Sales Glossary For Marketing Peeps

The sales and marketing teams of each business are absolutely vital to the company’s success. However, despite using many similar terms, the two fields often do not understand each other and operate separately. If these teams worked together, goals could be achieved much quicker and businesses would become much more efficient.


Therefore, we have put together this glossary of 99 terms that would be used in sales and marketing. We hope that it will be a comprehensive enough list to benefit both departments.

 

A

 

1) A/B Testing: This is when you test two variations of something to see which works better. This is usually done to help with a marketing plan; the better performing variation will be put to use. This is frequently seen in email marketing, where there will be variations in the subject of the email to see which one is opened more frequently.

 

2) Account: A customer, usually a big corporation. An account usually needs to be looked after carefully by a senior sales manager or even a team. They usually bring in the big bucks and their success is very important.

 

3) Active Listening: Focused listening on your customers’ needs. Instead of just delivering a sales pitch, you address any issues that they might have and take note of everything they say, as well as their body language. You would also ask questions too in order to elaborate on a subject of interest or clarify any queries you may have.

 

4) Analytics: You may have heard all about Google Analytics and how it tells you how many people go to your site and what they do. Well, analytics in general is the interpretation of data. With regards to sales and marketing, it may also include the website visits, but will also be trends in social media or PPC campaigns. Once these trends have been analysed, a plan of action will be formed and the marketing strategies can be improved.

 

5) API (Application Programming Interface): An API allows an app to extract information from an external source and input it into their own app or website. Rather than programming your own software, you can extract the same data from an existing app via an API. This is useful to analyse data and resolve any customer issues.

 

B

 

6) B2B: Business-to-Business relationships – those companies who sell to and communicate with other companies such as Google.

 

7) B2C: Business-to-Consumer relationships – those companies who sell directly to consumers, such as Apple or Nike.

 

8) Bad Lead: A lead that is most likely going to amount to nothing. This the worst possible situation for a sales associate; they spend a great deal of time trying to woo a potential client and they turn out to be a bad lead and won’t take out their service or buy their product. All it amounted to was a waste of time.

 

9) Benefit: The gain that a customer will receive from taking out the product or service that the sales associate is selling. This is different from the features of the service or product; the sales associate should be selling based on the benefits that the service or product has to offer.

 

10) Blogging: Whilst this doesn’t only relate to marketing, it is a really important component. Blogging is a collection of articles on posts on the internet, which would be ideally contributed to on a regular basis to help bring readers to the site.

Business blogging is a form of blogging but with a more aggressive marketing strategy attached. Personal blogging can just be any thoughts and topics, but with business blogging, you need to ensure the right keywords are used and the material is useful for readers. Each blog post must be able to be easily shared on social media and possible opt-in options should also be offered. Business blogs should have the sole purpose of increasing website traffic and converting this traffic into productive leads.

 

11) Bottom of the Funnel: Right at the end of the buying process where leads are almost converted into paying customers. Usually, the consumers need a little bit more persuading; they have done their research and shopped around but are not 100% convinced. At this point, it is always a good idea to follow up with the customer and offer more information or even a free trial in order to help seal the deal.

 

12) Bounce Rate: There can be a website and an email bounce rate in marketing. The website bounce rate is the amount of people who enter your website and then leave almost immediately. It is calculated as a percentage of visitors who leave your site without clicking anything at all. It affects your site’s rankings negatively as they do not stay on your site for enough time to even soak up any information you have on there. It also means that even if your site is just a landing page, you are not converting any leads from this page, so it is not performing well.

The email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that are unsuccessfully delivered to a recipient’s inbox. However, there could be many reasons for an email failing to be delivered, such as an out-of-date email address or mailbox quota is full. Therefore, a high bounce rate in email marketing is not necessarily bad, but it does mean that you will need to update your mailing list.

 

13) Buyer Persona: Your own version of what an ideal customer will be! It is not entirely based on your own hopes and desires, but actually on data of your existing customers and other market research. You build up a buyer persona and then adjust your marketing strategy based on that persona.

