20 Marketing Buzzwords: Navigating Trends and Terminology

The impact of buzzwords on consumer behavior and decision-making

A marketing buzzword is a trend that often reflects consumer behavior and can impact a business's decision-making process. These words are often used to describe tools, methods, strategies, tactics, and consumer behaviors.

Some marketing buzzwords are easy to understand in context, but others are more challenging because they describe entire digital marketing strategies you might not have heard of.

For instance, most business owners have heard of marketing automation and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. However, they may never have heard the term "growth hacking."

There are two types of buzzwords used in marketing: those used by marketing professionals to describe strategies and buzzwords used in everyday conversation to attract customers. The second type of buzzword can also be referred to as slang since it's the use of a particular type of language used to communicate with your target audience.

Using slang in marketing campaigns can help build trust with consumers and lead them through the customer journey. Search engine optimization (SEO) marketers use keyword and audience research to identify and target trending buzzwords to help you better communicate with your audience.

On the other hand, marketing buzzwords are used specifically in the marketing industry to describe various strategies.

These buzzwords change as marketing evolves, and new words and phrases are introduced every day while others decrease in popularity. In any case, since these buzzwords aren't slang and instead describe the marketing tactics and tools you use to communicate with your audience, you must stay up to date with them.

Marketing buzzwords to know

When you create a digital marketing campaign for your business, you should understand the various marketing buzzwords used to describe them.

These valuable terms can help you understand how the marketing campaign is created and how its performance is measured. Here are a few marketing buzzwords every business owner and marketer should know:

Influencer marketing

Influencer in itself is a popular marketing buzzword used primarily for product marketing, but it can also be effective for promoting services. Influencer marketing describes a digital marketing strategy that enables brands to work with thought leaders and personalities to promote their brands.

An influencer marketing campaign can increase brand awareness and help you reach your target audience by working directly with someone they already trust and respect.

Content marketing

Unlike traditional marketing, most digital marketing efforts use content to drive website traffic and business growth. Content marketing uses videos, articles, webinars, infographics, and so forth to attract your target audience. Content marketing utilizes website content and social media platforms to attract and convert customers.

This marketing buzzword is another digital marketing strategy consisting of various tactics like using search engines to increase brand awareness and drive website growth.

Brand storytelling

Brand storytelling supports your marketing efforts by creating a narrative to form a more emotional and personal relationship with customers. Brand stories are authentic and tell your customers where your brand came from and its mission.

An effective brand story connects your target audience to your values, helping to build trust without being too salesy. Since modern consumers care about a brand's values, this narrative can help set you apart from the competition.

User-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is another marketing buzzword related to social media. This content is original and created by customers published on various channels, primarily social media and websites. UGC can be anything from images and videos to reviews and testimonials.

Customers create user-generated content and share their videos and photos on social media with or without the knowledge of the brand. Using this type of content can help you elevate your social media marketing calendar while showing appreciation for your most valued customers.

Additionally, UGC acts as trust signals in the form of reviews and testimonials. When prospective customers read a positive review on your website, they'll take it into account when making a purchasing decision.

Viral marketing

Viral marketing is a buzzword that refers to the fast spread of information. Many brands want to go viral because it means higher word-of-mouth advertising. Viral marketing describes a strategy used to make virality happen as organically as possible.

On the other hand, viral marketing can happen accidentally. While you want all your social media posts to generate interest and attract the right audience, a post can go viral at any point if your audience continues to share it.

Viral marketing campaigns raise brand awareness by using easily digestible content and rely on customers to have large followings. It's not easy for a brand to go viral, but viral marketing employs a variety of other marketing efforts and tactics to increase the likelihood your content will be shared.

Omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing is another popular marketing buzzword because more and more companies realize the importance of reaching customers where they spend their time. With omnichannel marketing, you communicate with customers across channels, including online and offline channels.

Omnichannel marketing efforts enable customers to interact with your brand at any time, whether in-store, on your website, through apps, and on social media.

Omnichannel marketing uses tools like marketing automation to make messages, branding, and customer experience consistent regardless of the channel and where customers are in the customer journey.

Customer journey

The customer journey is the path customers take from the first interaction with your brand through purchasing and beyond. Marketing efforts are designed to guide them through the customer journey to convince them to make a purchase while providing them with post-purchase follow-up to increase brand loyalty.

The customer journey consists of different touchpoints to encourage your customers to keep moving through the journey or risk losing them. These touchpoints can be your website, customer service team interactions, in-store opportunities, and so forth.

Personalization

Personalization is the process of making more relevant marketing messages by tailoring your communications based on the information you know about your customers.

You can tailor almost any interaction within a digital marketing strategy, helping to build better relationships with customers and provide content that's most valuable to them.

Customer segmentation

Customer segmentation is a strategy used to create more personalization in your marketing efforts. This digital marketing buzzword refers to the process of separating, grouping, and organizing your existing and potential customers into groups based on similar characteristics or attributes. You can segment customers based on interests, geographic location, and preferences.

