Navigating the world of B2B Marketing and MarTech requires a shared language. And for those starting their career, not understanding the shorthand used can make you feel lost.
The vocabulary of marketing is not static; it evolves alongside technology and strategy. Terms like Account-based Marketing (ABM) are maturing into Account-based Experiences (ABX), while the rise of AI is reshaping concepts from search optimization (SEO to AEO) to data analysis. Understanding modern fundamentals like intent data, attribution models, and the roles of your CRM and MAP is no longer optional.
This glossary is designed to provide a current, practical primer on the essential terms that define today’s B2B landscape, empowering your teams with the clarity needed to adapt and succeed— and if we have left a definition out, email us at [email protected] and we will add it.
To make this resource as accessible as possible, we have organized it alphabetically. Each entry offers a straightforward definition, stripping away unnecessary jargon to focus on what the term means in practice. You will find clear explanations that connect each concept to tangible business outcomes, whether that’s improving conversion rates, boosting efficiency, or proving ROI. Use this guide to foster a shared understanding, onboard new team members, and ensure everyone is speaking the same language of revenue growth.
A
A/B Testing: A method, also known as Split Testing, used in digital marketing to compare two versions of a piece of content (email copy is the most common example) to determine which one performs better. By analyzing the data gathered from user interactions and conversions, marketers can identify which version generates higher engagement, click-through rates, conversions, or other desired outcomes.
Account-based Experience (ABX): ABX aligns marketing, sales, and CS to orchestrate personalized, multi-channel journeys for high-value accounts. It extends ABM beyond acquisition to deliver consistent, measurable impact across the full lifecycle.
Account-based Marketing (ABM): A highly targeted strategy involving marketing and sales teams collaborating to focus on specific high-value accounts to deliver personalized campaigns and messaging to drive engagement and conversions within those accounts.
Account Executives (AE): AE’s own mid-to-late stage sales cycles, from qualified discovery through negotiation and close. They tailor solutions to stakeholder needs, build business cases, manage procurement, and forecast revenue, measured by win rate, average deal size, sales cycle length, and quota attainment.
AI Agents: Autonomous systems that execute specific, designated tasks end-to-end based on goals and rules, often coordinating across tools and data sources. In marketing, they can be deployed execute campaigns, optimize SEO, and/or produce or analyze content with minimal human intervention.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): Involves optimizing content to appeal to AI-driven search tools like Google’s Gemini, where the AI-generated “answer” is used rather than directing the user to click through to a third-party website. It emphasizes structured, authoritative, and concise content that aligns with conversational queries.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): The simulation of human intelligence by machines, enabling them to perform tasks like pattern recognition, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. Generative AI is a subset of AI that is used in B2B marketing to power personalization, predictive scoring, content generation, and optimization at scale.
Attribution: Attribution is the method of assigning credit to touchpoints that influence conversions and revenue. It helps teams understand which channels and activities drive impact across the buyer journey.
Attribution Reporting: Attribution reporting visualizes and quantifies how touchpoints contribute to conversions using models (first-touch, last-touch, multi-touch). In B2B, it connects marketing efforts to pipeline, deal velocity, and revenue.
B
B2B Marketing: Shorthand for business-to-business (B2B) marketing, this is the practice of promoting and selling products or services from one business to another.
B2C Marketing: Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing focuses on promoting products or services directly to individual consumers rather than businesses or organizations.
Buyer Persona: A fictional representation of a specific customer type for a business or brand that is used for developing targeted messaging and optimizing content. It is created based on research and data collected from customers and target audience members that includes information such as age, gender, interests, location, motivations, occupation and pain points.
C
Call to Action (CTA): A prompt that directs users to take a specific next step. Effective CTAs are clear, benefit-led, aligned to the buyer’s stage, and move buyers to act.
