The Marketing Glossary.
Every Term. Plain English.
100+ performance marketing, growth, and advertising terms — explained without jargon. No padding, no filler. Everything a founder or marketer running paid ads actually needs to know.
A/B Test
An experiment where two versions of something — an ad, a landing page, an email subject line — are shown to different audience segments at the same time. The version that performs better wins. A/B testing is how you remove guesswork from marketing decisions. One variable changes at a time; everything else stays the same.
Above the Fold (ATF)
The portion of a webpage or ad that a user can see without scrolling. Content above the fold gets the most attention, so the headline, primary CTA, and key value proposition all belong there. Originally a print newspaper term — the top half of a folded broadsheet.
Activation
The moment a new user first experiences the core value of your product. Activation happens after signup but before retention — it's the point where a user thinks "this actually works for me." High activation rates are the single biggest lever for improving long-term retention in SaaS.
Ad Rank
A score Google uses to determine where your ad appears in search results. Ad rank is calculated from your bid amount, Quality Score, expected impact of ad extensions, and auction-time context. A higher Quality Score can let you outrank competitors while paying less per click.
Affiliate Marketing
A performance-based channel where third parties (affiliates) promote your product and earn a commission for each sale or lead they generate. You only pay when results happen. Common in e-commerce and SaaS — affiliates might be bloggers, email list owners, or comparison sites.
"Aha" Moment
The specific instant when a user understands exactly why your product is valuable to them personally. For Dropbox, it was seeing a file sync in real time. For Slack, it was the first time a team exchanged 2,000 messages. Identifying your aha moment and getting users there faster is one of the highest-leverage onboarding optimisations.
Analytics
The collection, measurement, and interpretation of data about user behaviour, traffic, and marketing performance. Analytics tools range from Google Analytics (website behaviour) to Mixpanel (product events) to platform-specific dashboards in Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads.
Annual Contract Value (ACV)
The average annual revenue generated per customer contract. ACV is the go-to metric in B2B SaaS for understanding deal size and forecasting revenue. A $500/month contract has an ACV of $6,000. Compare to ARR (annual recurring revenue), which is the sum of all ACVs.
Attribution
The process of determining which marketing touchpoints caused a conversion. Last-touch attribution gives full credit to the final channel a customer interacted with before buying. First-touch gives it to the first. Multi-touch models split credit across multiple interactions. Attribution is increasingly difficult post-iOS 14.
Audience Segmentation
Dividing your total addressable market into distinct groups based on shared characteristics — demographics, behaviour, purchase history, or job title. Segmented campaigns consistently outperform mass campaigns because the message can be tailored to what each group actually cares about.
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
Total revenue divided by total active users over a given period. ARPU tells you how much money each user is worth on average. Rising ARPU often indicates successful upselling or expansion revenue. Falling ARPU can signal that growth is coming from lower-paying tiers.
Backlink
A link from one website pointing to yours. Backlinks are a core ranking signal for search engines — they act as votes of confidence from other sites. Not all backlinks are equal: a link from a high-authority domain in your niche is worth far more than hundreds of links from low-quality directories.
Below the Fold
The portion of a webpage that requires scrolling to see. While below-the-fold content gets less attention by default, users who scroll there are often more engaged and closer to a decision. Long-form sales pages deliberately move objection-handling and detailed proof below the fold.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page without taking any action. A high bounce rate on a landing page usually means the page isn't matching the expectation set by the ad or search result that brought the user there.
Business to Business (B2B)
A business model where you sell products or services to other businesses rather than individual consumers. B2B marketing typically involves longer sales cycles, higher contract values, and multiple stakeholders in the buying decision. Most SaaS tools operate in B2B.
Business to Consumer (B2C)
A business model where you sell directly to individual end consumers. B2C marketing usually targets faster purchase decisions, lower price points, and emotional appeal. Mobile apps targeting general consumers are typically B2C.
Business to Government (B2G)
A business model where a company sells products or services to government agencies. B2G involves procurement processes, compliance requirements, and longer sales cycles than B2B. Less common for startups but significant in sectors like security, infrastructure, and data.