 

14) Buying Process: The entire journey that your potential buyers embark before making a purchase (or not). It is usually broken down into three stages:

  1. Awareness – customers become aware of the service or product that you are offering. Or they are suddenly aware that they require a product or service.
  2. Evaluation – you have made it on the potential customers’ radar and they realise that your service or product may just be what they are looking for.
  3. Purchase – the customer is now ready to purchase what you have to offer.

 

15) Buying Signal: Usually music to a sales rep’s ears! It is a sign from the customer that they are ready to make a deal. It could be something as simple as “So, when would my product be delivered?” – this indicates they already have the intention of buying it, so your best closing techniques would be required here.

 

16) Call Centre: Could be either just a department or an entire company dedicated to making and receiving calls on behalf of the business. Nowadays, call centres offer email support too, providing a full customer service experience. A well-run call centre is absolutely vital to a company’s reputation, as they are often the first point of contact for a potential buyer. They are also the first point of contact for complaints, before being escalated to a higher member of staff.

 

Several companies have been known to use call centres abroad, as they are a much more cost-efficient option, but this can also turn out to be a bad investment. Many customers will be annoyed with the language barrier and stock answers often provided by off-shore customer service agents. In-house call centres usually perform a lot better.

 

17) Call-to-action: A prominent button or image on a website or email that invites the reader to click a link to a page that they hope converts to a lead. For example, “Subscribe Now” or “Download our free guide” are common and effective CTAs.

 

18) CAN-SPAM: An abbreviation of “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing.” It is crazy that marketing would be grouped together with pornography but this U.S. law groups them together. It is to help recipients of marketing emails request to be taken off their list. It is this law that all businesses require an “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of each marketing email.

 

19) Churn Rate: This is basically the rate at which you lose your customers! In order to calculate your churn rate, you divide the number of customers you lost during a certain period and then divide it by the number of customers on your books in the beginning of that period. No new sales should be included in these calculations. The resulting number is your churn rate as a percentage.

 

20) Clickthrough Rate: This is somewhat opposite to the “Bounce Rate”, since it is the amount of people who actually click through to your landing page or contact page of your website. As a percentage, it is the number of clicks received divided by the number of visitors on that page.

 

21) Closed/Closing: When the sales representative actually convinces the customer to purchase the product/service. How many customers a sales representative closes was often a reflection on their sales skills.

 

22) Closed-Loop Marketing: This tracks and analyses how the marketing strategy affected a sale throughout the buyer process. It tracks the activity from when the visitor first comes to your website right the way through they pay for the product or service. If closed-loop marketing is done correctly, you can accurately assess how much effect your marketing investment has on the success of your business.

 

23) Cold-Calling: Less popular these days as it is the process of making unsolicited calls to a database of prospective customers. However, it does not produce very good results as customers view these calls as unwelcomed.

 

24) Commission: The payment the sales representative receives for making a sale. It is usually a percentage of the total amount of the sale, but each company will have their own pricing structure for commission.

 

25) Commodities: This is generally a product which is produced and sold in bulk. They usually sell millions of copies and eventually all products will become commoditized.

 

26) Concession: When the sales person gives away something extra in order to secure the sale. It is something conceded during negotiating.

 

27) Consumer: The one who uses the service or product, but may not necessarily have bought it. E.g. you could receive something as a gift and so when you use it, you are the consumer, even though you didn’t buy it.

 

28) Content Management System: All the rage nowadays for websites – it allows non-technical people to create and manage a professional website. It is great for marketing techniques as they can keep their readers up to date in real time rather than waiting for webmasters to put their promotions online.

 

29) Conversion Path: Usually consists of a call-to-action which sends the readers to a landing page. This page will then have some kind of form which captures the data of leads. Once the data is captured, the reader will be led to some sort of content. This whole process is known as a conversion path – it helps companies capture leads.

 

30) Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of people who completed the entire conversion path! Marketers will monitor the conversion rate of each page – high numbers mean the page is performing well. When discovering which pages are not performing well, a new marketing strategy would need to be put into place.