Channel Program: A channel program enables partners (resellers, MSPs, VARs, marketplaces) to market, sell, and support your solution. It includes enablement, incentives, co-marketing funds, and performance targets.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): A metric used in digital marketing to measure the effectiveness of an online advertisement or a search engine result page (SERP), representing the percentage of users who click on a specific link or ad after seeing it.
Content Calendar: A tool used by businesses and content creators to plan and organize their content marketing efforts. It serves as a roadmap that outlines the topics, formats, and distribution channels for creating and publishing content.
Content Distribution: The process of disseminating and sharing content across various online platforms to reach a wider audience. It involves strategically distributing valuable and relevant content, such as articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media updates, to attract and engage target audiences.
Content Engagement: The level of interaction and involvement that users have with a piece of content, such as blog posts, articles, videos, or social media posts.
Content Marketing: A strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a specific target audience. This form of marketing focuses on providing valuable information, entertaining content, or educational resources to potential customers, rather than directly promoting a product or service.
Content Strategy: The planning, development, and management of content to achieve specific business goals, delivering the right content to the right audience at the right time. This strategy build brand awareness, engage target audiences, and drive conversions.
Content Syndication: The process of distributing and republishing content across different online platforms, such as blog posts, articles, or videos, on various external websites, social media platforms, or content discovery networks. The primary goal is to increase the reach and visibility of your content, reaching a wider audience beyond your own website or blog.
Connected TV (CTV): Content streamed via internet-enabled devices and platforms, such as smart TVs and streaming platforms. Marketers use CTV for precise audience targeting, measurable reach, and attribution across the funnel.
Conversion Funnel: The step-by-step process that a user goes through on a website or digital platform, leading them towards a desired action or goal, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. It is a visual representation of the customer journey, starting from the initial awareness stage and ending with the conversion stage.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter, after engaging with content. It is a vital metric for businesses as it helps measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and website design.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): The process of improving your conversion rate using design techniques, key optimization principles, and testing. CRO is most often applied to web page or landing page optimization, but it can be applied to social media, CTAs, emails and other parts of your marketing as well.
Customer
Customer Acquisition: The process of attracting and converting potential customers into paying customers, involving various marketing strategies and techniques aimed at building brand awareness, generating leads, and driving conversions.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How expensive it will be to sign a new client. A clear understanding of necessary spend for acquisition is critical to forecasting marketing spend and overall company growth. It is also a metric that investors will want to know if and when you approach them for funding.
Customer Churn Rate: The percentage of customers who cancel or do not renew within a given period. In B2B, tracking churn by cohort, segment, and reason codes informs retention strategy, product roadmap, and forecasts for net revenue retention (NRR).
Customer Engagement: A measure of the level of involvement and connection that customers have with a businesses brand, product, or service.
Customer Lifecycle: The various stages that a customer goes through from the moment they become aware of a product or service to the point where they no longer engage with it. This is a strategic model utilized by businesses to understand and manage their customers’ journey and optimize their marketing efforts accordingly.
Customer Rate Optimization: A process that focuses on improving the conversion rate of a website or online platform by analyzing user behavior and implementing strategies to enhance the overall user experience, which in turn increases the likelihood of conversion or purchase. This may involve A/B testing, personalized content, streamlined checkout processes, and targeted offers.
Customer Retention: Strategies and actions taken by businesses to retain existing customers and ensure their long-term loyalty.
Customer Retention Rate: The percentage of customers that a business is able to retain over a specified period of time.
Customer Success Manager (CSM): A CSM owns post-sale value realization, retention, and expansion by proactively driving adoption, outcomes, and stakeholder alignment.
Customer Segmentation: The process of dividing a target market into distinct groups or segments based on common characteristics, preferences, behaviors, or needs to better understand customers and tailor marketing strategies to effectively reach and engage each segment. By segmenting customers, businesses can create personalized marketing messages, products, and services that resonate with specific groups, leading to higher customer satisfaction and increased sales.