Buyer Persona
A semi-fictional profile of your ideal customer, built from real data and interviews. A good buyer persona includes the customer's job role, goals, pain points, decision-making process, and objections. Personas make your messaging specific — you write for one person, not a demographic.
Call to Action (CTA)
The specific instruction telling a user what to do next. "Start your free trial," "Get the pack," "Book a demo." A strong CTA is specific, low-friction, and benefit-led. The best CTAs tell users not just what to click, but what they'll get when they do.
Churn
The rate at which customers stop using your product or cancel their subscription. Monthly churn of 5% means you lose 5% of your customer base every month. High churn destroys growth — you're filling a leaky bucket. Reducing churn by even 1% compounds dramatically over 12 months.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who click on an ad or link after seeing it. CTR = clicks ÷ impressions × 100. A high CTR means your ad creative or headline is resonating with the audience. In Google Ads, a higher CTR also improves your Quality Score and reduces CPC.
Cold Outreach
Contacting prospects who have had no prior relationship with your business — cold emails, cold LinkedIn messages, cold calls. The effectiveness of cold outreach depends almost entirely on the quality of targeting and the relevance of the opening message. Generic outreach at scale almost never works.
Content Management System (CMS)
Software that lets you create, edit, and publish digital content without writing code. WordPress, Webflow, and Notion (used as a headless CMS) are common examples. A good CMS decouples content creation from engineering, letting marketing teams move independently.
Content Marketing
A strategy of creating and distributing valuable, relevant content — blog posts, guides, videos, podcasts — to attract and retain an audience. The goal is to earn trust and establish expertise so that when the audience is ready to buy, your brand is top of mind. Content compounds over time in a way that paid ads do not.
Conversion
Any desired action a user takes — signing up, purchasing, completing onboarding, booking a call. What counts as a conversion depends on the stage of the funnel. An ad conversion might be a click-through. A landing page conversion might be a trial signup.
Conversion Event
A specific, trackable action that you've designated as a conversion. In Meta Ads, common conversion events include Purchase, Add to Cart, Lead, and CompleteRegistration. The conversion event you optimise for directly shapes which users the algorithm targets.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
The practice of systematically improving how many visitors take a desired action — without increasing traffic. CRO uses A/B testing, heatmaps, session recordings, and user research to remove friction and strengthen persuasion. A 2% lift in conversion rate has the same revenue impact as a 2% increase in traffic — but usually costs far less.
Conversion Tracking
The technical setup that lets ad platforms know when a conversion happened. A tracking pixel fires when a user completes the desired action, sending data back to the platform. Accurate conversion tracking is the foundation of performance advertising — without it, you can't optimise.
Copy
The written text in any marketing asset — ads, landing pages, emails, product pages. Good copy speaks directly to a specific person's problem and shows them exactly how your product solves it. Ad copy that converts typically leads with a pain point or outcome, not a feature list.
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
The direct costs involved in producing the product you sell. For software, COGS typically includes hosting, infrastructure, and third-party services. COGS is subtracted from revenue to get gross profit. For SaaS, low COGS are a defining feature — margins of 70–90% are common.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
How much it costs, on average, to acquire one customer. CPA = total spend ÷ number of acquisitions. CPA is the primary efficiency metric for paid acquisition — your target CPA should be derived from your LTV to CAC ratio. A CPA below your acceptable threshold means the channel is profitable.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
The amount you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. CPC = total spend ÷ number of clicks. Lower CPC means more traffic for the same budget. CPC is influenced by your bid, ad quality, audience competition, and targeting. In Google Ads, a high Quality Score directly lowers your CPC.
Cost Per Thousand Views (CPM)
The cost to have your ad shown 1,000 times. CPM = (total spend ÷ impressions) × 1,000. CPM is the standard buying metric for brand awareness campaigns. Higher CPMs indicate more competitive audiences. On Meta, a rising CPM often signals audience saturation or poor creative relevance.