 

31) CPL (Cost per lead): The calculated average cost the company forks out to generate a lead. Marketers will keep close tabs on these statistics as they are very important contributors to Customer Acquisition Costs.

 

32) Cross-Selling: This is a classic technique that sales representatives use to sell more products or services. If they feel that another product would be complementary to the one they are already trying to sell, they highlight the benefits of getting both. For example, this would be if you are purchasing a smartphone in a store and the sales rep suggests getting a case for that phone. This would be cross-selling.

 

33) Customer Acquisition Costs: Essentially the total costs of the sales and marketing teams. To calculate the CAC over a given period of time, you must do the following calculation:

 

(Salaries + Commission + Bonuses + Overheads for those departments + Advertising Spend)/New Customers in that period

 

34) Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Essentially a giant customer database – it enables businesses to organise the data of all their customers (plus potentials) very easily. Not only do they document all the sales data, but they can even track the phone calls and emails made to the customer plus schedule appointments!

 

35) Data Entry: Recording information in a spreadsheet or database for further use. In sales speak, this usually refers to adding customer details into a CRM and logging the interaction and buying activity for that customer.

 

36) Decision Maker: The person who makes the final decision during a sale. They are usually a manger or someone of senior position.

 

37) Demographics: The data of consumers’ ages, lifestyles, habits, genders, employement etc. Analysis of the demographics of a company’s target market is popular when coming up with a marketing strategy.

 

38) Discovery Call: The very first call that is made to a prospect. Usually the call just involves some introductory questions to see if they could be a potential customer and preparing them for the next step of the sales process.

 

39) Distribution: How products are sent into the market. It can apply to services too. A lot of work goes into establishing a good sales distribution model, so that it is appropriate to both the product and the user.

 

40) Dynamic Content: Dynamic content is tailored to the specific audience you are targeting. A popular form of dynamic content is a call-to-action. However, the difference is that you would use one type of CTA for those who are visiting your site for the first time and another for those who are regular customers. They will each receive a different message, tailored to what their likely purpose is on your site.

 

E

 

41) E-book: An electronic book – could be in the form of a kindle, flipbook or simple PDF. They are usually a reference guide to a particular topic, containing useful information on that given area. They are often a collection of blog posts that have been done over several months, compiled into one place. Marketers often use e-books to help with lead generation. It is a great tool to get people signing up to newsletters – by offering them a free e-book, in exchange for their email address.

42) Editorial Calendar: How marketers plan what they are going to post, when and where. It is a calendar just for content creation and distribution. It is essential to any content marketing campaign to help you be organised and get on top of the content. The calendar will track blog titles, social media posts, PR releases etc. and let you know when they should be created and released by.

 

43) Engagement Rate: A term used frequently in social media in reference to the amount of shares or likes an article of content receives. By the audience commenting or sharing the content with their peers, it shows you that these pieces of content are valuable and appreciated by your audience. Those pieces with a higher engagement rate should be promoted and other pieces like it should be created.

 

44) Evergreen Content: Just like the trees, evergreen content never gets old. Well, they get old by date, but readers are still using it way after it was posted. Content SEO is all about generating regular content to help improve SEO, but evergreen content is amazing for SEO as that same page will get an enormous amount of visitors. Therefore, marketers keep a keen eye out for evergreen content.

 

F

 

45) FAB (Features, Advantages, Benefits): Features refer to what the product has to offer, advantages refer to why that product is better than others and benefits refer to what gain the customer will get from using it. FAB is the link between these three aspects and is a key technique used in sales.

 

46) Forecasting: Just like with the weather, it is a prediction of the future, but with sales performance. It is based on previous data, of course, and it helps the sales representatives plan their schedules in advances. It also helps them budget for the week/month ahead.

 

47) Friction: These are the parts of your website that actually deter your prospects from staying on your site. This could be annoying pop-ups, too much text, distracting content, too bright colours etc. Anything that leads your prospects to get annoyed or stressed by your page enough to lead is friction.