D
Data-driven Marketing: A strategy that involves collecting and analyzing buyer data to gain insights into their behavior and preferences as a way to guide marketing decisions and optimize campaigns. This information is used to create personalized and targeted marketing messages, increasing the chances of engaging with the right audience and driving desired actions.
Demand Generation: The strategic marketing activities and tactics that are focused on creating awareness and generating interest in a product or service. It aims to attract and engage potential customers, ultimately driving them to take action and make a purchase. Demand generation encompasses a wide range of techniques, including content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and events.
Digital Marketing: The use of various digital channels and platforms to promote and advertise products or services to reach and engage a target audience online, drive traffic to a website or landing page, and ultimately convert visitors into customers.
Direct Mail Marketing: Highly targeted physical mailers and gifts that break digital noise and drive response. Often orchestrated with ABM plays, personalized landing pages, and SDR follow-up for measurable pipeline impact.
Drip Nurture Campaign: The delivery of timed, sequenced messages to move leads through awareness to consideration. In B2B, content is behavior-triggered and segmented by persona, stage, and intent.
E
Email Marketing: Targeted, permission-based messaging to nurture, convert, and expand accounts. Focuses on segmentation, lifecycle automation, deliverability, and attribution to pipeline and revenue.
Email Marketing Automation: The process of automating various aspects of an email marketing campaign using software or tools to send targeted and personalized emails to a specific audience based on their behavior, preferences, or actions.
Email List Building: A method of collecting and maintaining a database of email subscribers who have opted into receiving marketing messages from your business. This database is a critical component of any successful digital marketing strategy, as it allows you to communicate directly with your audience and build relationships over time.
Enablement: The structured process of equipping customer-facing teams (sales, SDRs, CSMs, partners) with the content, tools, training, and guidance they need to effectively engage buyers and accelerate revenue. In practice, it includes onboarding, playbooks, messaging, competitive intel, objection handling, and just-in-time assets measured by adoption, win rates, deal velocity, and productivity.
Enterprise: Large, complex organizations with significant employee counts, multi-layered buying committees, and stringent security, compliance, and procurement requirements. In B2B marketing and sales, “enterprise” typically implies longer sales cycles, higher contract values, customized solutions, and account-based strategies tailored to specific stakeholders and use cases.
Event Marketing: Strategy and execution of in-person and virtual touchpoints— trade shows, field events, webinars— to generate demand and deepen relationships.
F
Firmographic: Company-level attributes used for segmentation and targeting—industry, size, revenue, employee count, geography, growth stage, and ownership model. Helps qualify accounts, size markets, and tailor messaging.
First-party Data: Information collected directly from an audience or customers through owned channels and platforms. This includes website activity, email engagement, purchase history, social media interactions, and CRM data.
Funnel: A staged model of the buyer journey—from awareness and consideration to decision and post-sale expansion—used to plan, execute, and measure marketing and sales activities. In B2B, teams map content, channels, and KPIs to each stage to diagnose leakage, improve conversion rates, and forecast pipeline and revenue.
G
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): The practice of optimizing content to be selected, summarized, and cited by generative AI engines. It emphasizes factual depth, structure, provenance signals, and machine-readable context (schemas, citations).
Go-to-market (GTM): A strategic and operational plan for introducing and selling a product or service to its target market and, more generally, helping it succeed commercially. A GTM plan should include strategic activities like targeting and positioning, and tactical plays like selecting promotional channels and creating campaigns and content.
Google Ads: Formerly AdWords, this is Google’s advertising platform for search, display, YouTube, and more. B2B marketers use it for intent-led lead gen, remarketing, and brand protection on core keywords.
H
Hub: A centralized destination that organizes and distributes related content, data, or capabilities (e.g., a content hub, partner hub, or data hub). Hubs improve discoverability, consistency, and reuse—streamlining workflows, enabling self-serve access for teams or partners, and boosting campaign performance through coherent, on-brand assets.
