Fun Marketing Terms

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Buyer persona - Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. Buyer personas should include demographic, psychographic and behavioral information, and they tend to go more in-depth about the role and influence these people have within their companies, emphasizing their goals and motivations.

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Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) - Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) is the oral or written advocacy of a good or service from a satisfied customer (or evangelist) to a prospective customer. It’s widely considered to be the most effective form of promotion.

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Churn rate - Churn rate is a measurement used to calculate customer retention and is significant for recurring revenue companies. It helps companies identify how many customers they lose in a given time period. To calculate churn rate, you divide the number of customers lost during a time period by the number of customers you had at the beginning of the time period.

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Digital marketing - Digital Marketing is any form of communication aiming to persuade people to purchase a product or service that occurs through some form of digital device. At New Breed, we classify marketing efforts as “digital marketing” when they occur through an internet-connected tool.

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Brand positioning - Brand positioning is the way you differentiate yourself from your competitors and how consumers identify and connect with your brand. It’s comprised of the key qualities and values that are synonymous with your company. Brand positioning can be conveyed through a variety of means including tone and voice, visual design and the way your company represents itself in person and on social media.

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Brand awareness - Brand awareness is the extent to which people are able to recall and recognize your brand. It has two components: brand recall, which is a measure of how well a brand name is connected to a product class (e.g. Do customers know that Toyota is connected with the product class of cars?), and brand recognition, which is when a consumer recognizes a brand by its attributes (i.e. a company’s logo or brand colors).Brand awareness encompasses more than its component parts, however. Brand awareness constitutes a scenario when customers can see your brand or product and know that you provide the best solution to their problem.

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Demand generation - Demand generation encompasses — you guessed it! — generating demand for your product or service. More formally, it is the data-driven focus of marketing programs to produce awareness and interest in a company's offerings through the use of technology.

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Flywheel - Introduced in 2018, the flywheel represents a shift in how marketers think about B2B marketing success. The flywheel places customers at the center of a business and highlights the opportunity for repeat business through relationship building and customer service engagement. It represents how you keeping your customers coming back leads to the success of your company.

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Customer acquisition cost (CAC) - Customer acquisition cost is exactly what it sounds like - the cost associated with turning a lead into a customer. CAC is typically expressed as the ratio:

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Cost per lead (CPL) - Cost per lead refers to the amount spent on acquiring a lead. This cost is factored heavily into CAC. The most common use case for cost per lead can be found in paid advertising where there is a direct correlation between the amount of money you are spending in something like Google Ads, and the number of leads you are generating from that spend.

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Customer lifetime value (CLV) - The Customer lifetime value is the predicted net profit associated with the future relationship with that customer.

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Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate - The email sharing or forwarding rate measures the percentage of recipients who share or forward your email to others. It reflects the level of interest and engagement your content generates. A high sharing rate indicates that your email content resonates well and is deemed valuable by your subscribers. Research suggests that the average email sharing/forwarding rate ranges from 0.2% to 0.4%.

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List Growth Rate - The list growth rate shows the rate at which your email subscriber list is expanding. It helps you track the success of your efforts in acquiring new subscribers. A healthy list growth rate indicates effective lead generation and a growing audience to engage with. A healthy list growth rate is generally considered to be around 10% annually.

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Unsubscribe Rate - The average unsubscribe rate for email campaigns is typically around 0.2-0.5%. The unsubscribe rate measures the percentage of recipients who opted out of receiving future emails from your list. While it's natural to see some unsubscribes over time, a high unsubscribe rate may indicate that your email content or frequency is not aligned with your audience's expectations.

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Bounce Rate - The bounce rate indicates the percentage of emails that were not delivered to the intended recipients' inboxes. Bounces can be classified as either hard bounces (permanent delivery failures) or soft bounces (temporary delivery issues). Monitoring your bounce rate helps you maintain a clean and up-to-date email list. A bounce rate of 2-3% is generally considered acceptable for email campaigns. However, it's important to monitor your bounce rate regularly and take steps to address any issues, such as removing invalid or inactive email addresses from your list.

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Click-Through Rate (CTR) - The click-through rate measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within your email. It indicates the level of engagement and interest generated by your content and call-to-action. A higher CTR suggests that your email content is compelling and resonates with your audience.The average click-through rate for email campaigns is around 2.5%. However, the CTR can vary based on factors like the quality and relevance of the content, the strength of your call-to-action, and the clarity of your email design.

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Open Rate - The open rate is a crucial metric that tells you the percentage of recipients who opened your email. It helps you gauge the effectiveness of your subject line and preview text in grabbing the attention of your audience. Open rates typically range between 15-25%, with click-through rates (CTR) around 2.5%, according to various sources. However, this can vary greatly depending on the industry and the specific campaign.

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Keyword research - Keyword research is the process of identifying the search terms that your prospective site visitors are looking for online. It is critical to ensuring your content can be found on search engine results pages. Such research isn’t the only element that impacts your digital visibility, but if you’re trying to drive traffic to your website, you should actively investigate which keywords work best.

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Paid search - Paid search is the practice of displaying ads on search engines based on the terms, or keywords, individuals search for. Paid search works on a pay-per-click basis, meaning you only pay when someone clicks your ad for a given keyword.

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Search engine optimization (SEO) - Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of positioning your content and website so it can rank well on and draw traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO includes both on-page SEO, where you attempt to make alterations to your web code and content to improve its ranking, and off-page SEO, where you try to reach out to individuals outside of your company to acquire backlinks and traffic from other sources.