 

G

 

48) Gatekeeper: A common example of a gatekeeper is a receptionist or PA. They are the barrier stopping information getting to another person in the company.  A classic situation is when a receptionist will not let someone in a manager’s office, but instead takes a message and delivers it later. That way, the manager can decide in his own time, how to deal with that person.

 

49) GPCTBA/CI: This is the formula that sales representatives use in order to identify and qualify prospects. It stands for:

Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget Authority/Consequences, Implications

 

Goals: What you think your prospect wants from the deal. This is the stage where the sales representative should be giving advice, so as to build trust and respect with the prospect.

 

Plans: What the prospect has in mind in order to achieve their goals.

 

Challenges: The difficulties that may come up along the way. These could be ones already known and ones that are predicted they will face in the future.

 

Timeline: How long the achievement of the goals will take. It may also include a plan of when to try and tackle the challenges.

 

Budget: Just how much money a prospect will have to spend.

 

Authority: The person who will help the prospect make a decision to purchase.

 

Negative Consequences: All the bad things that will happen if the prospect fails to meet their goals.

 

Positive Implications: All the good things that will happen if all the prospect’s plans come through and they meet their goals.

 

H

 

50) Hashtag: A keyword or phrase (without spaces) used with a pound sign in front of it on social media. It is used in order to create a buzz about a certain topic and enables people to join in the conversation about that topic. E.g. #Wimbledon2015 was trending during the Wimbledon tennis tournament last year and #Superbow50 was during the 2016 Superbowl as it was the 50th one. If it is an event like these, the tweets/posts with these hashtags may even be shared with the event hosts and the audience’s questions can be answered.

 

I

 

51) Inbound Marketing: Those marketing activities that attract the attention of customers. It often involves content marketing as interesting, worthwhile content will attract readers to your site and as a result, you will get inbound traffic.

 

52) Infographic: A fashionable approach to displaying statistics in a visually-appealing way. It doesn’t have to be statistics, but it is usually a dry or difficult to understand topic, more often than not involving stats. It is a way for readers to easily digest this content as well as easily share it on social media.

 

53) Influencer: Generally, the decision-makers of the company – those who have power to influence others into making a certain decision. Therefore, if selling to a large organisation, it is important to use your techniques on influencers too, not just the final decision-makers. The influencer’s opinion could sway the decision-maker’s answer either way.

 

54) Introductory Letter: A great way to make your first contact to a company, especially a large organisation. You can improve your chances at getting that all important first meeting if you send an introductory letter letting your prospects know what you offer and why they should choose you.

 

J

 

55) JavaScript: The programming language that does all the pretty things on websites. Well, not all the pretty things, but things like pop-ups or fancy call to actions are coded in JavaScript. It helps build an interactive site, as well as mobile apps.

 

K

 

56) Key Performance Indicator (KPI): A measurement used to track progress towards various goals in the marketing plan. It could be measuring an individual employee’s progress or evaluate the success of a certain activity. Each KPI will be chosen depending on what is being monitored. Usually, the results are compared alongside industry-standard data.

 

57) Keyword: Either a word or phrase that search engines use to index sites. Keywords are the cornerstone behind search engine optimisation. Picking keywords to rank for is not an easy task; first of all, you will need to conduct a lot of research about what is appropriate for your company and what your competitors are ranking for. You should not be picking ones that will be impossible to rank for, but at the same time, you should not pick ones that have a low search volume.

 

Once the keywords have been determined, a long process of on-page and off-page optimisation will need to be done in order for your site to be ranked highly for them on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

 

L

 

58) LAMP® (Large Account Management Process): This is actually the intellectual property of Miller Heiman Inc. It’s a sales acronym that was developed by them and stands for: Large Account Management Process. It is a method for how to handle the biggest accounts (those that usually bring in the most money) in an organisation.

 

59) Landing Page: A single page on a website which sole purpose is to generate leads. It usually offers something to the prospects – a free ebook or free webinar and asks interested parties to sign up with their email in order to gain access.

