim, you are better able to see what content is successful, and what is not.

Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS is a web application that allows businesses to create, edit, and manage a website without any technical knowledge. CMS’s help users with content editing, content management, search tags, and more! Examples of CMSs are WordPress and Drupal.

Context

Context and content go hand in hand. Creating informative content is important, but making sure that content is directed towards the right audience is just as, if not more important. As consumers begin to control what type of content they digest, it is important to make sure that the content you deliver to consumers is contextually relevant. For instance, you would not want to be advertising a brand new candy bar to someone who can’t eat candy, right?

Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM)

CAN-SPAM is a U.S law that was passed in 2003 that provides recipients the right to request that a business stop sending commercial emails and messages to them, and outlines the penalties for those that violate this law.

Conversion Path

A conversion path, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the sequence of events on your website that helps to capture leads. Most of the time, a conversion path will consist of a call-to-action (See Call-to-Action) that leads to a landing page with some sort form the reader has to fill out. This form is also known as a lead capture form because the consumer will have to fill it out with relevant info such as an email address. In exchange for this new information, you provide them with some sort of content in return. This way, you generate a new lead, and the reader gets the information that they have been searching for.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of a website, in the context of empowered marketer, is the percentage of visitors that come to the site, and then fill out the form, converting them into leads. The higher the conversion rate, the better! To calculate the conversion rate, take the number of visitors that fill out the lead capture form, and divide that by the number of total visitors.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion Rate Optimization, in the context of empowered marketer, is the process by which you improve the techniques you use to try to convert visitors into leads. Some elements of the optimization include looking at keyword optimization, reassessing design techniques, and rewriting of some content. CRO can be applied to any part of your site and even your social media posts.

Cost-Per-Lead (CPL)

The cost-per-lead, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the costs that your marketing team incurs trying to get a lead. This factors into customer acquisition cost, and is a cost that marketers should keep their eye on when trying to reassess marketing techniques.

Crowdsourced Content

Crowdsourced content, in the context of empowered marketer, is content that you, as a business, allow other people outside of your business to write for you. This includes subject experts, consumers themselves, or freelancers. Allowing crowdsourced content on your site will allow you to produce more content in a shorter amount of time. Be sure to create some sort of incentive for users creating crowdsourced content, and you create a winning situation for everyone involved. A steady stream of content is a staple of any successful inbound marketing strategy!

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The customer acquisition cost, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the total cost of your sales and marketing strategies. To calculate the CAC, take the total of how much you have spent on trying to acquire more customers in a certain period, and divide that by the number of customers acquired during that period. Be sure to look at the resulting CAC in the context of your current strategies to see if there needs to be a shift in strategy!

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The customer lifetime value of a consumer, in the context of empowered marketer, is a projection of the possible net profit that can be gained from a future relationship with a consumer. To calculate the customer lifetime value of a consumer, one way to do so is to multiply the average amount of monthly transactions, by the average order value, and multiply that value by the average customer lifespan in months, and then finally multiply that value by your company’s average gross margin.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management, in the context of empowered marketer, is the process by which companies maintain and monitor their relationship with their customer base. This is usually done through a set of software programs to track communications with clients, send personalized emails, schedule appointments, and logging every interaction that the customers have with customer service/support. Some CRMs incorporate social media feeds into their software, allowing you to manage all of your interactions with your customers on a single platform. A CRM is crucial to keeping track of contacts and making sure that potential customers don’t become disinterested!

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D

Drip Marketing

See Lead Nurturing

Dynamic Content

Dynamic content is a different way of delivering content – instead of having static calls-to-action, dynamic content would personalize the offer to the visitor using whatever metrics they can gather from them just visiting the site. If a user has already visited your site, or maybe even registered in some way with the site, you could customize their user experience (See User Experience) even further to keep them engaged with your site and content!

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Ebook

Ebooks are a common type of content that marketers use to generate leads. In exchange for information about a given topic, the site will usually ask for the visitor to fill out some sort of form. This way the company gets a form of contact with the visitor and the visitor gets the information that they were seeking. Ebooks are usually much longer than blog posts and are much more detailed. If you would like to take a look at what an Ebook should look like, take a look at the Ebook displayed in the CTA at the top sidebar on this page!

Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is similar to a content calendar in that it helps you to organize your content. However, an editorial calendar is a little more comprehensive in that it helps you to determine what content you should be creating, how often to publish, what topics to target, and which personas to target. A comprehensive editorial calendar will reveal any gaps you may have in your content library. The calendar will also endure that you are not going off-topic and that your content is laser-focused!

Educational Content

Educational content is content created by a company that seeks to inform the reader about a specific topic or field. This form of content is important to an inbound marketing strategy as it creates a connection of trust between the reader and the company’s content. With informative, educational content, any company can become a thought leader (See Thought Leader).

Email

Email is short for electronic mail. Email is a core component of communication between your company and your customers because it allows you to send a message directly to your contact. As a marketer, it is crucial to make sure not to abuse this relationship with your contact: incessant emails will almost guarantee that your contact ceases contact with you. Make sure to space out your emails enough so that they are not ubiquitous, and include enough content to make them feel worthwhile!

Email Automation

Having to write every single email by hand seems like a lot of work right? That’s because it is! Luckily in this day and age, we have software that can send mass personalized emails for us. You can schedule emails so that they are delivered using any schedule that you determine for the software. Though there is no replacement for a human touch in an email, there is no denying that sometimes letting the software send out emails for you will allow you to reach out to more people in a shorter amount of time. Be sure to strike a balance between using email automation, and writing the email yourself!

Empowered Marketer

The definition of an empowered marketer is any individual who possesses the power to utilize marketing techniques successfully. This power can be passed upon through mentorship or through self education.

Engagement Rate

The engagement rate, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the measurement that gauges the amount of interaction any piece of content receives. To measure this, take the number of interactions with your content (likes, comments, shares, etc.) and divide that by the number of total people who can see the content.

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that is not contingent upon a recent event to be relevant. Evergreen content is content that will continue to inform and help readers no matter when it is read. This kind of content can be referenced long after it is published, and likewise, will still be relevant if you publish it later. These kinds of posts have extreme SEO potential and are considered to be high-quality posts. Although not all content has to be evergreen content, you should strive to at least have a few pieces of evergreen content on your site, so that your company always remains relevant!

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Facebook

Facebook is a social network that you’ve probably had some sort of interaction with at this point. As a social media giant, Facebook has become an important platform advertise your business on. In addition to being able to publish content and gain followers, you can use the targeting options available through Facebook to find and attract new prospects to your website. Before any of that can happen though, you need to make sure that you are posting engaging and entertaining content on your company’s Facebook! However, make sure that Facebook is not your only advertising platform. In a successful inbound marketing technique, Facebook is a part of the formula, but not the entire formula. Make sure to utilize all different kinds of platforms to make sure you have engaging content that can be seen in several places, to increase the chances of a prospect getting to one of your landing pages.

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Form

Another marketing 101 term is Form. A form, in the context of empowered marketer, is a place on your page where visitors can fill out information that will benefit your company in some way. Usually, a form is filled out in order to receive some sort of offer like an ebook or a white paper. This is where visitors transform into sales leads! Keep in mind that you should really only be asking for pertinent information, and not asking for too much. The fewer things that a visitor has to fill out, the more likely they will be to finish the form!

Friction

Friction, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to elements of your website that are hard to look at or are confusing. If there is too much going on on your webpage, or if the interface is hard to use, then visitors are not going to want to spend too much time on your website. Some examples of items that may cause friction are too many animations, difficult navigation, clashing colors, or even a form with too much to fill out. To maximize the number of people on your landing page, be sure to minimize friction.

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Google

Google is the most popular search engine there is. If anyone is going to be searching for your company, the chances are that they are going to go on Google to search it. The more optimized your empowered marketer are, the more visibility you are going to get on Google!

Google+

Google+ (Which most refer to as Google Plus) is a social network that allows you to create groups with anyone! You can make groups with your family, friends, co-workers, and other people in the industry. Just like any other social media, good posting and sharing habits on Google+ can help generate new leads, but Google+ has a little more to it than other social media platforms. When you share your company’s content on Google+, your content will get a boost in SEO (See SEO); more so than posting it on Facebook (Google+ is owned by Google after all). Make sure when posting on social media, to engage on all platforms, so your article reaches as many people as possible in addition to increasing your SEO value.