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Responsive design - Responsive design refers to the way a website automatically adjusts to the screen size you're viewing it from. This will ensure that no matter what device your visitor is using, whether it's their computer, their phone or their tablet, your website will always look great.

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CMS - A CMS (content management system) is a software that allows marketers to create, design, host, edit, manage and track the performance of all of their website content. Popular examples include HubSpot, WordPress and Squarespace.

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Marketing automationIn a nutshell, marketing automation refers to software that is designed to automate your marketing tasks. It's centered around nurturing leads through the buying process by leveraging targeted content that addresses your prospect's needs when they want it. Basically, you're sending them information based on their behavior which is much more powerful than just blasting out emails to everyone.Overall, marketing automation software allows marketers to streamline various tasks, boost their overall efficiency, draw key insights and drive ROI.

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Marketing operations - Marketing operations is everything that happens in your marketing automation and CRM platforms to enable the delivery of the right message at the right time to people who are interested in your products and services. Marketing operations lives behind the scenes. For example, while marketing operations specialists aren’t sending emails, they’re making sure they’re sent to the right person.

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Sales operations - Sales operations is everything that happens in your CRM and sales acceleration platforms to enable your sales team to communicate effectively with clients and control their sales process. Like marketing operations, it lives behind the scenes, supporting your sales team’s execution of strategy and objectives.

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Services operations - Service operations includes management of all the workflows, tools and processes required to maintain and improve the overall customer experience. It includes implementation, management and adoption of CRMs, ticket management, automated campaigns, product usage, knowledge base content and customer feedback.

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Revenue operations (RevOps) - Revenue operations is the alignment of marketing, sales and service to drive accountability and increase efficiency across your business. The goal of revenue operations is to provide more predictable outcomes and accelerate your company’s growth by organizing people, data and processes to help your business run more effectively.

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Top of the funnel (ToFu) - Even though the flywheel has arrived, the funnel still represents how you turn prospects into customers. The top of the funnel refers to the first stages of the buying process. During this stage, buyers are becoming aware that they have an issue and are looking for more information. Whether it's subscribing to a blog or watching a video, you want to have helpful content that prompts visitors to take the desired next steps.

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Middle of the funnel (MoFu) - The middle of the funnel represents the middle stage of the buying process. Buyers have identified that they have a problem and are continuing to do more research; however, now they are looking at content, such as a case study, that brings your business in as a solution to the problem they are trying to solve. This is also where responsibility for leads is typically transferred from marketing to sales.

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Bottom of the funnel (BoFu) - The bottom of the funnel represents the last stage of the buying process. This is when the buyer has identified a problem, researched possible solutions and is getting ready to buy. At this stage, buyers are typically requesting either a free demo or consultation & beginning a conversation with a sales rep.

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Marketing qualified lead (MQL) - A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is the third of six lifecycle stages in the buyer’s journey. MQLs indicate the number of visitors you’ve converted who are good fits for your organization. When a company confirms a lead is a good fit, that lead becomes an MQL. Once a lead becomes an MQL, the company works to further qualify the contact and nurture them down the funnel.

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Sales qualified lead (SQL)- A sales qualified lead (SQL) is the fourth of six lifecycle stages (occurring right after the MQL stage) in the buyer’s journey. An MQL is characterized as an SQL when sales agrees with marketing that the contact has demonstrated enough interest and is a good enough fit to initiate a sales conversation.The SQL stage also happens to be both one of the most important and most difficult stages for a company to define because it’s where the marketing-to-sales handoff occurs.The length of B2B sales cycles can vary greatly, with an average cycle length of around 6-9 months.

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Conversation qualified lead (CQL) - Conversational marketing and chatbots are becoming increasingly important in today's marketing landscape. A Conversation Qualified Lead is someone who has expressed interest in buying via a conversation with an employee or a bot. These leads are coming to you with specific questions that they want answers to in real-time.

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Buyer’s journey- The buyer’s journey is the progression that a contact follows when researching and purchasing a product. It starts with the awareness stage, when buyers realize they have a problem, moves to the consideration stage, when they evaluate different solutions to that problem, and concludes with the decision stage, when they decide which contender best aligns with their needs and objectives and purchase it.The buyer’s journey differs from the customer journey because not every prospective buyer becomes a customer. Individuals might go through some of the buyer’s journey stages without ever making a purchase.

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Multi-touch revenue attribution - Multi-touch revenue attribution is the process of organizing, collecting and cataloguing all of the interactions that occur as an individual decides to make a purchase with your company. It helps businesses understand how their marketing is contributing to the company’s bottom line, giving marketers the credit they deserve for their efforts.

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Customer marketing - Customer marketing is a set of strategies and tactics aimed at your customer base in order to improve their experience with your brand and increase the value they gain from their engagement with you. Through customer marketing, you can boost retention, evangelize your customer base and nurture existing customers toward future sales.

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Customer acquisition - Customer acquisition refers to all of the steps, processes and resources involved in attracting a first-time customer to your business. Brand awareness, lead generation, product marketing, nurturing and sales strategies all fall under the umbrella of customer acquisition — but the concept of customer acquisition stops as soon as your prospects officially close as a customer.

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Customer retention - Customer retention is the act of renewing your existing customers so they continue to work with your company. It’s the inverse of churn. The first step of retention is acquiring good-fit customers in the first place, but there are other components like customer support, customer success and customer experience that contribute to a customer’s likelihood to renew.

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Customer expansion - Customer expansion is the act of increasing the MRR you see from existing customers. This is typically accomplished through upsells and cross-sells.

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Customer support - Customer support is solving the problems your customers have when things go wrong. This is a reactive function that uses tools like a ticketing system or self-service knowledge base.