If you’ve ever felt like talking marketing is like speaking an entirely different language, don’t worry, even the most seasoned professionals have felt this way at one point or another!
Whether you’re a business owner working with an agency or freelancer for the first time, you’ve just started a new in-house marketing role, or you’re taking your first steps as a marketer yourself, the industry’s acronyms and jargon can feel overwhelming.
As a full-service marketing agency, we work with clients across a vast spectrum of experience, from business owners who have had little direct contact with marketing to in-house teams who’ve worked agency-side themselves. It’s our job to explain what we do in a way that leaves everyone informed and assured, whatever their starting point. We use acronyms for speed, never to gatekeep.
So here’s our plain-English glossary of the marketing acronyms you’re most likely to hear, grouped by topic. We’ve added a good few since this post first went up, and we’ll keep adding to it.
The business basics
B2B: business to business
This term isn’t at the top of the list just because it’s alphabetical. B2B is a key term in many marketing scenarios.
Simply put, B2B, or business-to-business, refers to transactional or promotional activity between businesses. Whether it’s a manufacturer, retailer, wholesaler, consultancy firm or a marketing agency such as ourselves, there are a staggering number of B2B businesses out there.
B2B marketing targets the decision makers in a business rather than consumers, and typically appeals to the needs of the business (efficiency, profitability, risk) rather than individual emotional needs.
B2C: business to consumer
On the flip side of B2B is B2C (business-to-consumer), which is marketing aimed directly at consumers.
Examples of B2C businesses include high-street banks, hotels, supermarkets and clothing shops, and online retailers such as Amazon or ASOS.
B2C marketing is generally concerned with meeting the needs of individuals. While B2B might talk about efficiency and turnover, B2C typically speaks to needs like wellbeing, convenience and social status.
USP: unique selling point (or proposition)
Your USP is the one thing that makes a customer choose you over the alternatives. It might be a product feature, a level of service, a price, a location or a reputation. The test is whether you can finish the sentence “Unlike everyone else, we…” and have it be true. A lot of marketing strategy starts with pinning this down.
KPI: key performance indicator
A KPI is a metric that represents a broader goal, used to track progress towards strategic objectives.
While this may sound like a fancy way of saying “performance metric”, not every metric is a KPI. Likes on a post or impressions are metrics; a target conversion rate or a cost per lead you need to hit is a KPI.
ROI: return on investment
Return on investment is a financial metric that shows what a business activity has returned in relation to the money spent on it, in other words how profitable it has been.
ROI is calculated by dividing the net profit from the activity by its total cost. Like a KPI, ROI is a measure of success; the difference is that ROI is specifically about money, while a KPI can be any business goal.
NPS: Net Promoter Score
NPS measures customer loyalty with a single question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” on a scale of 0 to 10. People who answer 9 or 10 are promoters, 7 or 8 are passives, and 0 to 6 are detractors. Your score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, so it runs from minus 100 to plus 100.
PR: public relations
PR is how a business manages its reputation and relationships with the public, the press and other stakeholders. In practice that means media relations (getting your story told by journalists), announcements, thought leadership, crisis handling and, increasingly, the social and online conversations about your brand. Unlike advertising, you don’t pay for the coverage, which is exactly why it’s trusted.
ATL, BTL and TTL: above, below and through the line
Older agency terms you’ll still hear. ATL (above the line) is mass-reach advertising such as TV, radio, press and outdoor, aimed at building a brand with a broad audience. BTL (below the line) is targeted, measurable activity such as direct mail, email, events and promotions. TTL (through the line) is a campaign that uses both. Today the terms mostly describe brand building versus direct response.
Websites, search and analytics
CMS: content management system
Historically, you needed coding experience to manage digital content. Content management systems changed that and are now a standard part of marketing practice.
A CMS is used to build websites and to create, edit and publish content without writing code, giving marketers much greater ownership of their content. Examples include WordPress, Squarespace and Wix.
Of course, there’s a trade-off. A CMS offers ease of use, but for complete control marketers may still call on web designers and developers, and day-to-day management still needs someone to own it.
CRM: customer relationship management
While it sounds similar to a CMS, customer relationship management refers to the tools that manage your relationships with customers and potential customers.