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Hashtag

The hashtag, or as some remember it, the pound-sign, is a way of tagging certain keywords or empowered marketer on social media. Originating on Twitter, the hashtag has become an easy way to see what the internet is saying about a specific term or topic. Hashtags can now be used on most forms of social media, so knowing what people are saying about any given hashtag is crucial knowledge. To search for a hashtag, you can type in any term with a “#” in front such as #Responsify or #Google or even phrases such as #ILoveFridays. To make things even easier, HubSpot has a hashtag monitoring tool that will help you track how any given hashtag is doing. When posting to social media, make sure to hashtag your empowered marketer and keywords to make sure your company is included in the conversation about that term/topic.

Hubspot

Hubspot is an all-in-one marketing and sales platform that includes a CRM, email marketing automation, social media publishing tools, and more! Hubspot is the industry leader in integrated software for both marketing and sales — designed around the Inbound methodology of attracting website visitors, converting qualified leads, and closing customers.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

HTML is another language used to create web pages. HTML goes hand in hand with CSS (See CSS) and JavaScript (See JavaScript). To make an awesome webpage, make sure you can competently implement all three languages! HTML’s job within the three languages is to provide the basic structure of the site, to be later modified by the other two languages. If you are going to start with a coding language for your website, HTML is a great place to start!

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Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing refers to the technique of drawing in visitors organically rather than going out and trying to the attention of potential customers. To do so, a company that uses the Inbound Marketing approach will generally produce regular content for a certain demographic. Soon enough, visitors from that sphere will begin to interact with your site naturally. Within your articles, make sure to include some sort of call-to-action! A call-to-action will help users get to your landing page and help turn them into leads. By making sure your content caters directly to your visitors you can then convert, close, and delight over time.

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Infographic

Another marketing 101 term is infographic. An infographic is a visualization that marketers use to convey a process or a set of data in a quick and simple way. Infographics can digest lesser-known empowered marketer and topics in a much easier way, so make sure to use these where you can!

Instagram

Instagram is a social media platform for those who want to share edited photos. Though the platform is more geared towards individuals rather than companies, Instagram has grown into a social media platform that poses promise to content marketers. You can post company-related or industry-related photos that your followers and customers would enjoy seeing. Creating a large Instagram following can help increase website traffic, so make sure you are posting on Instagram and other social media platforms!

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JavaScript (JS)

JavaScript is a programming language that helps to create a website. JS goes hand in hand with HTML and CSS to create an engaging and beautiful website. JS is the functionality piece to the puzzle — JavaScript is what determines the dynamic behavior of your website. All pop-ups, password creation, forms, navigation bars, etc. are controlled by JS. Having an interactive website will keep visitors engaged with your content. Make sure you know how to use all three coding languages when creating a website to make sure it is the best it can possibly be!

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Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

KPI is a marketing term referring to the measurement used to determine and evaluate an employee’s or an activity’s success. Marketers use KPIs to determine what marketing strategies are successful and if they are progressing towards their marketing goals. KPIs are a good way to evaluate one company against what the industry standard is. What qualifies as a KPI is determined by your company — it may be a CAC (See Customer Acquisition Cost) or the projected CLV (See Customer Lifetime Value). Your KPIs are determined by what your company is looking to improve upon or gauge.

Keyword

Keywords and keyword phrases are words that topics get searched by on search engines. The search engines when searching for a topic, will look for web pages that contain these keywords and key phrases.

Keyword Optimization

Keyword Optimization is a marketing term that illustrates the idea of fine-tuning your keywords for maximum visibility. To make sure that your content and website are standing out, you will need to determine what the keywords you want to rank high for. Many companies are going to try to go for the same one or two-word keyword phrases — the point of keyword optimization is to find keywords or keyword phrases that do not have too much competition so that your pages will show up in a search engine result! To learn more about keywords and optimizing results, see SEO.

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Keyword Research

Another marketing 101 term is Keyword Research. Keyword research is imperative for your content and website to show up in search engine results. Keywords generally have two metrics: search volume and difficulty rank. When choosing keywords, you want to make sure that people are searching for the keyword, while keeping the difficulty down. If the difficulty is too high, nobody will see your results, but if the search volume is too low, no one will search for the terms in the first place. When researching keywords, make sure to strike a balance between the two to increase the traffic flow to your site.