 

Marketers often create various landing pages depending on who they are trying to target. Even if the landing page is for the same product, it may be designed differently in order to appeal to different target markets.

 

60) Lead/Lead Generation/Lead Nurturing: These are grouped together because they really link into one another. First of all, a lead is a potential customer who has shown some interest in your service or product. Perhaps they signed up to your newsletter or followed you on social media. These leads are now people you should be targeting in order to turn them into paying customers.

Lead generation is the process of trying to obtain more of these leads. This could be by creating landing pages or using more prominent call-to-actions on the website.

 

Lead nurturing is the process of working on those leads already obtained and trying to convert them into paying customers. Things like email marketing and engaging with followers on social will help with nurturing your leads.

 

61) Lifetime Value: An estimation of the net profit of an entire relationship with a customer. This can be calculated for any period of time. The formula to calculate the LTV is:

 

Revenue from customer – Gross Margin

Estimated Churn Rate

 

62) LinkedIn: The most professional of all the social networks. Whilst sites like Twitter and Facebook attract teenagers and encourage the sharing of any material they like, LinkedIn is for business professionals and content on there is always business-oriented. Despite a smaller demographic, it still is one of the top social networks in the world. It is a popular platform for jobseekers and head-hunters alike.

 

63) Long-tail Keywords: More specific than regular keywords and usually contains three or more words. It helps your SEO as the visitors who land on your website due to the long-tail keywords are more likely to find what they are looking for. Thereby, you get more targeted customers and better conversion rates.

 

M

 

64) Margin: Important for budgets – it is the difference in cost between the selling price of a service or product and the cost of that service or product.

 

65) Markup: The extra cost added onto a service or product, in order to cover the overheads of the company providing that service or product.

 

66) Marketing: Wrongly stereotyped as purely advertising or the promotion of a product or service. Marketing is actually so much more and this is why there are entire departments dedicated to marketing in companies. It would include extensive research of products, target markets and competitors, plus press releases, strategic planning of campaigns etc.

 

67) Marketing Automation: Refers to the software that marketers use in order to make everyday marketing tasks easier for them. This can include social media management software or email marketing software. It does not mean that marketers can sit back and just watch machines do their job for them, but it means they can schedule several posts or emails at a time, or set automated replies, so that tasks are easier to manage.

 

68) Microsite: It’s exactly what it says – a very small site! It’s basically supposed to be bigger than a landing page, but not the size of a normal site. Marketers will create a microsite when they want to give something its own brand and have it as separate from the main website. It would have its own domain and distinct branding.

69) Middle of the Funnel: MOFU for short – the stage after a problem has been identified by a lead. They are needing more information in order to feel that the problem has been resolved. Sales representatives will need to refer these leads to case studies or relevant material to ease the leads’ concerns.

 

70) Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): Subscription-based companies will take in a monthly revenue based on their sales and the MRR is the calculation for this.

It is calculated by the total made from new sales plus the total made from upsells, then subtracting the amount lost from downsells and cancellations. The resulting figure is the MRR.

 

N

 

71) Native Advertising: This is essentially very subtle advertising. It is designed to create adverts which blend in with the environment that it is in. An example can be a sponsored ad on your Facebook news feed which has the overall look and feel of other posts on your timeline. These are not invasive, but blend in with the rest of the posts. Or perhaps radio Djs taking part in a discussion about a product – they are naturally advertising this product but are not hard-selling it and it is just in discussion.

 

72) Net Promoter Score: It is the simplest of surveys to determine how happy your customers are with your service or product. It is a metric, on a scale of 0 to 10, which asks the audience whether they would recommend your product or service to others.

 

The NPS is calculated by the equation:

Promoters (score of 9-10) – Detractors (score of 0-6)

 

73) Negotiation: A methodology used in the sales process, where the prospect and the sale representative both make concessions in order to come to a mutual agreement. It usually includes price reductions or additional perks and the negotiation process can take minutes or even years!

