Reference
Marketing glossary
Plain-language definitions of the marketing, advertising, and growth terms anyone selling a digital product should know.
A to Z
Terms by topic
53 terms, sorted A to Z inside each topic.
9 terms
The numbers behind a campaign
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is the total amount spent on marketing and sales to win one new customer, calculated as all acquisition spend in a period divided by the number of new customers gained in that same period.
- CAC:LTV RatioCAC:LTV ratio compares the cost of acquiring a customer against the total revenue that customer generates over their whole relationship. A ratio where lifetime value is roughly three times acquisition cost is the venture-funded subscription-software convention, not a universal law that applies to every business.
- CPC (Cost Per Click)CPC (Cost Per Click) is the amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Formula: total ad spend divided by total clicks. The number is set by a live auction on the platform, and the price of the auction depends on how many other advertisers want the same audience you asked for.
- CPL (Cost Per Lead)CPL (Cost Per Lead) is the total ad spend needed to generate one lead, where a lead is a person who hands over contact details or takes a qualifying action such as a waitlist signup, an enquiry, or a demo request. Formula: total campaign spend divided by number of leads.
- CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)CPM (Cost Per Mille) is the price you pay for one thousand ad impressions. Formula: total ad spend divided by total impressions, multiplied by a thousand. It is the cost of the auction slot on the platform, so it mostly measures how expensive the audience you asked for is, not how well the ad performs.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate)CTR (Click-Through Rate) is the percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it. Formula: clicks divided by impressions times 100. If your ad is shown 1,000 times and gets 20 clicks, your CTR is 2 percent.
- Ecommerce LTVEcommerce LTV is the total a customer spends at a store across all their orders over time, built from average order value and how often they buy again, not from recurring subscription revenue retained until churn. It is a projection of repeat purchase behaviour, so it is only as reliable as your history of buyers actually coming back.
- LTV (Lifetime Value)LTV (Lifetime Value) is the total revenue one customer generates over their entire relationship with a product. For recurring revenue the basic formula is average revenue per customer per period multiplied by the average number of periods a customer stays. A $10/month product with 14-month average retention, LTV = $140.
- ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is the revenue attributed to your ads divided by what you spent on those ads, expressed as a multiple. A ROAS of 3x means every unit of ad spend brought back three units of tracked revenue.
6 terms
Who you sell to and why they choose you
- Founder-Led MarketingFounder-led marketing is an approach where the founder is the primary voice and face of the marketing, creating the content, building the audience, and engaging in public directly. It works because the founder holds the deepest product knowledge and the most credibility, and buyers trust a real person more than a brand account.
- ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is a description of who gets the most value from what you sell and is easiest and cheapest to reach. It is a filter for deciding who to spend money reaching, not a demographic sketch.
- Lookalike AudienceA lookalike audience is a group the ad platform assembles by taking a seed list of known customers you upload and finding new people who statistically resemble them. You supply the examples of who converts, and the platform looks for more of the same.
- PositioningPositioning is the decision about which market you compete in and who you are the obvious choice for. It is set before any copy is written, and it defines you relative to the real alternative a buyer would pick instead, which is often doing nothing rather than a named competitor.
- Positioning GapPositioning gap is an unclaimed space in a market where a real group of buyers is underserved by everyone currently competing. It only counts if those buyers actually want the thing and you can reach them. Otherwise it is empty space nobody is standing in for a good reason.
- Value PropositionA value proposition is the specific promise you make to one buyer. It names who the product is for, the concrete change they get, and the reason to believe you can deliver it. If a competitor can honestly make the same promise, it is not yours yet.
12 terms
From first visit to qualified lead
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the systematic practice of increasing the share of visitors who complete the intended action on a page. The action depends on what you sell: a purchase on a store product page, an enrolment on a course, an install or a trial start for an app. CRO uses analytics, user research, and testing to find and remove friction on the path to that action.
- Growth LoopA growth loop is a closed cycle where the output of a growth action (a new buyer, a share, a piece of content, a review) feeds back as the input for the next turn, so growth compounds instead of running out. Unlike a funnel, which is linear and must be refilled from the top, a loop reinforces itself.
- Landing PageA landing page is a standalone web page with a single conversion goal, whether that is adding a product to a cart, enrolling in a course, installing an app, or starting a free trial. Unlike a homepage that serves many audiences at once, it speaks to one visitor and asks for one action.