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Landing Page

A landing page is a marketing term for the page on your website that visitors are asked to fill out a form for some sort of premium offer. This offer is usually some sort of ebook or white paper that draws the visitors in and gets them to fill out a form with information that your company can use. Websites can have different kinds of landing pages to cater to different kinds of visitors. Remember, the landing page is one of the most important parts of your website, as it is the page that will be generating your leads! The information that visitors fill the form out with is information that you can use to get in contact with them. Make sure your landing page is attractive, intuitive, and easy to navigate. The easier it is to provide the information for the premium offer, the more leads you will get in return!

Lead

A lead is a marketing term that refers to a person or company that has shown interest in your company or company’s product. A lead has not become a full-fledged customer yet, but they have the potential to become one. Leads can come in the form of someone filling out a form, subscribing to a blog, or sharing their contact info in exchange for some sort of offer. Generating leads is critical to a company’s success as leads can turn into customers!

Lead Nurturing

Lead Nurturing, which is sometimes referred to as Drip Marketing, is the practice of creating a set of correspondences (emails, messages, sharing of articles, etc.) with a lead that seeks to qualify the lead, keep it engaged with your business, and gradually coerce the lead down the sales funnel. Lead nurturing is an important part of the Inbound Marketing approach as the inbound approach is all about bringing content to the right audience. By bringing content that is relevant to the lead in relation to where they are in the sales funnel, the lead can be guided through the sales funnel to become a customer.

Lead Nurturing Email

Lead Nurturing Emails are emails that seek to provide information and content that will help guide leads through the sales funnel. These type of emails will usually provide information that is relevant to the lead’s context and will help the lead be both informed and taken care of. Sending out regular lead nurturing emails is a staple of an Inbound Marketing approach. Make sure not to send too many emails as to overwhelm your leads!

Lead Scoring

The more leads you have, the harder it will be to get to all of them, right? The marketing term Lead Scoring is the practice of ranking the perceived value of all of your prospects. By ranking your leads in order of value, you can see which ones have the highest priority and should be worked with closely. Measuring how much a lead’s value is determined by what your company is looking for during that period.

Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle Stages are a way to classify what your relationship currently is with your audience. The relationship can generally be broken down into three stages: awareness, evaluation, and purchase. You need to make sure that your content caters to whatever stage your audience is in at that time. If your visitor is in the purchasing stage, you would not want to be producing content that assumes it is their first time interacting with your product/company. It is important that your site has dynamic content, so you can have content that is appropriate for whatever stage your visitors are in. Catering to whatever stage your visitors are in will allow you to retain more of your audience in the long run.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media platform that is more geared towards professional development. With over 467 million users, being a part of this professional network of people is crucial, as it has quickly become one of the most popular professional platforms. Developing a complete profile on LinkedIn will allow you to communicate and network with new prospects, partners, employees, etc. Like any other social media platform, make sure you post content regularly so that your network is engaged with your company!

Long-Tail Keyword

A Long-Tail Keywords, in the context of empowered marketer, that refers to a targeted keyword phrase that contains three or more words. In terms of keyword optimization, long-tail keywords allow your content and site to show up for more specific searches. Visitors that land on your site by searching a long-tail keyword are more likely to be engaged with what your content is offering. Make sure when choosing a long-tail keyword to check what the search volume and keyword difficulty are like for the keyword. A long-tail keyword has potential to bring in more qualified leads, but it is useless if nobody is searching for it!

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Marketing 101

This stands for the essential knowledge about marketing. Marketing 101 means the basics of marketing, every marketer should know as the foundation of their understanding of marketing.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation, in the context of empowered marketer, is the suite of tools and analytics used to help nurture leads. Marketing automation includes automating the more repetitive tasks of nurturing a lead, like sending emails and social media posts. While automation allows you to free up resources, make sure to always include a human touch from time to time!

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A Marketing Qualified Lead, or a Qualified Lead, are market terms that refer to a lead that is more likely to become a customer. Whether it be that their score is high, or they clicked through on a long-tail keyword, making sure that you are focusing on MQL’s will allow you to generate more customers!