Cost Per View (CPV)
The amount you pay each time a user watches a video ad past a defined threshold — typically 30 seconds or the full ad if it's shorter. CPV is the primary metric for video ad campaigns on YouTube. Lower CPV with high completion rate indicates strong creative.
Creative
The visual and copy elements of an ad — the image, video, headline, and body text together. Creative is consistently the biggest variable in ad performance. In a mature account, improving creative typically yields far bigger gains than adjusting targeting or bidding strategy.
Creator
Someone who produces original content — videos, posts, newsletters, podcasts — and has an audience that trusts their recommendations. Creators have replaced traditional influencers in many marketing strategies because their content feels native and their audiences are highly engaged in specific niches.
Cross-Sell
Offering customers a related or complementary product alongside what they're already buying. A customer buying a SaaS project management tool might be cross-sold a time-tracking add-on. Cross-selling increases revenue per customer without increasing acquisition costs.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The total cost to acquire one new customer, including all sales and marketing spend. CAC = total sales and marketing spend ÷ new customers acquired. CAC is only meaningful relative to LTV — a $100 CAC is excellent if LTV is $1,000 and catastrophic if LTV is $80.
Customer Data
Information collected about your customers — purchase history, behaviour, demographics, preferences, and support interactions. First-party customer data (data you collect directly) is increasingly valuable as third-party cookies are phased out. The more you know about your best customers, the better you can find more like them.
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
Software that collects and unifies customer data from multiple sources — your website, product, CRM, email platform, and ad accounts — into a single customer profile. A CDP lets you act on behavioural data in real time, enabling personalised marketing at scale.
Customer Persona
A detailed profile of a specific type of customer your business serves. Personas are based on real data and interviews, not assumptions. They include goals, frustrations, decision triggers, and vocabulary — so your marketing sounds like it was written for that person, not a demographic bucket.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A system for tracking all interactions with current and prospective customers — emails, calls, deals, and support tickets. CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive give sales and marketing teams a shared view of the customer. In B2B SaaS, a CRM is essential for managing longer sales cycles.
Deliverability
The ability of an email or message to reach the intended inbox rather than spam or promotional folders. Deliverability is affected by sender reputation, email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), list hygiene, and engagement rates. High deliverability is the prerequisite for effective email marketing.
Desired Outcome
The specific result a customer wants to achieve by using your product — not the features they use to get there. "Reduce time spent on reporting by 80%" is a desired outcome. "A dashboard with 12 chart types" is a feature. Marketing that speaks to desired outcomes converts better than marketing that leads with features.
Direct to Consumer (DTC)
A business model where brands sell products directly to end consumers, bypassing retailers and distributors. DTC brands own the customer relationship and all the data that comes with it. Heavy users of paid social (Meta, TikTok) to drive direct sales at scale.
Drip Marketing
A series of pre-written messages sent to prospects or customers at set intervals, triggered by time or behaviour. A drip campaign might start with a welcome email on day one, a use-case tutorial on day three, and a trial-to-paid prompt on day seven. Drip campaigns automate nurture at scale.
Earned Media
Coverage and attention you receive for free because someone chose to talk about you — press mentions, social shares, word of mouth, organic reviews. Earned media has high credibility because it isn't paid for. It's harder to manufacture than owned or paid media, but it compounds over time.
Ecommerce (Ecomm)
The buying and selling of physical or digital products online. Ecommerce marketing is dominated by channels like Google Shopping, Meta paid social, and email. Most performance marketing tactics were developed in ecommerce before being adapted for SaaS and mobile apps.
Email Deliverability
Specifically, whether your emails land in the primary inbox vs. spam or promotions tabs. Deliverability is distinct from open rate — your email can be delivered (technically reach the server) but still not reach the inbox. Keeping engagement rates high and complaint rates low is critical to maintaining deliverability.
Email Service Provider (ESP)
The platform you use to send and manage email marketing campaigns — Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, etc. ESPs handle list management, automation, segmentation, and reporting. Your choice of ESP significantly affects your available automation capabilities.