- Marketing FunnelA marketing funnel is a model of the stages a stranger passes through before buying, from first noticing you to paying, useful mainly as a diagnostic for where people drop off. Its length is set by the purchase itself, not by the marketer: a cheap impulse buy has a short funnel, a considered one has a long one.
- Marketing Qualified LeadA marketing qualified lead is a prospect marketing judges ready to hand off, defined by a threshold that marketing and the people who sell agree on in advance. The label is worthless unless both sides trust it, so the definition is a negotiated agreement, not a number marketing picks alone.
- MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)An MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is a prospect who has taken a defined action that marketing reads as real buying interest, so they are worth passing on for follow-up rather than left in a general list. The judgement is based on observed behaviour, not a hunch.
- Product PageA product page is the page for a single item that exists to get a shopper to add it to their cart. It carries the imagery, the variant and size options, the price, the shipping detail, and the reviews for that one product. Its job is a purchase decision, which makes it a different conversion object from a signup page built around one call to action.
- Product-Led Growth (PLG)Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a strategy where the product itself does the convincing. People discover it, try it, and experience its value before paying, then upgrade to a paid plan through a self-serve flow rather than a sales demo or an outreach call. The product, not a salesperson, is the thing that turns interest into a purchase.
- Remarketing FunnelA remarketing funnel is a sequence of different ads shown to someone based on how far they got with your product, rather than one ad repeated to everyone who visited. Each stage answers the reason a person stopped at that exact point, so a browser and an abandoned checkout see different messages.
- RetargetingRetargeting is showing ads to people who already interacted with you, visited a page, added to cart, or started a signup, so the ad can assume context and answer the one objection that stopped them, instead of introducing the product cold.
- Sales Qualified LeadA sales qualified lead is a prospect marketing has passed to whoever closes the sale, judged ready for a real buying conversation. The label lives or dies on the handover: what context travels with the lead, not just that a lead was sent. A name with no story is not a qualified lead, it is a row in a spreadsheet.
- SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)An SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) is a prospect that a salesperson has evaluated and judged worth their time to pursue, usually against budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT). Note: SQL here means sales qualified lead, not the database query language. An SQL has moved past general interest into an active buying conversation.
9 terms
Making, testing and refreshing ads
- A/B Testing for AdsA/B testing for ads means running two versions of an ad against each other, with exactly one meaningful variable changed, to learn which produces better results such as a higher click-through rate, a lower cost per result, or more purchases. The point is to change one thing so the difference you measure has a single cause. It applies to any advertiser: a store, an online course, or an app.
- Ad Copy TestingAd copy testing is the systematic process of running multiple variations of ad text, headlines, body copy, CTAs, simultaneously to determine which messaging resonates most with your target audience and produces the best results (highest CTR, lowest CPC, or most conversions).
- Ad CreativeAd creative is the finished ad itself: the image or video, the headline, the body copy and the call to action a viewer sees in the feed. It is the artefact, the thing that gets built and shipped, as opposed to the plan for what a batch of ads should argue.
- Ad FatigueAd fatigue is the decline in ad performance that occurs when a target audience has been exposed to the same ad (or same messaging) too many times. It manifests as decreasing CTR, increasing CPC, and lower conversion rates, indicating the audience has become desensitized to your creative.
- Creative FatigueCreative fatigue is when an ad's performance declines because the target audience has seen it too many times. Click-through rate drops, cost per click rises, and frequency metrics climb, all signs the creative needs refreshing.
- Creative StrategyCreative strategy is the plan behind what a set of ads should say and prove before anyone designs them. It decides the ideas a batch will test, so the group argues different points instead of showing colour variations of one point. It is the step between what to say and how to say it.
- Marketing ExperimentA marketing experiment is a test where you write a specific, falsifiable prediction, pick the number that would prove you right or wrong, decide the threshold before you look at the data, run it, and accept the answer. It is the wider practice of learning from a controlled change, not just the mechanic of comparing two variants.
- Paid Social for SaaSPaid social is advertising on social platforms like Meta (Facebook/Instagram), LinkedIn, TikTok, and X, where you pay to place ads in someone's feed. Unlike paid search, the person was not looking for you, so the ad has to earn attention in the first two seconds.
- Performance MarketingPerformance marketing is a results-based approach to advertising where you pay against a defined, measurable action, a purchase, an install, an enrolment, or a paid conversion, rather than impressions or brand awareness. Every unit of spend is judged by a trackable number.