Microsite

A microsite is a site that exists out of your main site that provides a different experience or content than your site would usually offer. If you are taking a multi-platform marketing approach, you probably will be making use of a microsite. A microsite is smaller in nature but should ultimately be showing some sort of ties with your main site.

Middle of the Funnel

The middle-of-the-funnel, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the stage in the funnel where the lead has identified where their problem lies. The lead has begun their research, and are trying to find a solution to their problem. When leads are in the middle-of-the-funnel the content that you are gearing towards them should shift to more comprehensive material. You should be producing content that includes case studies or product brochures and should also be posing your company as part of the solution to their problem.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile Marketing, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the marketing strategies that apply to the mobile network. Through mobile marketing you can provide location-sensitive, personalized content that will help you promote your company and product. Many search for information on mobile, so making sure you have a marketing strategy that applies to mobile devices is crucial for bringing in those mobile visitors.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is designing and formatting your websites and microsites (See Microsites) so that they are optimized for mobile devices. Making sure that the interface of your website is as intuitive as possible on both your regular website and mobile website will make sure that mobile visitors stay on your website. Google’s algorithm also rewards websites that can also be viewed on mobile devices, so make sure your websites are mobile optimized!

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Another marketing 101 term is Monthly Recurring Revenue. In the context of empowered marketer, MRR refers to the amount of revenue your company receives on a monthly basis. When calculating MRR include any net new, net positives, net negatives, net losses.

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Native Advertising

Native advertising, in the context of empowered marketer, describes advertising that adapts to its surroundings to fit in on any given website or social media platform. In other words, it is advertising that tries not to stand out to the point of being interruptive — it blends into its environment. This way the ads feel less like an advertisement, and more like a natural part of the site or platform. An example of this kind of ad would be a character in a movie drinking a certain soda with the logo pointed directly toward the screen so that the audience can see it. The point is to be natural and to not be overbearing in terms of advertising.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A Net Promoter Score, in the terms of empowered marketer, refers to a measurement of customer satisfaction that determines how likely a customer is to recommend your company to their peers. The score is on a scale of 0-10 and is a loose indicator of how loyal your customers are to your business. To calculate Net Promoter Score, take the percentage of customers that would promote you (7-10) and subtract from that the percentage that would not promote you (0-6) (Promote-Not Promote). Try to measure your company’s NPS as often as possible to see what areas need adjusting or what areas need to be allocated more resources.

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News Feed

A news feed is a feed on a social media platform that shows you what is happening in terms of news, followers, etc. To remain up-to-date, make sure you take a look at all of your news feeds periodically!

No-Follow Link

Another marketing 101 term is No-follow. No-follow links are links that you designate within your HTML code (See HTML) that tells search engines not to use this link in your SEO value. No-follow links have their place in marketing, but it depends on the context to determine whether or not a link you have posted needs to be a follow link or a no-follow link.

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Off-Page Optimization

Off-Page Optimization, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the practice of trying to improve efforts geared towards marketing that occurs off of your site. Off-Page includes social media, sites linking to your domain, etc. For the most part, off-page optimization is out of your control, as you can’t determine what people are sharing or posting. However, by creating a steady stream of useful, informative content, you increase the chances that someone will identify with your content, and then share it with their peers.

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Offer

See Premium Offer

On-Page Optimization

On-Page Optimization refers to strategically placing keywords within your content, titles, URLs, etc. to increase SEO value (See SEO). As opposed to off-page optimization, on-page optimization is almost entirely controlled by your company, so make sure that your website is as optimized for SEO as possible.

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Page View

A page view is a single request to load a page on the internet. In the context of empowered marketer, page views is a metric by which businesses can measure how popular any given page is. Making changes to a page, then seeing how the page view count has changed is one way to determine whether any changes that your business is making is making an impact.

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

A Pay-Per-Click is a marketing term used to describe the amount spent to receive a click on one of your digital advertisements. There are two models by which PPC is generally paid for, but the idea is that every time the advertiser generates a click for your company, you pay them a certain amount. The first model by which people pay for PPC ads, is the flat rate model. In this model, the advertiser and the publisher agree on a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. If you are sure that you will receive a decent amount of traffic, it is better to go with this approach. The second model is a bid-based model, where the advertiser competes against other advertisers in a network. Each advertiser will appear in a certain spot and will “bid” a maximum amount of money that it is willing to pay. After that maximum is reached, their ad will disappear. This model is appropriate for those company’s that have a smaller amount of traffic, because it will be cheaper in the long run.