Engagement
Any interaction a user has with your content — likes, comments, shares, saves, time on page, replies. High engagement signals relevance and is used by social algorithms to determine distribution. For ads, engagement rate can indicate creative quality even before conversion data is available.
Exit Rate
The percentage of users who leave your site from a specific page. Unlike bounce rate (single-page sessions), exit rate measures the last page visited in any session. A high exit rate on a pricing page may indicate friction or unanswered objections. On a checkout confirmation page, a high exit rate is completely normal.
Experimentation
Running structured tests — A/B tests, multivariate tests, holdout groups — to make decisions based on data rather than opinion. Companies that build experimentation cultures make faster, better decisions. Experimentation is the process that turns intuition into validated learning.
First-Party Data
Data you collect directly from your own users and customers — email addresses, purchase history, behavioural data from your website or product. First-party data is the highest-quality data for marketing because it's accurate, consented, and owned by you. As third-party cookies disappear, first-party data becomes the primary competitive moat in marketing.
Freemium
A pricing model where a product is available for free with limited features, and users upgrade to a paid plan for full access. Freemium creates a large top-of-funnel user base and lets customers experience value before paying. The economics only work if free-to-paid conversion rates are high enough to cover the cost of free users.
Funnel
A model for the stages a prospect goes through before becoming a customer — typically Awareness → Consideration → Conversion. The funnel narrows at each stage because not everyone who hears about you will buy. Knowing where the funnel leaks most helps you prioritise which stage to optimise.
Gated Content
Content placed behind a form that requires a user to provide their contact details to access it. The exchange — email address for content — is the foundation of inbound lead generation. Gating only makes sense when the content is high enough value that someone would willingly share their details to get it.
Growth Hacking
A term coined by Sean Ellis for rapid experimentation across marketing, product, and distribution to find the most efficient paths to growth. Growth hacking prioritises creative, often unconventional tactics over traditional marketing spend. Now used loosely to describe any creative or scrappy acquisition approach.
Growth Marketing
A data-driven approach to growing a business by running experiments across the full customer lifecycle — acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral (the AARRR framework). Growth marketers look for leverage at every stage of the funnel, not just top-of-funnel acquisition.
Heatmap
A visual tool that shows where users click, move their cursor, and scroll on a webpage. Heatmaps reveal which parts of a page get attention and which are ignored. High-traffic areas show up as warm colours (red, orange); low-traffic areas in cool colours (blue). Tools like Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity generate heatmaps.
Impressions
The number of times an ad or piece of content was displayed, regardless of whether anyone clicked. Impressions measure reach. One person can generate multiple impressions by seeing the same ad more than once (frequency). Impressions alone don't indicate engagement or performance — they need to be paired with CTR or conversion data.
Inbound Link
A hyperlink from an external website pointing to a page on your site. Also called a backlink. Search engines treat inbound links as endorsements — sites with more high-quality inbound links generally rank higher. A strong inbound link profile is one of the most durable SEO advantages a site can have.
Inbound Marketing
A strategy of attracting customers by creating content, SEO, and experiences that pull people toward your brand rather than pushing messages out to them. Blog posts, YouTube videos, SEO-optimised landing pages, and free tools are all inbound marketing tactics. Inbound builds an owned audience that you don't have to keep paying to reach.
Influencer Marketing
Partnering with people who have audiences to promote your product. Influencer marketing works because recommendations from trusted voices carry more weight than brand-to-consumer advertising. The ROI depends heavily on audience-product fit — a fitness influencer promoting a meal prep SaaS will convert better than a random celebrity.
Interstitial
An ad or prompt that appears between two pages of content, covering the full screen. Pop-ups, app-open ads, and mid-article overlays are all interstitials. They achieve high visibility but risk annoying users if overused. Google penalises mobile pages with intrusive interstitials in search rankings.
