A business owner’s guide to understanding inbound marketing lingo
Whether you’ve been in the industry for years or you’re a fresh startup, good inbound (or content) marketing is the key to getting more customers. However, before you get going with a marketing strategy, it’s useful to have a brief terminology list to ensure that you and your marketing team are speaking the same language. So, what are the ins and outs of inbound marketing lingo?
Inbound marketing lingo: a glossary of terms
Inbound marketing
First on the inbound marketing lingo list is inbound marketing… simply the process of harnessing content marketing to draw customers to you. It foregoes traditional (outbound) marketing, i.e. television adverts, telemarketing, flyers, in favour of far more engaging, personal marketing methods, which draw your target audience into you. Inbound marketing thrives on shares, social media and knowing the consumer. Instead of vying for customers through a megaphone, they come to find you.
Content marketing
… concerns relevant and consistent content that is both valuable to, as well as retains, the audience. Consumers don’t necessarily view it as an advert for your business because content marketing blends seamlessly with other non-marketing content.
A good example of this is Facebook’s news feed: if you are a shoe company, creating an infographic about shoes, which appears on the news feed of someone fashion-conscious would engage with your shoe company, without you even mentioning that you want them to buy your shoes.
Contextual marketing
… centres on online shopping and browsing behaviour, by using a customer’s browsing habits to target them with products they’ve previously viewed, or suggestions of products they might like to see. For example, if you browse a pair of shoes on shoes.com, but click away before buying and then go over to another website then there’s a fair chance that the same pair will appear in that sidebar advert, beckoning you to return and purchase.
Lead nurturing
… establishes the importance of a buyer’s journey throughout the sales process, and your relationship and involvement with them during that. Once a buyer becomes involved, channelling communication and marketing into giving the buyer the knowledge and understanding they need throughout the buying process is essential, and often integrates (and is followed by) lead scoring and content strategy.
Marketing automation
… simplifies the process of automated marketing; specifically social media posts, emails and any other repetitive forms of marketing. It’s the summary title of multiple automated software platforms, such as Hootsuite, that allow easy scheduling and communication in automated form, allowing the more mundane marketing tasks to require less thought.
It also automates the task of nurturing your leads through the buyer’s journey, which often means you can educate them before beginning a sales call.
Transactional emails
… are the electronic version of receipts in email form. If you’ve bought some shoes through online shopping, the website will email you a confirmation of this transaction, which serves to both cement your purchase and remind you of that company. Transactional emails are always triggered by consumer action, and could also include password resets, shipping details and welcome letters.
SEO
… stands for search engine optimisation – an organic, unpaid marketing process that takes the key terms from the content of your website and uses them to rank it accordingly on search engines. The more popular a word, the better, as it ensures a greater chance of visibility for your website, and brings it forward in the search engine pages, thus increasing the likelihood of getting more traffic to your site.
PPC
… is the acronym of pay per click. Most common on search engines, if you choose to search, for example, the phrase “shoes”, companies like shoes.com will advertise themselves in the search engine’s poll position, before any organic results. Your click on their website link would then be paid for by shoes.com, who have then essentially bought your browsing and site visits.
These are only some of the inbound marketing lingo terms that will be flung around marketing meetings, but at least you will more equipped as a business owner or marketing manager going into your next meeting with a marketing agency.
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