Persona

See Buyer Persona

Pinterest

Pinterest is a social media network that is more geared toward e-commerce. However, that does not mean that B2B and B2C content marketers do not exist within this space. Companies and consumers use Pinterest to post content about the things that they are interested in or doing. Not too many companies are advertising on Pinterest, but that does not mean the potential is not there! Try to engage with consumers on this platform the best you can, and comment on the posts of others. Soon enough, people will be sharing your content on Pinterest as well!

PPC

See Pay-Per-Click

Premium Offer

Another marketing 101 term is Premium Offer. A Premium Offer, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to an offer that you make to visitors of your site in exchange for some of their contact info. By engaging with your premium offers, those visitors are transformed into leads that you can pursue. In an Inbound Marketing approach, the premium offer is an important step in generating leads. Without providing some sort of exchange for contact information, no visitor will leave their info. By providing an ebook, webinar, or white paper, you are providing the visitor more information about their desired topic, while getting precious lead info. Everyone wins!

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QR Code

A QR code is a special barcode that can take a visitor directly to text, URL, or other data. QR codes require a special QR reader that is available for free on most phones. Though it is not common to post QR codes when advertising, utilizing a QR code somewhere in your advertising provides a convenient way for the consumer to get directly to what you want them to look at.

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Qualified Lead

See Marketing Qualified Lead.

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Responsive Web Design (RWD)

Another marketing 101 term is Responsive Web Design. A Responsive Web Design, is the idea that your business wants to create a website that adapts to how a user is viewing it. For instance, if a visitor is viewing your website on mobile, you do not want it to be a different website than if they visited your site on a computer. By making sure your website can adapt to any resolution/screen size, your business will ensure that no visitor has a disjointed experience when visiting your website.

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Return on Investment (ROI)

A Return-On-Investment, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the metric used to evaluate the profitability of any given investment or compare the promise of multiple investments. To calculate an ROI for given investment, take the Gain from Investment then subtract from it the Cost of Investment, then divide that difference by the Cost of Investment ([Gain-Cost]/[Cost]). The larger the ratio is, the better! If the ratio is above one, you will be making more than your initial investment. However, if your ratio is negative, then that investment may cause your company to lose money. To carefully choose which investments to follow, try to determine the ROI before making a decision.

Responsify

Responsify is a Content and Inbound Marketing agency located in Brooklyn New York, helping innovative B2B companies across the United States attract new website visitors, convert them to qualified leads, and close them into happy customers. (Shameless self-promotion).

Retweet

A Retweet is the reposting of a tweet that someone else has made on Twitter. There are several ways to retweet a tweet, whether it be reposting the whole tweet, adding your own commentary, or just linking the post in an original tweet. Twitter is yet another platform to help your company interact with the community, so make sure you’re retweeting and tweeting consistently to keep your following engaged.

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Sales Qualified Lead

A Sales Qualified Lead is a little different from a Marketing Qualified Lead (See Marketing Qualified Lead) in that the lead has been researched by the marketing team and the sales team and has shown intent to purchase a product or work with the company. These leads should be prioritized as these leads are ready to transition into full-fledged customers!

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing is a marketing term that describes a marketing approach where you gain traffic and visibility through a search engine. You can pay for a higher spot on a search engine, or you can try to be one of the first results organically through Search Engine Optimization (See Below).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is a marketing term that refers to the strategy of enhancing a page or sites standing within a search engine through the use of keywords and content. When talking about “SEO Value” that refers to the visibility that your website is receiving. Taking into account on-page and off-page factors, inbound marketers can improve their sites placement in search engine results. Search engines take into account A LOT of factors including titles, tags, keywords, images, content, word-count, links, inbound links,… you get the idea. There’s a lot of factors in improving SEO value, so try to fine-tune all of these different factors to see what the best combination will be for getting the most visibility.

