Marketing Terms You’ll Want to Memorize: Part Two

Welcome to part two of Raek’s marketing encyclopedia, your go-to guide for a marketer’s essential concepts. If you missed part one, click here to cover all the most basic content before reading below.

Or maybe you’re already a marketing-savvy sales rep who just needs a quick refresher – regardless, here is where you’ll find the tools of the trade for enticing people to enter that classic funnel into which leads enter and from which conversions emerge.

Backlink

A backlink directs users from some website to another. So if someone else’s website links to one of your pages, that’s a backlink. Good search-engine optimization usually demands high-quality backlinks, which latter plays a major role in telling Google about your page’s popularity, performance, and relevance.

Link Building

Link building when you increase your total number of backlinks (links that lead to your site from some other location online. Link building is usually done by making quality content that other sites will want to share with their visitors.

Marketing-Qualified Lead (MQL)

A marketing-qualified lead is one that has communicated interest by engaging with your content, usually also providing personal details you can use to convert them into a “known lead.”

Sales-Qualified Lead (SQL)

Sales-qualified leads are those who have qualified for marketing and merit contact by a sales-team member. An SQL is considered “ready to be sold,” so this is where you expect them to have over money in exchange for one or more of your main offers.

Conversion Path

A conversion path is some series of events or triggers that move potential leads down the path of conversion. So on a website, this means something like: call to action > sign-up form > thank-you page > thank-you email. Something has to be promised to the visitor in return for their contact information if the conversion path is to be successful. 

Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFU)

TOFU stands for top-of-the-funnel. This is also known as the beginning of the buyer’s journey. During this stage, your business provides info to new leads about relevant products/services, your brand, and various sales questions.

Middle-of-the-Funnel (MOFU)

MOFU only sounds like it’s rated R – it actually stands for middle-of-the-funnel, AKA the “consideration stage” of the buyer’s journey. Middle-of-the-funnel leads have moved from “awareness” to “consideration,” so they’re now prepared to get info on your product/service.

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

BOFU = bottom of the funnel. This is the final stage in a buyer’s journey, also known as the “decision stage.” Once the lead gets to this point, they’re all prepped for your sales team.

Persona

A persona is a general representation of the demographic whom you expect to purchase your product/service. It takes the form of an imaginary person who has many of the traits that define your target audience. The persona profile includes things like behaviors, goals, careers, marital status, and much, much more.

Smarketing

Yes, this is a real term – don’t blame us. Smarketing means coordinating between your sales and marketing teams in order to achieve a shared goal. That goal is typically to increase revenue.

Workflow 

Also known as a “drip campaign,” workflow is a term for moving a lead through the nurturing process, which can take many forms depending on your business. 

A/B Testing 

A/B testing applies to virtually any form of marketing, including landing page copy, social ads, email subject lines, calls-to-action, e-newsletters, and more. Sometimes called “split testing,” this concept basically refers to when two versions of some marketing asset are each tested on different groups to see which one does better. The difference between them can be extremely small, but in marketing, even small changes can make a big difference. 

Business-to-Business (B2B)

B2B refers to business conducted between, yup, two separate businesses. Pretty straightforward.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

When a business sells directly to the consumer, that’s a B2C business. All control of the product/service lies with the company of origin no matter the stage of the sales process—unlike B2B, in which case the recipient business controls the product after acquiring it.

Closed-Loop Marketing

Closed-loop marketing is what happens when your sales team is reporting on leads—and what’s happening to them—to the marketing division. Marketing can then piece together which lead sources to emphasize and which to drop or leave alone. If the leads from Source A aer converting, that’s a good sign for Source A.

Customer Acquisition Cost

This is how much money you have to spend to convert someone into a customer. Acquisition cost refers mainly to marketing expenditure. When you have this value, your business can predict average expenditure needed to generate some desired amount of customers.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

This value is a prediction of how much revenue some customer will generate for you until they are no longer your customer. CLTV often factors heavily into customer acquisition cost (above).

Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization is a broad concept referring to non-website measures you can take in order to boost your ranking in organic search results. 

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is the complement to its off-page variant (above): What can you do on your website to boost those organic search-engine rankings? 

Automation

The use of software by marketers to automate repetitive tasks is generally known as automation. Automated processes are often used together with lead nurture, and depending on how users behave, they get sent different info automatically to cater to their personal interests.