Marketing terms, explained plainly

Influencer marketing is the practice of paying or compensating individuals with engaged social media followings to promote a product, service, or brand to their audience.

Referral marketing is the structured practice of incentivizing existing customers to recommend your business to new customers.

Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) is the deliberate effort to encourage customers to talk about your brand, product, or service to other people — in person, on social media, in reviews, in DMs, anywhere.

Review marketing is the deliberate practice of generating, managing, and promoting customer reviews across the platforms that matter for your business — Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, industry-specific sites (Avvo for lawyers, Zocdoc for healthcare, G2 for B2B SaaS).

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based channel where third parties (affiliates) earn a commission for driving a measurable result — typically a sale, but sometimes a lead or a sign-up — for an advertiser.

A hashtag strategy is a deliberate plan for which hashtags to use on social posts to maximize discovery, audience targeting, and content categorization.

Earned media is any publicity a brand receives that it didn't pay for and doesn't directly control.

Paid media is any marketing distribution a brand pays for directly: search ads, social ads, display ads, sponsored content, paid influencer partnerships, podcast ads, billboards, print ads, TV spots.

Owned media is any channel a brand fully controls and doesn't rent: its website, blog, email list, SMS list, app, podcast, owned social accounts (with the caveat that social platforms can change rules), and any content distributed through those channels.

An email drip campaign is a pre-scheduled sequence of emails sent automatically to a subscriber over time, triggered by an action (signup, purchase, abandoned cart) or a date (anniversary, birthday).

A micro-influencer is a social media creator with roughly 10,000 to 100,000 followers in a specific niche or geography.

A nano-influencer is a social media creator with roughly 1,000 to 10,000 followers.

A brand ambassador is a long-term advocate for a brand — usually a customer, employee, or hand-selected creator — who consistently represents the brand to their audience across multiple posts, events, or interactions.

User-generated content is any media — photos, videos, reviews, social posts, blog comments, unboxing clips — created by real people rather than by a brand.

A customer loyalty program is a structured rewards system that incentivizes repeat business from existing customers.

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the free Google product that lets a business manage its presence across Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Shopping.

Local SEO is the practice of optimizing a business's online presence to rank for geographically-relevant searches — searches with explicit local intent ('plumber in Austin', 'best tacos near me') and searches Google interprets as local.

Conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a defined desired action out of the total who had the opportunity.

Customer Acquisition Cost is the total amount a business spends to acquire a single new customer, calculated by dividing the sum of all marketing and sales costs over a period by the number of new customers acquired in that same period.

Customer Lifetime Value is the total revenue (or, more rigorously, gross profit) a business can expect from a single customer over the duration of their relationship.

Engagement rate is the percentage of an audience that interacts with a piece of content — through likes, comments, shares, saves, clicks, or replies — out of the total audience that could have seen it.

An impression is a single instance of a piece of content being displayed to a viewer.

Reach is the total number of unique users who saw a piece of content at least once during a defined period.

Attribution tracking is the practice of measuring which marketing touchpoints contributed to a conversion.

Cohort analysis is the practice of grouping customers by a shared characteristic — typically their acquisition date or acquisition channel — and tracking that group's behavior over time.

Net Promoter Score is a customer satisfaction metric calculated from a single survey question: 'On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?' Respondents scoring 9–10 are 'promoters,' 7–8 are 'passives,' and 0–6 are 'detractors.

The viral coefficient (also called the K-factor) measures how many new users each existing user generates through referrals or shares.

Social proof is the psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others are correct in a given situation, especially when they're uncertain.

FTC disclosure refers to the U.

A content calendar is a planning document — typically a spreadsheet, Notion database, or dedicated tool — that schedules upcoming social, blog, email, and ad content across channels, dates, and themes.