If you’re a marketer and you spend time presenting to others in your company or even clients, you may want to think about the marketing language you are speaking. Because the terms and phrases are so specific to marketing and its derivative traditional, digital, mobile and social channels, it can be very confusing. A former client once told me that I speak another language when I explain strategies and tactics and he does not understand. I have since learned to simplify my language when communicating to non-marketers.
Because marketing is so diverse and even complex, it can be very easy to get caught-up in using the buzz-terms that I call ‘agency-speak.’ Sometimes I act like a chameleon when I am trying to get a point across. I do my best to simplify the terms and explain them using easy to understand terminology.
Here’s a good example of why ‘marketing-speak’ can be confusing for nearly everyone listening, except us marketing geeks.
Mr. client, we propose that owned media be the focus of the content strategy. We will begin the production of eBooks, blogs, landing pages and social posts based on your targeted personas. This will help to increase prospect engagement, SEO rank, KLOUT score and even conversion. Within the first month you will begin showing up on page one of SERPs. We will supplement this strategy with LSI keywords, paid search, display and retargeting to generate increased awareness. Pre-media buy; we will negotiate with publishers to obtain the best possible CPM for your SEM campaign. The integrated campaign will seed with social first for brand lift. Then, as the customer continues through the sales funnel approaching conversion, we will use varying media strategies to capture even more prospective customer attention. CTAs will be used to direct the customer to download pre-produced eBook content and get them to complete the short form. Finally, a viral strategy will be needed in order to obtain a higher percentage of shared content within your social sphere.
Does this sound familiar? If you are guilty of terminating the client’s ability to understand what you are saying by adding too many marketing terms… STOP. Here are a few commonly used terms that are thrown around in casual and formal conversation that can be very difficult to understand.
Lift
Channels
CPM
PPC
CPC
OOH
SEO
CTA
SERP
LSI
SEM
Conversion
Klout
API
eBook
Post-roll
Persona
Meta Deta
Owned Media
Quality Score
Hashtag
Optimize
Organic Search Results
Integrated campaign
Channel growth
Monetization strategy
Inbound traffic
Owned Media
Influencers
Engagement
Viral Content
Content Marketing
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Scott MacFarland
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Email: scmacfarland@yahoo.com