10 terms
Getting found by search engines and AI
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of structuring and optimizing content so it gets selected as a direct answer by AI-powered search engines, voice assistants, and chatbots. Unlike traditional SEO which aims for page-one rankings, AEO targets position zero, the featured answer that gets read aloud or displayed directly.
- AIO (AI Overview Optimization)AIO (AI Overview Optimization) is the practice of writing and structuring content so it gets cited inside the AI-generated summary at the top of a search results page, where the engine synthesises one answer from a handful of sources rather than listing ten links to click.
- Entity SEOEntity SEO is the practice of getting search engines to recognise your brand, your product, or you as a person as a specific thing they can identify and connect to other things, rather than treating your site as a page that happens to contain the right keywords. An entity is a named thing with relationships, not a string of text.
- Featured Snippet OptimizationFeatured snippet optimization is the practice of structuring an answer on your page so a search engine can lift it into the highlighted box above the normal results, sometimes called position zero. It means giving a direct answer, in the format the question implies, that the engine can pull out and display on its own.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the emerging discipline of optimizing your brand's content, structure, and authority signals so that generative AI systems, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google SGE, and Claude, cite, reference, or recommend your product when answering user queries.
- llms.txtllms.txt is a proposed web standard, a plain text file placed at the root of a website (similar to robots.txt), that provides structured information about a site's content, purpose, and key pages to help large language models (LLMs) better understand, index, and cite the site accurately.
- Schema Markup for SEOSchema markup (also called structured data) is standardized code from Schema.org added to a web page that tells search engines what a thing IS, rather than making them infer it from the text. It marks a price as a price, a rating as a rating, a recipe as a recipe, which makes the page eligible for rich results in search listings.
- Semantic SEOSemantic SEO is the practice of writing for meaning and intent rather than keyword repetition, covering a topic and the concepts around it thoroughly enough that a page answers the whole question someone has instead of matching the single phrase they happened to type.
- Topical AuthorityTopical authority is the perceived expertise and credibility a website has on a specific subject area, as judged by a search engine or an answer engine. It is built by covering one subject thoroughly with interlinked content, so the site reads as a genuine source on that subject rather than a scatter of one-page-per-keyword posts.
- Zero-Click ContentZero-click content is content that delivers its complete value within the platform where it's posted, the reader gets the insight, framework, or answer without needing to click a link to your website. The value is self-contained in the post, thread, carousel, or video itself.
7 terms
Agents, builders and AI-made campaigns
- AI Campaign BuilderAn AI campaign builder is a software tool that uses artificial intelligence to generate complete advertising campaigns, including audience targeting, messaging strategy, ad copy, and creative assets, from minimal input such as a product URL, brief description, or set of goals. It automates the multi-step workflow traditionally handled by marketing teams or agencies.
- AI Content GenerationAI content generation is the use of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI to produce written content, including marketing copy, blog articles, ad scripts, social media posts, email sequences, and landing page text, from prompts, templates, or automated workflows.
- AI Marketing AgentAn AI marketing agent is a software system that autonomously performs marketing tasks, market research, strategy development, copywriting, creative generation, that traditionally require multiple human specialists. Unlike simple AI tools that assist with one task, an agent completes multi-step workflows end-to-end.
- AI Marketing AgentAn AI marketing agent is an autonomous or semi-autonomous AI system that performs multi-step marketing tasks, market research, strategy formulation, copy generation, creative production, and campaign optimization, with minimal human intervention. Unlike simple AI tools that require a prompt for each output, agents chain multiple steps together to complete complex workflows.
- AI-Powered AdvertisingAI-Powered advertising is the use of AI models to do the research, planning, and creative production that advertising used to require a person or a team to do by hand: reading the product, studying competitors and reviews, choosing an angle, and drafting the copy and the images, carousels, or video that carry it.
- Autonomous Marketing AIAutonomous marketing AI refers to systems that independently execute multi-step marketing workflows, research, planning, content creation, and campaign deployment, with minimal human intervention. Unlike assistive AI (you prompt, it responds), autonomous AI takes a goal and works through the required steps on its own.
- URL-to-CampaignURL-to-campaign is an input-to-output shape where a single product URL is enough to produce a reviewable advertising campaign. Instead of filling out a long brief, you paste the link to what you sell, and a model reads the page and drafts the research, strategy, and creative from it.