I
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): A profile that defines the firmographic, technographic, and behavioral traits of companies most likely to buy, succeed, and expand. It focuses targeting, messaging, and resource allocation for maximum ROI.
Inbound Lead Generation: The process of attracting potential customers to a business or website through various marketing strategies and tactics focusing on creating valuable, engaging content that draws people in and encourages them to take action.
Inbound Lead Nurturing: The process of developing and cultivating relationships with potential customers who have shown interest in a company’s products or services. It involves strategically engaging these leads through various channels with the aim of turning them into qualified sales opportunities.
Inbound Marketing: A strategy that focuses on attracting and engaging potential customers through valuable content and experiences, often thought leadership and other non-product-based content. It is a customer-centric approach that aims to build trust and credibility with the target audience.
Influencer Marketing: Partnering with credible industry voices—analysts, creators, practitioners—to reach, educate, and build trust with niche B2B audiences. Includes content collaborations, webinars, reviews, and paid/earned amplification with compliance and disclosure.
Intent Data: Signals indicating which accounts are actively researching topics, products, or competitors. It enables timely outreach, prioritized account lists, and personalized messaging based on buying-stage activity.
Integrated Marketing: Coordinated campaigns that unify strategy, messaging, creative, channels, and data across the funnel. The goal is compounding impact, consistent experiences, and clearer attribution.
J
Job-Qualified Lead (JQL): A lead scoring framework that qualifies prospects based on whether they’re actively trying to accomplish a specific “job to be done,” not just demographic fit or intent signals. Teams map content and offers to the job state to prioritize outreach, improve conversion, and align messaging with the buyer’s progress and pains.
K
Key Performance Indicators (KPI): Quantifiable metrics used to assess progress toward marketing objectives. B2B teams align KPIs to pipeline and revenue outcomes—SQLs, SAL-to-opportunity rate, CAC payback)
L
Landing Page: A specific web page that serves as the entry point where users “land” after clicking on a specific advertisement, search result, or call-to-action, to point them towards taking a desired action, such as accessing information or making a purchase.
Landing Page Optimization: A process of improving the performance of a landing page to maximize its effectiveness in converting visitors into leads or customers. It involves analyzing and updating headlines, images, forms, calls-to-action, and overall design to create a persuasive action.
Lead Conversion: Converting potential customers, or leads, into paying customers. It involves taking a lead, who may have shown interest in a product or service, and guiding them through a series of steps to ultimately make a purchase.
Lead Database: A centralized base that stores and organizes information about potential customers or leads that includes details such as contact information, demographics, interaction history, and purchase intent.
Lead Funnel: The process of guiding potential customers through various stages of the buyer’s journey, with the ultimate goal of converting them into paying customers.
Lead Generation: The actions involved in attracting and capturing potential customers, or leads, for a business. It involves strategies and techniques aimed at enticing individuals to provide their contact information or express interest in a product or service. This information is then used by the business to nurture and move leads through the buyers journey.
Lead Magnet: A valuable piece of content— such as e-books, whitepapers, templates, webinars, or free trials— or incentive that businesses offer to their target audience in exchange for their contact information, typically an email address. It serves as a tool to attract potential customers and generate leads.
Lead Management: The capturing, tracking, and nurturing of potential customers or leads throughout their journey from initial contact to becoming a paying customer. It involves various activities such as lead generation, lead qualification, lead scoring, and lead nurturing.
Lead Nurturing: The building of relationships with potential customers and guiding them through the sales funnel. It involves providing relevant and valuable information to prospects at each stage of their buying journey in order to keep them engaged and move them closer to making a purchase.
Lead Scoring: The ranking of potential customers based on their likelihood to convert into a sale using numerical values, or scores, to leads based on their engagement and behavior with a company’s marketing efforts.
List Buy/List Purchase: Purchasing a third-party contact list for outreach.
M
Marketing Analytics: The practice of measuring, analyzing, and interpreting data related to marketing efforts to gain insights and make data-driven decisions. It encompasses the collection and analysis of data social media, email campaigns, website traffic, and customer behavior.
