Essential Marketing Terms Every Business Owner Should Know in 2025

Comprehensive Guide to Marketing Terms for Business Owners

Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy is a detailed plan that guides a business's marketing efforts. It encompasses marketing goals, market research findings, target audience details, key messages, and the specific channels used to reach customers. This strategy can be traditional or unconventional.

Marketing Mix (4 Ps)
The marketing mix, often referred to as the "4 Ps," includes product, price, place, and promotion. These are the key elements that companies adjust to effectively bring a product or service to market, ensuring they meet customer needs. More information on the 4 P’s of Marketing can be found online. Balancing these factors helps businesses position their offerings and meet customer needs effectively.

Marketing Campaign
A marketing campaign is a structured series of activities and messages designed to achieve a specific marketing objective within a defined period. For instance, a campaign might be created around a product launch or a holiday sales promotion.

Digital Marketing
Digital marketing involves promoting a brand online through tactics like paid search, paid social media, and audience segmentation. According to Shizu Okusa, founder of Apothékary, understanding digital marketing basics is crucial for all founders to effectively manage capital.

Multichannel Marketing
Multichannel marketing focuses on promoting products or services across various channels where customers are active, such as social media platforms, online marketplaces, and physical stores. Marc Weisinger, former director at Shopify, emphasizes that understanding how these channels interact is key to successful multichannel marketing.

Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel marketing aims to provide a consistent and unified shopping experience across all channels and touchpoints. Kerri Economopoulos, from Titan AV, notes that while challenging, tools like Shopify Plus can help centralize branding and manage channels efficiently.

Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is a strategy that delivers personalized messages directly to potential customers, using methods like direct mail, email marketing, social media, telemarketing, and in-person outreach.

Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing involves actively pushing messages to potential customers through channels like paid advertising, cold calls, and email blasts.

Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing attracts customers using content, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media, drawing them in with valuable content.

Content Marketing
Content marketing creates and distributes valuable content to attract and engage a target audience, build brand awareness, and establish authority. Additional resources on Content Marketing are available.

Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing uses platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn to connect with target audiences.

Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing involves collaborating with creators who have engaged audiences to promote products or services. Kara Brothers, former president of Starface, explains that this often involves reaching out to individuals with niche followings and providing them with products to incorporate into their content.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing compensates third-party partners for driving sales through their promotional efforts, focusing on performance-based conversions.

Earned, Owned, and Paid Media
There are three main types of marketing channels:

• Owned media: Channels that a brand owns and controls directly, such as a website, blog, or email list.
• Paid media: Advertising that is purchased, like search ads on Google Ads or social media ads.
• Earned media: Exposure gained through public relations, reviews, or word-of-mouth.

Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing targets consumers on mobile devices through tactics like push notifications, SMS messaging, and in-app promotions.

Customer Journey
The customer journey represents the path a customer takes from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement.

Marketing Funnel
A marketing funnel models the stages of the customer journey, including awareness, consideration, purchase, and loyalty.

Call to Action (CTA)
A call to action (CTA) is a prompt that encourages users to take a specific action, such as "Buy now," "Sign up," or "Add to cart."

Landing Page
A landing page is a standalone web page designed to receive traffic from CTAs and typically contains a specific offer or message.

Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation involves grouping customers based on traits like purchase history, interests, or location. Vicky Pasche, co-founder of Dapper Boi, notes that using tools like Klaviyo with Shopify allows them to segment customers efficiently based on shopping behavior.

Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a fictional profile of an ideal customer based on market research, representing their goals, challenges, and behaviors. Additional information on Buyer Persona is available.

Lead Generation (Lead Gen)
Lead generation is the process of attracting and capturing potential customers' interest through forms, gated content, or promotions.

A/B Testing
A/B testing compares two versions of a marketing asset to determine which performs better.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the total cost to acquire a new customer, including advertising, sales, and marketing expenses.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value is the predicted revenue a business will generate from a customer over their entire relationship.

Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on investment measures the profitability of a marketing activity relative to its costs.

Conversion Rate
A conversion rate is the percentage of users who complete a desired action out of the total possible users.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate measures the percentage of users who click on a specific link or ad out of those who saw it.

Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Key performance indicators are metrics used to evaluate progress toward marketing goals. Further details on Key Performance Indicator (KPI) are available.

Attribution Model
An attribution model determines which marketing channel or touchpoint is credited for a conversion. Dan Gray, CEO of Vendry, highlights that the biggest challenge in multichannel marketing is accurately attributing impact to specific channels.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
A customer relationship management system helps businesses manage and improve relationships with customers.

Content Management System (CMS)
A content management system is software that allows users to publish content online without coding.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization improves a site's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Jeremiah Curvers, CEO of Polysleep, notes that with AI tools, SEO is more accessible to non-experts.

Google Ads
Google Ads is an online advertising platform for running various types of ad campaigns.

Retargeting (Remarketing)
Retargeting displays ads to users who previously interacted with a brand but did not convert.

Marketing Automation
Marketing automation streamlines repetitive tasks using software, often leveraging artificial intelligence (AI).

Brand Marketing
Brand marketing promotes a company’s overall brand identity and values. Information on Brand is also available.

B2C and B2B Marketing
Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing targets individual consumers, while business-to-business (B2B) marketing targets business clients.