Where every click is a journey and every impression counts.
A content strategy where you create one major piece then cascade it down into multiple smaller formats—blogs become social posts become email snippets. It's content recycling dressed up as strategic repurposing.
In marketing warfare, the stats that tell the real story—customers lost, engagement dropped, or brand trust obliterated. The price of a bad campaign.
The art of selling stuff online instead of in physical stores, revolutionizing retail by eliminating the need to wear pants while shopping. It encompasses everything from Amazon's global empire to your neighbor's Etsy shop selling handmade soap. Born in the '90s, it's now the default way humans acquire everything from groceries to furniture, much to the despair of malls everywhere.
An opinion piece where a publication's editors climb onto their soapbox to tell readers what to think about current events, traditionally unsigned to represent the institution's collective wisdom (or bias). In media, it's also the content side of the business—the journalism and creative work, as opposed to the advertising that actually pays for everything. Editorial calendars plan this content, while editorial independence is the increasingly quaint notion that advertisers don't influence it.
Software that aggregates customer data from multiple sources into unified profiles, creating a single source of truth about who bought what when. Abbreviated as CDP, or 'the system that knows you better than your therapist.'
The minimum standard for an ad to count as 'viewed'—typically 50% of pixels visible for at least one second. A bar so low that advertisers celebrate ads nobody actually noticed.
The process of finding new prospects who resemble your existing customers, using algorithms to clone your best audience at scale. It's digital matchmaking based on the assumption that people similar to your customers will also tolerate your product.
The strategic art of defining how a product, brand, or service occupies space in the consumer's mind relative to competitors—essentially, it's competitive mind-gaming. In marketing, it's about carving out your unique spot in an overcrowded marketplace by convincing people your mediocre product is somehow different. Good positioning makes people willing to pay $8 for coffee that costs 30 cents to make.
In data science and marketing analytics, the practice of filling in missing data with educated guesses when reality refuses to cooperate with your spreadsheet. It's essentially statistical fortune-telling that lets you pretend your dataset is complete. Data scientists treat it as sophisticated methodology; everyone else calls it making stuff up with math.
The phenomenon where repeated exposure to the same advertisement causes declining performance as audiences develop immunity to your creative genius. Your ad doesn't suck; people are just tired of your face.
When companies publicly support social causes to appear ethical while doing nothing substantive behind the scenes. It's performative activism designed to boost brand image without affecting the bottom line or requiring actual change.
A snippet of code that tracks website visitors so you can haunt them with ads across the internet. The technology that makes people think you're literally reading their minds.
The art of assigning credit to various marketing touchpoints in a customer's journey, often sparking heated debates about which channel deserves the glory (and budget). Think of it as marketing's version of dividing credit for a group project where everyone claims they did the most work.
An experimental method to measure whether your marketing actually caused an outcome or if it would have happened anyway. It's the uncomfortable question every CMO avoids: did we waste our money?
Placing ads based on the content of the page rather than user tracking, showing car ads on automotive sites instead of following users around. It's the old-fashioned targeting approach that's suddenly new again as privacy regulations tighten.
The holy grail of marketing where you transform casual browsers into paying customers, or skeptics into believers. It's the art of turning window shoppers into wallet openers through a carefully orchestrated dance of persuasion, psychology, and sometimes sheer annoyance. Every marketer's favorite verb and every CFO's favorite metric.
The percentage of visitors who complete your desired action, whether that's buying, signing up, or downloading, serving as the ultimate verdict on your marketing effectiveness. It's the number that determines whether you're persuasive or just loud.
Selling products by associating them with the lifestyle customers want rather than the one they have, dangling the carrot of a better version of themselves. The reason luxury brands show yachts instead of minivans.
Advertising where you only pay when a specific action occurs—clicks, leads, sales—rather than just hoping brand awareness somehow translates to revenue. It's marketing for people who believe in accountability, or at least pretend to.
A internal document declaring who you are, who you serve, and why anyone should care—that almost nobody outside your marketing team will ever see. It's the North Star that guides messaging, assuming anyone reads it.
The actual cost to acquire one customer after all is said and done—the metric that separates marketing theater from marketing accountability.
The total profit you'll extract from a customer over their entire relationship with you—basically the only metric that actually matters, yet everyone focuses on acquisition instead.
Fear Of Missing Out, the primal anxiety that everyone else is having more fun, getting better deals, or attending cooler events than you. Marketers exploit this emotion like a villain in a Disney movie, using countdown timers and "only 2 left" warnings.
Valuable content locked behind a form requiring users to surrender their contact information before access. The digital equivalent of 'you must be this tall and provide your email to ride.'