Marketing Attribution: Identifying and assigning value to various marketing touchpoints or channels that contribute to a conversion or sale. This helps marketers understand which marketing activities are driving desired outcomes and allows them to make data-driven decisions to optimize their marketing efforts.
Marketing Automation: The use of technology and software to automate repetitive marketing tasks and processes— like lead nurturing, email campaigns, social media posting— allowing businesses to streamline their marketing efforts and increase efficiency.
Marketing Automation Platform (MAP): Software marketers use MAP to automate communications, including email sends, lead scoring and lead distribution/routing.
Marketing Channel: A strategic and coordinated set of activities and tactics to promote a product, service, or brand to a specific target audience to create awareness, generate leads, move users along the buyers journey, and drive sales. Forms include including online advertisements, social media promotions, email marketing, and content marketing.
Marketing Campaign: The strategic and coordinated set of activities and tactics designed to promote a product, service, or brand to a specific target audience looking to create awareness, generate leads, and drive sales.
Marketing Collateral: The collection of materials and resources used to promote a brand, product, or service. These materials, designed to communicate key information, create brand awareness, and persuade potential customers to take action, include brochures, flyers, business cards, product catalogs, whitepapers, and case studies.
Marketing Conversion Metrics: The benchmarks marketers use to measure the effectiveness and success of marketing efforts in terms of generating conversions. These measures provide valuable data and insights into how well marketing strategies are performing and where improvements can be made.
Marketing Dashboard: An information management tool that allows marketing professionals to track, analyze, and visualize KPIs related to their marketing campaigns. It provides a comprehensive overview of the marketing metrics in one place, making it easier to make data-driven decisions.
Marketing Data Analytics: The process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to gain insights and make informed decisions in the field of marketing using various tools and techniques to measure and analyze data related to customer behavior, campaign performance, market trends, and competitor analysis.
Marketing Funnel Stages: The various steps that potential customers go through as they progress from being aware of a product or service to becoming a paying customer. The marketing funnel consists of four main stages: awareness, interest, consideration, and conversion.
Marketing Metrics: The quantitative measurements used to evaluate the effectiveness and success of marketing campaigns, strategies, and initiatives. These metrics provide insights into various aspects of marketing performance, such as customer engagement, lead generation, conversion rates, website traffic, and return on investment (ROI).
MarOps: Short for Marketing Operations, this standardizes processes, data, and tech to improve efficiency, compliance, and measurement. It owns the marketing stack, workflows, lead flow, and performance reporting.
Marketing Person: A detailed picture of a business’s target customer—including characteristics like job title, education level, priorities, and preferences—that helps marketers to align all marketing strategies and develop impactful content. It is created through market research and data analysis.
Marketing Segmentation: The method of dividing a target market into distinct groups or segments based on various characteristics such as demographics, psychographics, behavior, and needs. This strategic approach allows marketers to tailor their marketing efforts to specific segments, which increases the effectiveness of their campaigns and improves overall customer satisfaction.
Marketing Strategy: A comprehensive plan of action that outlines how a business intends to promote and sell its products or services. It involves identifying target audiences, understanding their needs and preferences, and developing tactics to reach and engage them through various channels such as social media, email marketing, content marketing, and advertising.
MarTech: Short for marketing technology, this refers to the tools, platforms, and software that marketers use to streamline and enhance their marketing efforts. It encompasses a wide range of technologies, including customer relationship management (CRM) systems, email marketing software, social media management tools, analytics platforms, and more.
Marketing Technology Stack: The collection of software and technologies that businesses use to manage and execute their marketing efforts.
Multichannel Marketing: A strategic approach to reaching and engaging with customers across multiple channels, including online and offline platforms, to provide a seamless and cohesive experience for customers, regardless of which channel they use to interact with a brand.