Using marketing automation tools, you can automatically segment customers based on behaviors or actions they've taken on your website.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is less of a buzzword and more of a digital marketing strategy. If you have a website and invest in other online marketing tactics, you should work on boosting your online presence with social media marketing.

Both social media marketing and advertising can help you build more personal customer relationships while supporting your overarching marketing strategy.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is another marketing buzzword that describes a specific strategy for increasing brand awareness and driving website traffic.

SEO is a long-term process that helps your business's web pages rank in search engines, allowing customers to find your business online. It considers factors like keyword usage, mobile optimization, and backlinks to demonstrate authority, allowing your pages to rank higher than the competition.

Big data

Big data is a marketing buzzword that doesn't describe a strategy. Instead, it's associated with how massive amounts of data are used to drive marketing efforts and help your marketing team succeed in a competitive landscape.

Data is crucial in digital marketing and can help you understand each individual marketing campaign, including what works and what doesn't. Yet, big data is also crucial for everyday business decisions because it can help you learn more about virtually every aspect of your business.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a relatively new concept in the world of marketing. While companies have been using marketing automation for years, they haven't seen AI in action until recently.

AI can be used to do everything from helping you write content that attracts and converts customers to predictive analysis that allows you to keep up with inventory management.

AI in marketing can transform how we do business, allowing you to create more effective content faster than ever. In addition, generative AI can even improve the visuals you use to define your brand image.

Of course, you shouldn't lean too heavily on generative AI tools like ChatGPT because there are some inaccuracies, but they can still help marketers ramp up their content marketing efforts to stay competitive.

Chatbots

Chatbots are customer service and marketing tools that can help you build better customer relationships. When customers use chatbots, they're primarily looking for more information.

This technology uses a type of conversational marketing automation that improves lead generation and conversions on websites.

Growth hacking

Growth hacking is a fairly new marketing buzzword that describes low-cost marketing strategies that can help a business attract customers. This marketing strategy requires the use of data to grow the business in the most cost-efficient way possible, prioritizing the testing of innovative growth strategies to determine what works.

It's important to note that growth hacking isn't a single marketing strategy. Instead, it consists of several types of marketing strategies that allow the business to measure each tactic and determine which brings in the most customers at the lowest cost.

The less you spend on marketing, the higher your profits, as long as you can attract enough customers to help the business grow.

Thought leadership

Thought leadership is the process of earning consumer trust by showcasing your expertise in the market. Consumers are more likely to purchase products and services from businesses that can demonstrate their knowledge effectively.

Thought leadership pieces like blogs on your website and guest posts in popular publications can help you build customer trust and improve your reputation.

Gamification

Gamification is a marketing technique that uses elements from gaming to attract customers. With gamification, customers interact with a digital product to make it more engaging.

If you visit a website, you might get the opportunity to spin a wheel to receive a discount. These interactive gaming elements make websites more engaging, which can help keep visitors on the page.

Gamification in the form of points and badges can also help retain customers, acting as a loyalty program. Every time a customer makes a purchase, they might earn rewards points that can be exchanged for discounts.

Customer retention

It's more affordable for businesses to retain their existing customers than pay to acquire new ones. Customer retention is increasingly popular for businesses because it's easier to convince an existing customer to purchase a product than to educate new customers about your products and services.

Brands must employ various customer retention strategies to retain customers, including promotional pricing, deals, loyalty programs, and subscriptions.

Of course, no two businesses are the same. Some businesses have low customer retention rates because they sell big-ticket items, so customers won't need to come back for many years.

However, focusing on customer retention means encouraging customers who have already interacted with your brand to make another purchase.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a marketing process for finding ways to increase conversions on a website or individual web pages. Ultimately, the main goal is to split-test different ideas to see how they perform compared to one another and determine which elements increase the number of conversions on a page.

Conversion rate optimization supports other marketing efforts like SEO. While SEO aims to increase website traffic, it doesn't necessarily aim to convert. A CRO strategy paired with an SEO strategy can help you find ways to convert all website traffic into paying customers.

Agile marketing

Agile marketing gets its name from agile development, which is when teams break larger projects into smaller chunks to make them more manageable. With an agile marketing approach, marketing teams can identify which products to focus their efforts on while working in short bursts to quickly deliver results.

Agile marketing teams work in sprints to complete large projects in smaller chunks in a more collaborative way, allowing managers to test different elements of a project while the team moves on to the next task.

Then, once the sprint is finished, project managers can determine how well the project went and use their findings to improve upon the various processes involved in delivering on a project.

Stay up to date with evolving trends and terminology

Marketing evolves. Several years ago, marketing automation was all the rage, forcing business owners to learn as much as possible about the various technologies involved to help them save time and create more personalized marketing campaigns.

Unfortunately, if you don't stay up to date with marketing buzzwords, you can quickly fall behind because they affect every aspect of your marketing campaigns.

Whether you're focusing on social media, omnichannel, SEO, or PPC, you need tools to create better campaigns. Mailchimp's marketing suite of tools can help you automate your marketing campaigns and create better content.