Jobs-to-Be-Done Framework (JTBD)
A framework that focuses on the underlying task a customer is trying to accomplish, rather than their demographic profile. People don't buy a product because of who they are — they hire a product to do a specific job. Understanding the job your product is hired for shapes better positioning, messaging, and product decisions.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A metric you've chosen to measure progress toward a specific business goal. Good KPIs are measurable, time-bound, and directly connected to outcomes you control. A KPI for an ad campaign might be CPA ≤ $30 or CTR ≥ 2.5%. The problem with KPIs is choosing ones that actually reflect the goal — not just the metrics that are easy to track.
Keyword
A word or phrase that users type into search engines. In SEO, you target keywords to rank for organic traffic. In paid search (Google Ads), you bid on keywords to show ads to people actively searching for what you offer. Keyword research reveals what your audience is looking for and how competitive it is to rank for those terms.
Landing Page
A standalone web page built for a single purpose — to convert visitors who arrive from a specific campaign. Unlike a homepage, a landing page has no navigation or distractions. Everything on the page is engineered to move the visitor toward one action. Ad → landing page → conversion is the core loop of performance marketing.
Lead Generation
The process of attracting and capturing contact information from people who might eventually become customers. Lead gen can be inbound (a blog post drives someone to sign up for a newsletter) or outbound (a cold email campaign). In B2B, lead generation is usually the top-of-funnel goal before sales takes over.
Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total revenue you can expect from a single customer over the entire length of their relationship with your business. LTV = average order value × purchase frequency × customer lifespan. LTV is the ceiling for your allowable CAC — you can only profitably spend up to a fraction of LTV to acquire a customer.
Lookalike Audience
An audience that ad platforms generate by finding people who share characteristics with your existing customers. Upload a list of your best customers; Meta or Google finds millions of new users who look like them. Lookalike audiences are among the most efficient targeting options available for paid social at scale.
Micro-Influencer
A creator with a smaller but highly engaged audience, typically 1,000–100,000 followers. Micro-influencers often have stronger trust relationships with their audiences than celebrity influencers and convert better for niche products. Working with ten micro-influencers frequently outperforms working with one macro-influencer for the same budget.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
The predictable, recurring revenue generated each month from all active subscriptions. MRR = number of paying customers × average revenue per customer. MRR is the core financial health metric for subscription businesses. Track MRR growth, churn, and expansion MRR (revenue from upgrades) separately to understand the shape of your growth.
Multivariate Test
An experiment that tests multiple variables simultaneously to identify which combination performs best. Unlike an A/B test (one variable), a multivariate test might test three headlines and two images at once, creating six combinations. Requires significantly more traffic to reach statistical significance.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A measure of customer loyalty based on one question: "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?" on a 0–10 scale. Respondents are split into promoters (9–10), passives (7–8), and detractors (0–6). NPS = % promoters − % detractors. Used widely as a proxy for overall customer satisfaction and growth potential.
North Star Metric
The single metric that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers. For Airbnb it's nights booked. For Spotify it's time spent listening. A north star metric aligns all teams around the same goal and filters out vanity metrics. Choose a north star that represents genuine customer value, not just business output.
Objectives and Key Results (OKR)
A goal-setting framework where you define an ambitious Objective (a qualitative direction) and 3–5 Key Results (measurable outcomes that tell you you've hit it). OKRs create alignment between teams by making goals and measurement explicit. Popularised by Google, now standard in tech companies.
Onboarding
The process of guiding new users or customers from signup to their first experience of core product value. Effective onboarding reduces time-to-value, increases activation, and sets users up for long-term retention. Poor onboarding is one of the leading causes of early churn — users who don't see value quickly don't stick around.
Open Rate
The percentage of email recipients who open a given email. Open rate = emails opened ÷ emails delivered × 100. Since Apple Mail Privacy Protection (iOS 15), open rates have been significantly inflated for Apple users. Use click rate as the more reliable engagement metric for email.
Organic
Traffic, reach, or growth that is earned without paid promotion. Organic traffic comes from SEO; organic social reach comes from algorithmic distribution without boosting. Organic channels take longer to build but provide compounding returns — content you publish today can drive traffic for years.