N
Net Promoter Score (NPS): A customer satisfaction and loyalty metric that measures, on a scale of 0-10, how likely customers are to recommend your company to others. A simple survey to determine NPS can help you identify how loyal your customers are to your brand and business.
O
Omnichannel: Unified customer experience across all channels and stages, driven by shared data, orchestration, and measurement. Ensures consistent messaging, next-best action, and attribution across paid, owned, earned, and sales-assisted motions.
Optimization: Systematic testing and improvement of assets, journeys, and budgets to increase conversion and efficiency. Encompasses conversion rate optimization (CRO), bid/budget tuning, creative testing, and funnel friction reduction.
Organic Social: Unpaid content posted to social platforms for community building and engagement. In B2B, it’s key for thought leadership, employer brand, and warming demand.
Outbound Marketing: A traditional marketing approach where businesses actively reach out to their target audience through various channels to promote their products or services. It involves initiating communication with potential customers through methods such as cold calling, direct mail, email marketing, television and radio advertisements, and trade shows.
Out-of-home (OOH) Advertising: OOH placements include billboards, transit, and digital screens reaching audiences in physical environments. In B2B, it’s often used for brand lift, geo-targeting events, and executive awareness.
P
Paid Search Advertising: A digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee to have their ads displayed on search engine result pages (SERPs) for specific keywords or phrases. This form of online advertising is commonly used to drive targeted traffic to a website, increase brand visibility, and generate leads or sales.
Paid Social: Advertising on social platforms with targeting by persona, interest, and intent signals. It’s used for scalable reach, retargeting, and conversion campaigns.
Partner Marketing: Joint marketing with channel, tech, or service partners to drive pipeline and adoption. Includes co-branding, co-selling, marketing development funds (MDF) programs, marketplace plays, and ecosystem campaigns.
Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC): A digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee every time their online ads are clicked. This type of advertising is commonly used on search engines like Google and Bing, as well as on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Performance/Growth Marketing: Outcome-driven marketing that optimizes toward measurable acquisition, revenue, and LTV. Uses experimentation, attribution, and rapid iteration across paid, owned, and product-led motions.
Personalization: The tailoring of marketing messages and content to meet the individual needs and interests of a specific buyer. This approach involves using data and analytics to gain insights into the preferences and behaviors of a target audience, and then delivering content and messaging most likely to resonate with that user at a specific time via various channels.
Pipeline Conversion Rates: The percentage of opportunities advancing from one sales stage to the next. Tracking these rates by segment, source, and rep reveals bottlenecks, informs enablement and budgeting, and ties marketing programs to revenue impact.
Proof of Concept (POC)/Trial: The barometer to measure value and feasibility in a controlled period with defined success criteria, helping to shorten time-to-value and builds internal consensus among B2B stakeholders.
Q
Qualified Lead (MQL): A potential customer who has shown enough interest and engagement with a company’s marketing efforts to be considered ready for further nurturing and sales targeting. MQLs are typically identified through various actions, such as filling out a contact form, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading gated content like whitepapers or e-books.
R
Raw Leads: Unfiltered contacts captured from forms, lists, or events before qualification. They require enrichment, deduplication, and scoring before entering pipeline workflows.
Return on Investment (ROI) Marketing: This is a measure of the effectiveness and profitability of a marketing campaign or strategy. ROI quantifies the value generated from the marketing efforts in relation to the resources invested.
RevOps: Short for Revenue Operations, this unifies marketing, sales, and content operations to align data, processes, and goals. It improves forecasting, pipeline health, handoffs, and full-funnel accountability.
S
Sales Accepted Lead (SAL): A marketing-qualified lead that sales has reviewed and accepted for follow-up. It indicates alignment between teams on lead fit and readiness to engage.
Sales Development Representative (SDR): An SDR specializes in pipeline generation by qualifying inbound leads and conducting targeted outbound to ideal accounts. They run discovery, sequence outreach across channels, and book meetings for account executives (AEs), measured by SALs, opportunities created, and conversion rates.
