WHILE IT’S EASY TO FIND VERBOSE, TECHNICAL DEFINITIONS OF MARKETING terms and phrases, it’s harder to find simple, understandable explanations for the nonmarketing professional. Many small business owners and freelance writers do not have formal training or experience in marketing, so I’m including a glossary that provides layman’s definitions of the marketing verbiage used throughout this book.
$10 words and $1 words: $10 words are big words that are used to make the writer sound more knowledgeable but do not add value. Simpler words (called $1 words) are thought to be generally more effective and conversational.
80/20 rule: 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your sales. Those 20% are your most valuable customers.
Active voice: A sentence written in the active voice shows that the subject is performing an action. For example: The cat bit Jane. Also, see passive voice.
Ad placement: The medium, format, and timing of when your ad will run. By purchasing ad placement with a medium, you’re reserving the space and time the ad will appear. Also called media buying.
Bait and switch: Offering or promising something in an advertisement or marketing piece to lure customers and then changing the offer to something else at the time of purchase.
Benefit: What a product can do for the customer or how the product can help the customer.
Blog: A website that includes frequently updated entries (called posts) appearing in reverse chronological order. The term blog was created by combining the words web and log.
Brand: The image a person, business, product, or service portrays in the marketplace.
Business-to-business (B-to-B): Marketing and other business efforts targeted to businesses (e.g., business partners, clients, etc.).
Business-to-consumer (B-to-C): Marketing and other business efforts targeted to end-user customers.
Callout: In print ads, a callout appears in a separate, attention-getting design set apart from the main copy, so customers are certain to see it. Callouts generally include the most important messages.
Copywriting: The use of words in a marketing communication to drive an audience to action.
Corporate rhetoric: Empty, insincere, and pretentious language used to expound the virtues of an organization.
Deceptive advertising: Advertising that misleads customers by making false claims and/or omitting restrictions and necessary disclaimers. See disclaimer.
Demographic profile: A complete description of the various characteristics that make up your customer base. By creating a demographic profile, you can group like customers together. See market segmentation and target audience.
Differentiator: Aspects of your product, service, or business that are different than your competitors’.
Disclaimer: Used to provide details about an offer or product to protect the advertiser and ensure customers fully understand an offer. A method to provide full disclosure to a customer.
Early adopters: Those customers who are usually first to try a new product.
Elastic: An elastic product’s demand is greatly affected by the price of the product. Sales will drop if the price for the product goes up, and sales will increase when the price goes down. Nonessentials are often elastic products. For example, when clothes are on sale, stores typically sell more.
Emotional trigger: A psychological, internal reaction to a stimulant. For example, the emotion of fear can be triggered by a stimulant of seeing a snake (for people who are afraid of snakes). Copywriting can appeal to customers’ emotions by creating a stimulant through words that trigger those emotions.
Feature: The parts or characteristics of a product.
First person: The person speaking in a sentence (I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours).
Four Actions of Effective Copy: Drive, motivate, compel, persuade.
Four Rights of Advertising: The right message to the right audience at the right time and in the right place.
Inelastic: Products whose sales (i.e., the demand for the product) are not affected by price changes are considered inelastic. Most necessities are inelastic products. For example, milk sales don’t typically drop if the price of milk goes up by 10%.
Jargon: Unique vocabulary belonging to a group of people that is generally not understandable to people outside of that specific group (e.g., people in a specialized industry, coworkers, etc.).
Key selling points: The features, benefits, and differentiators of a product or service that are most appropriate and actionable for a specific target audience. See target audience.
K.I.S.S. Rule: Keep It Simple Stupid refers to the style of copywriting in which jargon, corporate rhetoric, and complicated words are replaced with a more conversational tone and language and extraneous information is omitted.
Medium: The place where you run your ad including print (magazine, newspaper, etc.), television, radio, or online.
Opt in: Giving consumers the opportunity to agree to receive marketing communications from your organization.
Opt out: Giving consumers the opportunity to decline receiving any marketing communications from a company.
Passive voice: A sentence written in the passive voice shows that the subject is acted on, but does not perform an action. For example: Jane was bitten by the cat. Also, see active voice.
Perceived need: A nonessential desire for something. For example, people need food to live, but they don’t need chocolate. However, advertisers can create a perceived need for chocolate with copy that convinces customers they want chocolate so badly they actually think they need it.
Qualitative research: Qualitative research focuses on the quality of the results gathered. For example, focus group sessions or one-on-one interviews with prospective or current customers are qualitative methods of research that allow the moderator or interviewer to have in-depth conversations with respondents. Qualitative research is usually conducted early in the process of developing a new product or marketing campaign for exploratory purposes.
Quantitative research: Quantitative research focuses on the quantity of results gathered and is used to conduct trend analysis and evaluate new business and marketing opportunities. For example, a company might conduct a survey with 1,000 current customers to determine their interest in a new product enhancement. The results will help the company develop a product enhancement that appeals to the largest number of customers, while meeting the company’s financial goals. The results also help define the target audience for the new product enhancement and determine the best places to invest the advertising budget.
Red Pen Rule: Once you’re done writing your copy, delete at least 30% of it to make your copy as tight and powerful as possible.
Return on investment (ROI): The amount of money that is earned as a result of an investment. For example, if it costs you $100 to design and place an ad in a local newspaper, then you want to generate enough sales from the ad to make at least $100 in profit to cover the cost of the ad. Also called ROI.
Second person: The person being addressed or spoken to in a sentence (you, your, yours).
Segment: A subgroup of a larger population within your total customer base who share similar demographic characteristics.
Seven Steps to Advertising Success: Awareness, recognition, interest, purchase, repurchase, loyalty, and influencers.
SLAP test: (Stop, Look, Act, Purchase) The criteria your ad must meet to ensure it overtly communicates your message and obtains a desired result.
Social bookmarking: A method of saving and storing web pages in a single online location for future use or for sharing with other people.
Social media marketing: Advertising and marketing initiatives targeted to Web 2.0 such as blogs.
Social networking: Online social networking occurs through a variety of websites that allow users to interact, share content, and develop groups and communities around similar interests.
Social Web: The second generation of the World Wide Web which focuses on user-generated content, communities, networking, and interaction between users. See also Web 2.0.
Target audience: The group of customers that is the focus of your advertising or marketing campaign.
Third person: The person being spoken about in a sentence (he, his, she, her, they, them, their).
Three S’s of Customer Loyalty: Stability, sustainability, and security.
T.M.I. Rule: Too Much Information refers to avoiding extraneous information in copywriting that adds no value to the overall message or for the target audience.
Web 2.0: The second generation of the World Wide Web which focuses on user-generated content, communities, networking, and interaction between users. See also Social Web.