Out of Home (OOH)
Advertising that reaches consumers in public spaces — billboards, transit ads, digital screens in airports and malls. OOH is a brand awareness channel with no direct click path to purchase. It's measured by impressions and reach rather than clicks. Hyper-targeted digital OOH (DOOH) has made the channel more addressable.
Outbound Link
A hyperlink on your website that points to a different website. Outbound links help search engines understand the context and credibility of your content. Linking to authoritative sources is a best practice in SEO and signals to readers that your claims are backed by evidence.
Outbound Marketing
Marketing that pushes messages out to an audience — cold emails, display ads, cold calls, direct mail. Outbound is interruptive by nature. It reaches people whether or not they were looking for you. Effective outbound requires tight targeting and highly relevant messaging to overcome the inherent friction of the approach.
Owned Media
Channels you control directly — your website, email list, blog, app, and social accounts. Unlike earned media (coverage you can't guarantee) or paid media (distribution you have to keep paying for), owned media is a durable asset. Building owned channels is the most resilient long-term marketing strategy.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
An advertising model where you pay only when someone clicks your ad. Google Search ads and most social media ads operate on a PPC model. PPC is performance-based — you're not paying for visibility that doesn't drive action. Budget management in PPC is critical because costs can scale quickly.
Payback Period
How long it takes to recover your customer acquisition cost from a customer's revenue. A customer costing $120 to acquire who pays $40/month has a 3-month payback period. For venture-backed SaaS, a payback period under 12 months is typically healthy. Longer payback periods increase cash requirements and risk.
Personalization
Tailoring marketing messages, content, or experiences to individual users based on their data, behaviour, or preferences. Personalisation ranges from simple (using a first name in an email) to sophisticated (dynamically changing landing page headlines based on the ad a user clicked). More relevant = higher conversion.
Product-Led Growth (PLG)
A go-to-market strategy where the product itself is the primary driver of acquisition, activation, and expansion. Users discover value through free use before sales ever gets involved. Slack, Figma, and Calendly are canonical PLG examples. PLG requires a product that delivers a clear "aha" moment quickly and has natural sharing or viral mechanics built in.
Product-Market Fit
The point at which your product satisfies a strong market demand — users love it, organic growth is happening, and retention is high. Sean Ellis's test: if more than 40% of your users say they'd be "very disappointed" if your product disappeared, you have product-market fit. Everything in marketing becomes easier after you find it.
Prospecting
The top-of-funnel activity of identifying and reaching out to potential customers who may not yet know about your product. In paid advertising, prospecting campaigns target cold audiences. In sales, prospecting involves researching and contacting potential buyers. Good prospecting relies on a clear ICP (ideal customer profile).
Public Relations (PR)
Managing the spread of information between your company and the public, including media coverage, partnerships, and community engagement. PR focuses on earned media — getting journalists, podcasts, and publications to write about you without paying for it. Strong PR builds brand credibility that paid advertising can't replicate.
Quality Score
Google's internal rating of the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages on a scale of 1–10. A high Quality Score lowers your cost per click and improves ad placement. It's calculated from expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Improving Quality Score is often the highest-leverage optimisation in a Google Ads account.
Reach
The total number of unique people who saw your content or ad within a given period. Reach measures breadth of exposure. Different from impressions (which count multiple views by the same person). In brand campaigns, maximising reach at a target frequency is the primary objective.
Referral Marketing
A strategy of incentivising existing customers to recommend your product to others. Referral programmes typically offer a reward to both the referrer and the new customer. Referral is the highest-trust acquisition channel because the recommendation comes from someone the prospect already knows.
Remarketing
A broad term for targeting people who have previously interacted with your brand — through ads, email, or direct contact. Includes retargeting (ad-based) and email re-engagement campaigns. Remarketing audiences are warmer than cold audiences and typically convert at significantly higher rates.