Sales Enablement: Programs, content, and tools that help sellers engage buyers effectively. Includes messaging, playbooks, competitive intel, training, and guidance tied to stages and ICP pain points.
Sales Funnel: The system that a potential customer goes through from their initial awareness of a product or service to the point of making a purchase—it is visualized as a funnel because, as prospects move through the different stages, the number of potential customers gradually decreases. Sales funnels are usually divided into several key stages representing a different level of commitment, engagement, and decision-making from customers.
Sales Pipeline: A visual representation of the stages— of identifying, qualifying, and nurturing leads— a potential customer goes through before making a purchase. The pipeline helps sales teams to manage their activities and prioritize prospects, allowing them to focus on the most promising leads and close deals more efficiently.
Search Engine Management (SEM): Managing paid search strategy and execution to capture intent. It includes keyword strategy, bidding, ad copy, landing pages, and performance measurement.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The refinement of a website or web page to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). It involves various techniques and strategies to attract organic traffic and increase the chances of appearing higher in search engine rankings.
Service Level Agreement (SLA): An agreement between a company’s sales and marketing teams that defines the expectations sales has for marketing and vice versa. The marketing SLA defines expectations sales has for marketing with regard to delivering leads and the quantity and quality expectations around those leads. The sales SLA defines the expectations marketing has for sales on how deeply and frequently sales will pursue each qualified lead, so marketing knows their efforts are being matched.
Small to Medium-sized Business (SMB): A business with 100 or fewer employees is generally considered small, while one with 100-999 employees is considered medium-sized. “SMB” is usually used in contrast to “Enterprise.”
Software as a Service (SaaS): Services offered via software that you can access either online or via a downloaded version— HubSpot is a SaaS company. Usually used to refer to the industry or business of these services.
Social Media Marketing: The practice of using social media platforms and websites to connect with buyers and promote products or services. It involves creating and sharing engaging content, as well as running targeted advertising campaigns, with the goal of attracting and engaging a specific target audience.
T
Target Audience: A specific group of individuals that a business or organization aims to reach with its products, services, or messaging.
Technographic: The technologies a company uses or is evaluating—software, infrastructure, integrations, and cloud providers— to inform product fit, competitive displacement plays, and targeted outreach based on stack compatibility.
U
Urchin Tracking Module (UTM): Short text codes added to URLs which are used to track the performance of specific advertising campaigns, webpages, or posts. The tags standardize attribution across platforms and enable accurate reporting in analytics.
User Experience (UX): The experience someone has when interacting with content, a website, or a product or service. UX designers focus on usability, whether an interface is intuitive and easily navigated, and the emotional impact of using the asset or product in question.
V
Vanity Reporting: A focus on surface-level metrics that look impressive but don’t correlate to revenue—an example of this is impressions. B2B teams prioritize revenue-centric metrics over vanity indicators.
Video Marketing: Using video across the funnel—thought leadership, product demos, customer stories—to educate, differentiate, and accelerate deals. Optimized for distribution on website, social, ads, sales enablement, and events with clear CTAs and analytics.
W
Web Form: The act of collecting visitor information for inquiries, demos, content downloads, or subscriptions.
Webinar: A live or on-demand digital video event that shares valuable information buyers will want to engage with. It is a useful tool for education, lead capture, and pipeline acceleration.
Whitepaper Syndication: The process of distributing whitepapers through third-party platforms, content networks, and industry channels to reach a highly targeted audience.
X
XML Sitemaps: Used by webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling.
Y
Yield Optimization: The process of measuring and predicting the performance of different advertising impressions to maximize revenue.
Z
Zero-party Data: Information that customers intentionally and proactively share with your brand, such as purchase intentions, personal contexts, survey responses, and quiz results. Unlike first-party data which is observed through behavior, zero-party data is consciously provided by customers who understand how it will be used.
