When you begin creating a marketing plan, it’s important to have an understanding of the language that is going to be used throughout the marketing processes. It may be a little confusing, that’s why we decided to create this list of 10 key marketing terms to help you get started!
Inbound Marketing – This is the process of trying to pull customers to your product or service. The goal is to create trust with people before they become clients. Examples include SEO, blogging, and social media engagement.
Outbound Marketing – This is when your company initiates contact/conversation with potential customers. Examples include cold calling, email spam, and media buys.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization works to increase your website traffic. Using certain techniques while you build your website, write blog posts, or create ads can increase the quantity and quality of traffic by appearing higher in search engine results.
CRM – Customer Relationship Management describes software that is meant to help keep track of relationships and interactions with current and potential customers. CRM’s offer the ability to gather quality analytics about your customers journey to help you improve your marketing tactics. Examples include HubSpot, Zendesk Sell, Salesforce, Pipedrive, ZoHo, Monday, etc.
AI/Machine Learning – Artificial Intelligence is becoming a big part of online marketing. Using information gathered through analytics, machine learning can better anticipate your customer’s next move and improve their journey or experience with your company.
Customer Journey – This is the full experience that a customer has with your company. From the moment they first interact with your business, to when they decide to purchase your services and then perhaps when they are return customers. The journey is the umbrella for all the different components that they may encounter throughout their experience.
Buyer Personas – Your buyer personas are fictional caricatures of your ideal customers. They are created using marketing data on existing customers and then used to categorize different clients based on their habits, where they get the news, their age, etc. You will likely have more than one, so that you can target different kinds of people in your marketing efforts.
Lead – A lead is a prospective customer.
Lead Capture – This is the process in which you try to save potential customers information in your CRM so that you can target specific marketing content at them, to hopefully improve their customer journey.
Forecasting – The process of looking at trends and trying to determine the future numbers and trends for your target market. This process can help you inform the kinds of new Buyer Personas you create and how you go about capturing leads.
Segmentation – You may use your CRM to help you create segments of potential customers, usually based on things like their geographical location, their behaviors, or other key components you have identified through creating buyer personas, or by examining your analytics.