Retargeting
Running ads specifically to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your ads. A retargeting pixel on your site tracks visitors; ad platforms then show those people follow-up ads. Retargeting is one of the highest-ROAS activities in paid advertising because you're reaching people who already know you exist.
Retention
The ability to keep customers using and paying for your product over time. Retention is the fundamental business metric — without it, growth is impossible. In SaaS, retention is often measured as monthly or annual churn rate. Improving retention by 5% can double company value over several years due to compounding.
Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
Revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. ROAS = revenue from ads ÷ ad spend. A ROAS of 4x means you made $4 for every $1 spent. ROAS is the primary efficiency metric for e-commerce paid ads. For SaaS, ROAS is trickier to calculate because revenue is deferred over a subscription lifetime.
Return on Investment (ROI)
The profit generated from an investment relative to its cost. ROI = (net profit ÷ cost of investment) × 100. Unlike ROAS (which is purely revenue), ROI accounts for costs. A campaign with high ROAS can still have negative ROI if COGS, fulfillment, or overhead make the revenue unprofitable.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Paid advertising on search engines — primarily Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. SEM puts your ads in front of people actively searching for what you offer, which makes it a high-intent channel. Unlike social ads, SEM captures existing demand rather than creating it. Bidding strategy, keyword match types, and ad copy all determine performance.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The practice of improving your website's visibility in organic (unpaid) search results. SEO includes on-page optimisation (content, keywords, structure), technical SEO (site speed, crawlability), and off-page SEO (backlink building). High organic rankings are one of the most durable and cost-effective long-term acquisition channels.
Social Proof
Evidence that other people have used and benefited from your product — testimonials, reviews, case studies, user counts, logos of well-known customers. Social proof reduces risk in the buyer's mind. In ad creative, a specific, named testimonial ("Marcus, SaaS founder, 2x ROAS in 30 days") outperforms a generic one almost every time.
Split Testing
Another term for A/B testing — running two or more versions of a creative, email, or page simultaneously to determine which performs better. Called "split" testing because traffic is split between versions. The key to reliable split tests is changing only one variable at a time and running the test long enough to reach statistical significance.
Top of Funnel (TOFU)
The earliest stage of the marketing funnel, focused on awareness. TOFU content and ads target people who don't yet know about your product or may not even know they have the problem you solve. Educational blog posts, social content, and brand awareness campaigns are typical TOFU tactics. TOFU volume determines how much flows into the rest of the funnel.
Tracking Pixel
A small piece of code embedded in your website that fires when a user visits or takes a specific action, sending data back to an ad platform. The Meta Pixel, Google Tag, and TikTok Pixel are common examples. Pixels enable conversion tracking, retargeting audiences, and optimisation signals. Post-iOS 14, pixel data is less complete than it once was.
Upsell
Offering a customer a higher-tier or upgraded version of what they're purchasing. An upsell happens when a user is already in buying mode — upgrading from a monthly to annual plan, or from a starter to pro tier. Upselling existing customers is significantly more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Content created by users or customers about your product — reviews, unboxing videos, testimonials, social posts. UGC performs exceptionally well in paid ads because it looks and feels like organic social content rather than an ad. UGC-style video scripts are among the highest-converting ad formats for SaaS and mobile apps.
Value Proposition
A clear statement of the specific benefit your product delivers to a specific customer — and why you're better than the alternative. A strong value proposition answers: what do you do, for whom, and why does it matter? The value proposition is the foundation of all marketing copy. If it's vague, every ad and landing page built on top of it will underperform.
Viral Coefficient
A measure of how many new users each existing user refers. A viral coefficient above 1 means each user generates more than one new user — the product grows by itself. Most products have a viral coefficient below 1 but can still benefit from viral mechanics that meaningfully reduce CAC.
Word of Mouth (WOM)
Organic recommendations from satisfied customers to people in their network. Word of mouth is the highest-converting acquisition channel because it comes with built-in trust. Great products with strong aha moments, strong customer success, and referral programmes can systematise and accelerate WOM beyond its natural rate.
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