 

74) No-Follow Link: A link which tells search engines not to follow the linked websites in content, so as to not get associated with any spam or accidentally violate Google’s SEO guidelines. The no-follow link attribute applies to all the major search engines and not just Google.

 

O

 

75) Offer: In sales speak, an offer is the deal proposed by either the sales representative or the prospect in the hope that the other party accepts and a contract is made. The offer can be declined, accepted, thought about or more information can be requested.

 

In marketing speak, an offer is the prize behind the landing page. This is usually in the form of a free webinar or e-book or maybe a free template such as a business plan template. The purpose of this offer is for lead generation.

 

76) On-page/Off-page Optimisation: Two of the main types of SEO. On-page optimisation is the optimisation of all the elements on a web page. It includes the content, meta tags, H1/H2 title tags, URL optimisation, image optimisation etc. etc. It focuses on the desired phrases and keywords and ensure they are included in that page frequently enough to help the search, but not too much that it damages the results.

 

Off-page optimisation is sort of out of a marketer’s hands. It is based around all the incoming links and how the webpage is indexed. However, social media does affect off-page optimisation, so you can create links to the relevant pages on social media and track the click results there too. However, everything comes down to content, as if you create great content, others will share it and you will generate links.

 

P

 

77) Page View: A single load of a page on your website. A huge part of website analytics – marketers can view just how many views each page on the website has got, thereby working out which are the best performing pages. They can also use it within A/B testing and monitor what effect a small change on the page has on the page view count.

 

78) Pay-per-click (PPC): The form digital advertising where a publisher (usually Google or Facebook or another large social media site or search engine) advertises your link for you and you pay them a small amount of money every time that link is clicked.

 

Search engines like Google display PPC links right at the top of the page when a relevant keyword is searched for. This is why companies are willing to pay for this sort of advertising – they are seen more easily and hope to not only generate more leads, but increase the conversion rates.

 

79) Pipeline: The entire process of converting a lead into a customer. It is a step-by-step process and can often mean the visual representation of the sales process too. The sales representative works their way through the pipeline, trying to take advantage of opportunities at each step.

 

80) Profit Margin: The amount of money that a company earns as a profit each year. It is represented as a ration and is calculated by:

Net Profit / Sales

 

81) PSS (Professional Selling Skills): The selling process that many B2B organisations adhere by. It was made popular by the US Xerox photocopier organisation in the 1960s but is still used today. It heavily focuses on presentation and various closing techniques.

 

Q

 

82) Qualified Lead: The type of leads that are likely to turn into paying customers – they have opted in to be kept up to date with information about your product or service and are looking to know more. They most likely have done their own research and are looking for you to push them to the next stage of the buying process.

 

83) Quota: A certain amount of sales that a representative is expected to make during a certain period. It is essentially their sales goal for that period, whether it be a month or a sales quarter. It is very common practice in a company to set a sales quota to help measure the performance of the sales team.

 

R

 

84) Referral: A recommendation of another potential buyer suggested by an independent party. It could be another buyer who knows of someone who would also benefit from the product or service purchased. Sales representatives who can obtain multiple referrals are looked upon very favourably.


Many companies have referral programs, where current customers will get benefits such as money off, or free goodies, should they successfully refer new customers to them.

 

85) Re-Tweet: Reposting someone else’s tweet on Twitter. Despite being restricted to only 140 characters per tweet, Twitter is one of the hugest social media sites in the world. It is a chance for the public to connect with celebrities and highly influential people and companies, which they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do.

 

Retweeting is a way to show that you appreciate the content shared by that Twitter account and want all your followers to hear it too. You can retweet the tweet simply, or you can quote it and add your own comment too. It is a great marketing tool as it is very quick and easy. You can also request that your followers retweet something, by writing RT just before the tweet.  

 

S

 

86) Sales Methodology: John Kenney, Sales Benchmark Index, described sales methodology as “The ‘how’ of selling as a skill set”. Popular methods include conceptual selling and SPIN selling. There is no one right methodology and it really depends on your business and your team set-up. It is the sales leader’s responsibility to pick an appropriate sales methodology and train and educate the team in this methodology.