Sender Score

A sender score, in the context of empowered marketer, that measures your reputation in terms of outgoing mail. When your company sends out emails, mail servers will check what your sender score is before deciding where your emails will go. You can check your score online by entering your IP address. A score of over 90 is where you should aim to be.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A Service Level Agreement, in the context of empowered marketer, that refers to an agreement between the sales team and the marketing team that defines what each team expects of each other. For the most part SLA‘s are used to determine what kind of leads the marketing team will deliver to the sales team, and what kind of leads the marketing team wants the sales team to ultimately pursue. For a company to be successful, these two teams need to be able to work in harmony and in tandem. A well-oiled sales and marketing team will lead to increased lead and customer generation.

Small-to-Medium Business (SMB)

A Small-To-Medium Business is a business that has around ten to 500 hundred employees.

Smarketing

Smarketing is a marketing term that refers to the fusion of Sales and Marketing goals. In the business world, the sales team and marketing team are working towards the same goal, but do not always take the same approach to getting to that goal. By unifying the sales and marketing team as much as possible, lead generation will be increased and so will the number of customers that are being closed. Similar to what is produced by an SLA, Smarketing is a term used to describe what the best possible outcome could be.

Snapchat

Another marketing 101 term is SnapChat. SnapChat is a social media platform that allows users to send and receive photos and videos that expire within a set time limit. These messages are known as snaps, and after they expire, they can never be seen by the users again. Users can add drawings, animations, and text to any snap and can post these to a public story or just to their friends. A “story” is a snap that anyone can view for 24 hours and gives a window into the life of the user. Though not many companies have broken into advertising on SnapChat, there are companies that post content that people can sift through interspersed with advertisements. When it comes to social media, make sure you are posting regularly! On SnapChat, since stories expire every day, if you choose to adopt SnapChat as one of your platforms, try to post every day.

Social Media

Social Media, or Social Networks, is a group of platforms designed to allow you and your company to interact with the public. Most platforms are free and allow you to interact with the public as much as you want. Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google+, etc. are all platforms you want to try to add to your companies social media platforms. The more platforms that you can appear on, the more visibility your company is going to get. Social Media is an important part of an Inbound Marketing strategy, as it provides another way for users to get to your website organically. Try to post on these platforms often, but not to the point where you begin to become overbearing. By posting relevant content regularly, your company will grow a following that can be then converted into leads!

Social Calendar

A Social Calendar is similar to a content calendar, just with social media. A social calendar is a schedule by which you post on social media. By organizing what you are posting on social media, you can conserve resources and post regularly to keep your followers engaged.

Social Proof

Social Proof is the marketing term for the phenomenon in which people seek guidance from those around them to determine what they should be doing or how they should act. In the context of empowered marketer, social proof is the idea that when people are reacting positively to your company or product, that others will as well solely for the fact that those who have interacted with your brand have positive things to say. Try to get your community to interact with your content as much as possible, as creating a positive image for your company/product can only bring in even more leads and customers. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your followers as well to make your social media presence as large as possible!

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Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Software-as-a-Service, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to software that is hosted and created by another company, for your company’s use. All the information that you use and gather through these services are stored on the cloud and can be accessed by any of your affiliates. Using SaaS’s can be beneficial if you would rather outsource much of the technological backend elsewhere. Examples of SaaS companies include Hubspot, project management applications, and Instant Messaging services.

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Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

Top-Of-The-Funnel, or TOFU as it is sometimes known as, is a marketing term that refers to the first stage of the buying process. This is the stage in which leads are just identifying their problems, but still need some information to identify it correctly. As part of an Inbound Marketing strategy, you want to make sure to produce helpful content that will assist leads in identifying their problems so they establish a connection with your business. By providing content, you are also guiding the lead down the sales funnel, and towards the next step in the process.

Twitter

Twitter is a social media platform that mainly consists of 140 characters or fewer posts called tweets. You can follow other users and see what they are tweeting about and you can use hashtags (See Hashtags) to see what people are saying about any given topic. When tweeting, make sure you have the appropriate hashtags to make sure your company gets mentioned in the relevant conversations! The more you tweet, the bigger your following, and the more people that will retweet your tweets!

Thought Leader

A thought leader, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to an individual or company that is considered an authority in a specific field. Companies that are seeking information about that specific field will flock to the thought leader for guidance. An example of a thought leader would be Bill Gates in the field of computing.

