Where every click is a journey and every impression counts.
The total profit you'll extract from a customer over the entire relationship, assuming they don't leave for a competitor next quarter.
User Generated Content, which is a polite way of saying you're using your customers' photos and videos instead of paying for a professional shoot. It's the marketing equivalent of asking someone to bring a dish to a dinner party you're hosting.
Psychological hot buttons marketers press to provoke specific emotional responses that drive action—fear, joy, anger, or FOMO. The puppet strings of persuasion, ethically questionable but demonstrably effective.
The function responsible for marketing technology, analytics, data management, and process optimization. Often abbreviated MarOps, it's the team that actually makes marketing work while creative people take credit.
The number of people who see your content without you paying for it, a number that social media platforms have been slowly suffocating to death for years. It's like a restaurant that keeps shrinking portion sizes until you're forced to order extra sides.
In marketing speak, growth or reach that you actually paid for rather than earned through genuine audience love—the difference between making friends and buying them. Unlike 'organic' content that spreads naturally, inorganic means you opened your wallet to boost that post, sponsor that influencer, or plaster ads across the internet. It's not fake growth, it's just growth with a credit card attached.
In marketing, any medium through which you push your message into people's consciousness, whether they asked for it or not. Email, social media, carrier pigeons—if it can transmit your brand's desperate plea for attention, it's a channel. Modern marketers obsess over being "omnichannel," which means annoying customers everywhere simultaneously.
High-level executive support or approval that protects a risky marketing initiative from being killed prematurely. Essentially, having a C-suite bodyguard for your crazy ideas.
The ability to serve different ads to different households or individuals consuming the same content, typically through connected TV or digital platforms. Mass media meets individual targeting, like a billboard that changes based on who's looking at it.
The practice of aiming your marketing arrows at specific demographics with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. It's how advertisers ensure that vegan yoga moms see ads for organic kombucha while gamers get energy drinks and RGB keyboards. The digital version involves so much data collection that your phone knows you're pregnant before you do.
Technology that stores, manages, and delivers advertisements to websites or apps, deciding in milliseconds which ad you're about to ignore. The invisible infrastructure making targeted advertising possible and privacy advocates nervous.
Showing ads featuring the exact products users viewed on your website, because subtle doesn't work when you're already being invasive.
An advertisement placeholder that reserves space in a publication or website but intentionally runs blank or with minimal content, often used strategically to block competitors. It's passive-aggressive marketing at its finest.
Your digital shopping cart's prettier older sibling—a holding area where your soon-to-be regretted purchases wait patiently before you commit to the transaction. Also a metaphor for grouping related things together.
The systematic evaluation of competitors' strategies, strengths, and weaknesses to inform your own marketing approach. It's professional stalking with PowerPoint deliverables.
An ad buying method where inventory is offered sequentially to buyers in descending priority order until someone bites. Like a retail clearance rack that goes through progressively less desirable shoppers.
A marketing approach where companies obtain explicit consent before sending promotional messages, as opposed to interruption marketing which assumes everyone wants to hear about your product. Revolutionary concept: not annoying people who didn't ask.
The systematic process of increasing the percentage of visitors who complete desired actions, typically through endless A/B testing and arguing about button colors. Science meets superstition in pursuit of marginal gains.
A prospect who's been vetted by marketing, kicked over to sales, and deemed worthy of actual human attention rather than automated email sequences. Abbreviated as SQL, which confusingly has nothing to do with databases.
In data analytics and sociology, the act of assigning credit, blame, or characteristics to a person or thing based on analysis rather than self-identification. Marketers use this to decide who deserves credit for a conversion, while sociologists use it to study how society boxes people into categories they didn't choose. Both involve making assumptions that may or may not reflect reality.
How often something occurs within a given time period, whether that's radio waves oscillating, ad impressions served, or your project manager asking for status updates. In physics, it's measured in Hertz; in marketing, it's how many times your target audience sees your ad before they start actively hating you. The sweet spot between "who are you?" and "please make it stop."
An aggressive discounting pattern where prices progressively decrease to move inventory, crushing margin like asphalt under heavy machinery. The retail death spiral in action.
The time period during which a conversion can be credited to a specific ad interaction. It's the arbitrary timeframe marketers use to claim credit for sales that may have happened anyway.
The marketing visualization showing how thousands of potential customers magically transform into a handful of actual buyers, shaped like an inverted cone of broken dreams. Each stage represents another opportunity for prospects to ghost your business entirely. Sales teams love drawing these; conversion rates love destroying the optimism they represent.