A Beginner's Inbound Marketing Glossary

If your business or organization is just getting started with inbound marketing, you'll be hearing new phrases, terms and acronyms that you may not be familiar with. Here's a basic inbound marketing glossary so that you don't feel lost in the conversations!

inbound marketing - Marketing activities focused on bringing visitors to you based on those visitors educating themselves online and providing them valuable information they are looking for vs. interrupting a person's activity with a traditional style ad.

It's all about sending the right message, to the right people, at the right time (WHEN THEY ARE LOOKING)!

buyer persona(s) - This should be your best buyer(s), or the people you WANT to get more leads/work from. Your buyer personas are who your entire strategy will be geared towards reaching and engaging.

buyer's journey - The process your persona would take when making a decision.

awareness - This is the first stage of their journey and the person will likely be searching for symptoms of a problem vs. looking for a specific solution.

consideration - The person has defined their problem and are researching possible solutions.

decision - The person has found solutions and have narrowed to a short list, in the decision stage they compare their options

search engine optimization (SEO) - Tactics focused on improving organic search engine visibility in an effort to generate more website visitors.

pay-per-click (PPC) - Often thought of as a traditional form of advertising, however PPC advertising can and should be set up with an inbound marketing philosophy.

blogging - Generating content that should help to inform or educate readers. Blogging can be less formal and should not be focused on your business or sales, but instead focused on the problems, questions, or interests of the readers.

content marketing - Content created for your persona in an effort to generate a visitors or leads. This might be ebooks, guides, checklists, videos, webinars, etc. When attempting to generate leads, these would be considered your offer.

call-to-action (CTA) - An image, button or emphasized content placed on your website drawing attention to an offer. When clicked a CTA should take a visitor to a landing page.

landing pages - A website page focused on generating a conversion. It should contain your offer, the value of that offer, and other content that explains why the visitor should take the offer, usually in return for an email address. Landing pages should be short, to the point, have limited distractions and contain the conversion opportunity (form) above the fold.

above the fold - The content on a website page seen without having to scroll down.

conversion - A website visitor takes a desired action. For example become a lead by downloading an offer.

lead - A website visitors that fills out a form for an offer or even a request for more information.

lead nurturing - The process in converting a lead into a "sale" through ongoing education and/or communication. Lead nurturing times will vary based on industry, product, service, the buyer, and the stage of the buyer's journey they are in.

workflow - The actions that should happen after someone converts on your website. This might include marketing automation, direct follow-up or even offline actions.

marketing automation - An automated series of emails sent to leads/prospects based on triggered actions. For example, if a someone downloads a checklist about a specific topic, they would get a series of emails based on their download.

customer relationship management (CRM) - Software used to track communication and engagement with a prospect, lead, or current customer. It should track all interaction and store other information about the individual whether personal, professional or their general interests.

Those are the basic terms you should understand. If you're in a meeting with an inbound marketing agency and they start to talk over your head or get too technical...just ask them to slow down and explain!