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Unique Visitor (UV)

Another marketing 101 term is Unique Visitor. A Unique Visitor is a single visitor that visits a webpage. That visitor can visit a webpage multiple times, but that web page will still be considered only to have had a single UV. Measuring the number of unique visitors is a good metric by which to see how much traffic your website is receiving from unique individuals.

URL

URL, which stands for Uniform Resources Locator, which is something you will almost never need to know, is an address of a webpage. URL’s are taken into account when determining the SEO value of a page, so make sure that your URLs contain the pertinent keywords so that your SEO value goes up! URLs are generally in the form of https://www.responsify.com/.

User Experience (UX)

The User Experience is the overall ease of interaction that a customer has had with a company. This includes the discovery of the brand, customer service, awareness, interactions with social media, use, etc. To make sure that customers are returning to your company again and again, you need to make sure that your company’s UX is as intuitive as possible. If a business is hard to get in contact with, no one is going to want to interact with that business. Make your business easy to contact and amicable in all interactions!

User Interface (UI)

The User Interface describes the interface that the user interacts with when using an application, visiting your website, etc. The User interface includes your toolbar, buttons, windows, and anything on the webpage that the user can interact with. The key to a website that will retain visitors has a clean, easy-to-use UI. Make all of your links easy to get to, and make sure that nothing on your interface is hard to look at. The more intuitive your interface is the less likely you are to have visitors leave after seeing a single page.

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Viral Content

Viral Content is used to describe a piece of content that has become popular very quickly throughout the internet. A piece of content that is viral is being shared massively for better or for worse. It is hard to determine what content is going to become viral, so do not create content in hopes that it becomes viral. Create content in hopes that users will find it helpful and relevant!

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Website

Another marketing 101 term is Website. A Website is a group of interconnected pages that is usually managed and run by your own business. A webpage consists of a homepage, contact page, and in the case of inbound marketing, a landing page. In an Inbound Marketing approach, your website is one of your biggest tools in lead generation. Once you get users to come to your site, they need content to keep them engaged. By creating a constant stream of content on your website, you can keep visitors engaged, and eventually get them to the landing page to see what other information you have to offer. A website should also be interactive as well! Having a dynamic, content-filled website can only generate more success for your company and your inbound marketing strategy!

Website Optimization

Website Optimization, in the context of empowered marketer, is the process of making updates and changes to your website so your SEO (See SEO) value increases. Changes to the URL, article tags, keywords, etc. can increase your SEO. Make sure to optimize your website as routinely as possible to increase the visibility of your website.

White Paper

Another marketing 101 term is white paper. A White Paper is a paper written by an author that is informed about a certain topic. In Inbound Marketing, a white paper is sometimes used as a premium offer (See Premium Offer) to incentivize visitors to fill out a form to receive the white paper.

Word-of-Mouth (WOM)

Word-of-Mouth, in the context of empowered marketer, refers to the relaying of information from person-to-person. WOM marketing is an important part of an efficient Inbound Marketing strategy. Word-of-Mouth marketing costs almost nothing, it is hard to control. The best way to facilitate WOM is to create a positive image for your brand through community interactions and the regular production of content. If your company is positively interacting with other companies, then people will password on of your company, creating buzz around your brand.

Workflow

Another marketing 101 term is Workflow. A Workflow is a series of events that your company controls to help your lead through the nurturing process (See Lead Nurturing Emails). In Inbound Marketing, determining a workflow is important for lead retention. A workflow is a series of events that need to be completed in order for some event to happen. In this context, it is producing content for your leads, and guiding them along the way until they are ready to become customers.

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XML Sitemap

An XML Sitemap is a list of all the important pages of your website. The XML sitemap itself is a file of code that should be updated whenever you add a page to your website. The XML sitemap also affects SEO value as the XML sitemap is what most search engines use to look at a page, determine its value, and then travel to another page within the site.

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YouTube

Youtube is a social media platform that is primarily for video-sharing. Anyone can upload videos, comment on the videos of others, and view videos. Some companies try to make short videos to post on their Youtube channel to interact with the Youtube community. Though it may not be one of the primary platforms of communication for businesses, your company could still find a way to thrive on the platform!

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