From tracking leads and automating marketing emails to managing the sales pipeline, a CRM is designed to make sure every contact gets the right follow-up at the right time, which in turn maximises sales and encourages repeat custom.
Examples include Salesforce, HubSpot and Zoho CRM. (The original version of this post listed Hootsuite here; it’s a social media management tool rather than a CRM, so we’ve swapped it.)
UX: user experience
UX is how comfortable and easy a website (or app) feels to the person using it. A good user experience is usually a combination of the following:
- Easy to navigate
- Accessible for people with disabilities
- Filled with useful information
- Pleasing to the eye
- Fast to load
- Links that work and go where you expect
- Consistent from page to page
Some of this you can manage yourself. For best results, a UX specialist or agency will get you much further.
SEO: search engine optimisation
SEO is the practice of getting a site or page as close to the top of a search engine’s results as possible, without paying for ad space.
It’s a slow-burn strategy that works on several fronts, including:
- The words used in page titles, headings and text
- Images and their descriptions
- URLs and site structure
- Links between related pages, and links from other sites
- Site speed and technical health
By optimising all of the above for your audience, and creating content that’s genuinely useful, you give search engines the signals they need to rank your pages. Basic SEO housekeeping can be done in-house; a thorough job usually needs an SEO specialist or agency.
SERP: search engine results page
The page you get after you type something into Google (or Bing). “Ranking on the SERP” means appearing on it. Today’s SERP is more than ten blue links: it can include ads, a map pack of local businesses, image and video results, “People also ask” boxes, and an AI-generated overview at the top.
CRO: conversion rate optimisation
CRO is the work of getting a higher percentage of your existing visitors to do the thing you want: buy, enquire, sign up or download. It covers page layout, copy, forms, calls to action, trust signals and speed, usually tested one change at a time. SEO and PPC bring people to the site; CRO makes the visit count.
E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness
E-E-A-T comes from Google’s search quality rater guidelines, the document Google gives to the people who assess its search results. Raters look for content that shows first-hand experience, real expertise, recognised authority and, above all, trustworthiness. Google added the “experience” E in December 2022. It’s not a direct ranking factor (the guidelines evaluate Google’s systems rather than individual sites), but it’s a useful checklist for what Google wants to reward.
GEO and AEO: generative engine optimisation and answer engine optimisation
The newest acronyms on the list, and you’ll see them used interchangeably. Both describe optimising content so that AI tools (Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and the like) cite or draw on it when answering a question. The practical advice overlaps heavily with good SEO: clear structure, direct answers, named sources and evidence of expertise.
GA4: Google Analytics 4
GA4 is the current version of Google Analytics, the free tool most websites use to measure visits, where they come from and what people do on the site. It replaced Universal Analytics, which stopped collecting data on 1 July 2023, so if someone offers you “Google Analytics” figures, this is the version they mean.
GTM: Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a free tool for adding tracking code (“tags”) to a website without editing the site itself. Your analytics, ad conversion tracking and other scripts are managed in one container, which makes changes faster and keeps developers out of the loop for routine tracking updates.
UTM: Urchin Tracking Module
A UTM is the tracking code added to the end of a link (the bit that looks like ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email) so that your analytics can tell which campaign, channel or post a visitor came from. The odd name comes from Urchin, the software Google bought and turned into Google Analytics.
Paid advertising
PPC: pay per click
PPC is the general term for advertising where you pay each time someone clicks your ad, most commonly search ads on Google and Bing, but social ads work on the same basis. People often use “PPC” and “Google Ads” to mean the same thing.
CPC: cost per click
If you’re running ads for your business, or are considering doing so, you’ll have heard the acronym CPC.
Cost per click is what you pay for each click on your ad, and it’s an essential metric for any paid campaign on search engines or social media. To work out your average, divide the total cost of your ad by the number of clicks it received.
There’s no universally “good” or “bad” CPC; it depends on your industry and the searches you’re targeting. If you’re bidding on high-value searches such as “payday loans” and your CPC is only 10p, something is off!
The quality of the clicks matters as much as the price. If your ad is unintentionally misleading, or sparked attention through a glaring spelling error, you’ll get cheap clicks from the wrong people. Look at your ad copy, creative and targeting to zone in on the people you actually want. Comparing two versions side by side is known as A/B testing, and it’s standard practice for anyone running ads.