 

87) Search Engine Optimisation: The process by which websites rank on search results. It is a huge and booming industry as every company wants to be on the first page of a relevant Google search result.

 

There are so many factors that affect a website’s SEO and it cannot just be boosted instantly – it takes months of hard work. There is both on-page and off-page optimisation (See O) and various factors affect both of these areas.

 

Even aspects such as the coding and design of a website, or the page speed affects the website’s SEO, but there are a few things that marketers can do to help. First of all, content is absolutely key and high-quality content will be sure to positively influence the SEO of your website. Off-page SEO can be helped by building links to your site by sharing content on social media, so an editorial calendar can be planned to work out which content will go where, to help your website’s SEO.

 

88) Sector: An area of the target market that can be categorised by its own characteristics. A marketing expert will need often need to conduct market research to find out what sector their company would benefit in targeting.

 

89) Service Level Agreement (SLA): This is another area where the sales and marketing teams combine and work together. An SLA is an agreement between the two teams that lays out the roles that both teams should be playing in a project. The sales team will usually expect the marketing team to generate enough leads and of good quality. The marketing team will then expect the sales team to pursue these leads and convert them. The SLA helps to integrate the teams and get them on the same page.

 

90) Smarketing: Whilst this is a made-up word, it is catching on and it is an attempt to make the sales and marketing team one big happy family. Whilst they have overlap in various areas, they are two separate departments and are responsible for completely different things. However, the key to any successful business is an integrated sales and marketing team… hence Smarketing team!

91) Social Media: Websites and channels that are purely driven by social interaction. The most popular social media networks are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

 

However, they are not just for social purposes and can be really powerful business tools if used in the right way. Marketers can use these channels to reach more people and spread content much more quickly, thereby allowing themselves to reach more business goals.

 

92) Software as a Service (SaaS): This software is designed to help with project management and data management. It refers to any software which has cloud storage and is hosted by a separate company. A major example is HubSpot.

 

T

 

93) Target Account: It is essentially a sales target – it is the target given to a team or individual in the sales department, to achieve a certain level of sales performance during a given period of time. Bonuses are often given if these targets are reached.

 

94) Top of the Funnel: Abbreviated to TOFU and is definitely not edible in this context. It refers to the initial stage of the buying process, where leads are just trying to acquire more information on the product or service you are offering.

 

U

 

95) Unique Visitor: This refers to someone who is probably a regular user of the website in question. When analysing data on how many visits a page receives, a unique visitor is one who visits that page more than once during the period of time being analysed. For example, if that person visits a page 15 times, the stats would be that the page has had 15 views, but 1 unique visitor.

 

96) USP: Unique Selling Point/Proposition – it is what makes that company or product or service stand out from competitors. It is one of the biggest marketing tools, to define the products USP, as it is easier to convince a prospect of its benefits.

 

97) UX: Shorthand for User Experience – usually refers to how a customer feels about his time spent on a website. It is analysed in great detail in the world of web design, but it can also be a general term for how a customer enjoys their experience with a company. This includes their entire journey from the first moment they discovered the brand, right the way through to the purchase.

 

In order to improve the UX, a sales a marketing team will need to put themselves into the shoes of their customer and think what they would like and appreciate.

 

V

 

98) Viral Content: This refers to content that has rapidly spread across the globe and is shared on multiple social media channels across the world. The content could go viral because it is a ground-breaking piece of news, or it is an amazing new concept. However, many people don’t realise they are creating a piece of viral content, but the world’s reaction to it surprises them and it goes viral. It can often just be something really funny or amazing or often embarrassing.

 

W

 

99) Word-of-mouth: One of the most powerful marketing tools, although it is largely not down to the marketer. It classically referred to the form of oral communication between people, but now it can also mean spreading the word online. It is a powerful and cost-efficient marketing tool, but requires a lot of quality content to be made. Then, clever content marketing and social media marketing plans need to be hatched in order for people to spread the word about your content.