CPM: cost per thousand impressions
CPM (the M is the Roman numeral for a thousand) is what you pay for every 1,000 times your ad is shown. It’s the pricing model for display and social campaigns where the goal is reach and awareness rather than clicks.
CPA: cost per acquisition (or action)
CPA is the total you’ve spent on ads divided by the number of conversions they produced, whether that’s a sale, a booking or a sign-up. It’s the number that tells you whether the campaign is actually paying for itself.
CPL: cost per lead
Staying with paid activity, cost per lead tells you how much each enquiry cost you against your ad spend.
To calculate it, divide your total ad budget by the number of leads you acquired. The lower the number, the better value the ad. Once you know it, you can work on lowering it further by improving your ad copy or adjusting your targeting to reach your ideal customer more accurately.
CTR: click-through rate
Click-through rate is how often the people who see your ad end up clicking it. Take the number of clicks, divide it by the number of impressions, and multiply by 100 for a percentage.
Unlike most of the other paid metrics here, a higher CTR is better. Use CPC and CTR together: CPC measures the efficiency of your spend, CTR measures how appealing your ad is to the people seeing it.
ROAS: return on ad spend
ROAS is the revenue generated by your ads divided by what you spent on them, usually shown as a ratio or a percentage. £5 of sales for every £1 spent is a ROAS of 5:1, or 500%. It’s the paid-media cousin of ROI, with the difference that ROAS looks at revenue rather than profit.
CTA: call to action
One of the more straightforward acronyms on this list, a call to action is what you want the reader to do next. Examples include asking people to:
- Sign up for a service
- Share their opinion
- Buy a product
- Book a consultation
- Download a guide
- Learn more about a service you provide
CTAs are a vital part of any campaign, because they turn attention into action. To write a good one:
- Be brief and unambiguous
- Give people a reason to act now
- Spell out the benefit to them, not to your business
Leads, sales and customers
MQL and SQL: marketing qualified lead and sales qualified lead
An MQL is a contact who has shown enough interest (downloaded a guide, visited the pricing page, opened several emails) that marketing thinks they’re worth a conversation. An SQL is a lead the sales team has checked and agreed is a genuine opportunity. The handover between the two is where a lot of B2B marketing and sales teams fall out, which is why agreeing the definitions matters.
CAC: customer acquisition cost
CAC is everything you spend on marketing and sales in a period, divided by the number of new customers won in that period. It’s broader than CPA because it includes salaries, tools and agency fees, not just ad spend.
LTV or CLV: customer lifetime value
Lifetime value is the total revenue (or profit) a customer brings over the whole time they stay with you. It’s the number that makes CAC meaningful: a £300 acquisition cost is a bargain for a customer worth £5,000 over five years and a disaster for a one-off £50 sale.
AOV: average order value
Total revenue divided by the number of orders. An ecommerce staple, and one of the quickest levers to pull: raising AOV through bundles, free-delivery thresholds and recommendations is often cheaper than finding new customers.
Social, content and media
SMM: social media marketing
The use of social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X and the rest) to reach and engage an audience, through organic posting, community management and paid social advertising.
UGC: user-generated content
Content made by customers rather than by the brand: reviews, unboxing videos, photos tagged with your name, posts in your community. It’s trusted because it isn’t you saying it, and brands increasingly commission “UGC-style” content from creators to get the same feel.
OOH and DOOH: out of home and digital out of home
OOH is advertising that reaches people when they’re out and about: billboards, bus shelters, posters on the Underground, taxi wraps. DOOH is the digital version, the screens that can change creative by time of day, weather or audience, and be bought programmatically.
GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation
Not strictly a marketing acronym, but one marketers run into constantly. The UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 set the rules for collecting and using personal data, which affects email lists, cookies, tracking and lead forms. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) publishes the guidance. If someone asks whether your marketing is “GDPR compliant”, this is what they mean.
Conclusion
Whether you’re brand new to the world of marketing or in need of a refresher, we hope this post has helped you feel more confident in talking about your business needs.
This list covers the acronyms you’ll hear most, but the marketing glossary keeps growing, and so will this page. If you’ve got a burning marketing question, or you need support for your business, have a look at our other blogs or get in touch with the team directly.