Not sure about some of the new vocabulary you’re hearing when building your online business? We got you covered.
Here is a list of common words and phrases you’re probably going to be hearing… a lot.
Here’s a full breakdown of all the important words you need to know what they mean. Enjoy!
The Online Marketing & Sales Funnel Vocabulary List
Affiliate marketing/sales – affiliate sales and marketing are when you to get paid for referring other people’s products and services and in commission from the product owner. As you build you list of people who are interested in topic X you can get paid for referring products and services that have helped you around that topic, not just for your own products.
Analytics – Analytics is tracking and collecting data about what actions users are taking on your website, sales funnels, and online assets.
Asset – an asset is a resource, something tangible or intangible, that is created to produce value over time. An example of an asset is building an online course. You can sell that course over and over for years to come without recreating the course over and over.
Automation – automation (or marketing automation) is using software to automate marketing actions. For repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions you can use different software to trigger an action at a certain time without having to do it manually.
Awareness Level – Customer awareness levels comes from the book Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. Schwartz breaks down the different levels of awareness to each customer as:
- Most Aware. Customers and prospects who already know everything they need to know about your solution.
- Product Aware. Prospects who know about your solution and those of your competitors, but aren’t sure which solution is right for them.
- Solution Aware. Prospects who know about solutions like yours, but don’t know your specific product or service.
- Problem Aware. Prospects who know they have a problem and have some idea of what their problem is, but who aren’t aware of any solutions for it.
- Unaware. Prospects who don’t realize they have a problem to solve.
Prospects at different awareness levels have different needs and desires. In general, the less aware a prospect is:
- The more education he requires before you can “sell” to him
- The less open he will be to a sales pitch
- The more indirect you have to be in talking to him about your offering
You can use the levels of awareness as you create your message for your sales funnel and marketing messages.
Bonuses – bonuses are typically free giveaways for purchasing a digital product. Someone can buy a 30 day jumpstart guide to X and “when you buy today you get the free bonus of [fill in the blank]” like: a 30 minute strategy session with Y.
Broadcast emails – broadcast emails (or broadcast message) are emails sent to an entire email list or segment of an email list at the same time.
Call to action (or CTA) – a command given to a viewer, reader, or listener to perform a specific action. Examples are: “click here to read the article,” “buy this today,” or “call us now”
Congruency – congruency, when talking about marketing and sales funnels, is how much the entire sales process is in agreement and harmony with itself.
For example: if someone downloads a free list of 25 tools to build your own website and then the next offer in the sales funnel is to sign up for a free social media consultation – that offer might not be congruent to what the user was expecting when they signed up. They wanted help with their website, not their social media.
What would be more congruent is a download for a free list of 25 tools to manage your social media, then an offer for a free social media consultation.
Continuity – a continuity offer is a product or service that is charged on a recurring monthly basis. It could be built around a software, membership site, or ongoing coaching. The point is that it is a product or service automatically renews each or billing period until the customer cancels it. This residual income will be the lifeblood for most businesses.
Conversion Rate – is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action. If you send 100 people to a landing page, and 40 of them opt-in for the offer, you have a 40% conversion rate. Or 40% of the people that visit this page take the desired action (to opt-in, buy, call, etc.).
Conversion – a conversion is getting a user to take a desired action on a specific page or part of the funnel. If someone opts in to a freebie on a landing page, that is a “conversion.” If someone buys on a sales page, that is considered to be a “conversion.”
Copy – copy is text written with the specific purpose to persuade your readers to take a specific action, such as download a freebie, click a link in your email, or click a “buy” button. It’s used on websites, emails, sales pages, and pretty much anywhere online where you are writing to get someone to take a specific action.
Core Offer – Your flagship offering, product, or service. It’s the thing you got in business to create. It’s you primary service or product that you want all of your customers to buy.
Crosssell – is selling a different but related product or service to an existing customer. You can see this on Amazon every day. “Hey you bought this book! Since you liked this book, you will probably also like this similar book written by someone else about the same topic.”
Customer Acquisition – is the term for the systems and processes that it takes to acquire a new customer. It’s everything from the lead generation to the process that turns that prospect into a customer. On this site when we talk about customer acquisition we are typically talking about driving traffic online for the purpose of lead generation and sales.
Customer Value Optimization – the process of building a sales funnel or funnels in your online business that will maximize the amount of revenue generated from each customer by offering different levels or value at different price points. For more about customer value optimization click here.
Downsell – A downsell is an offer in a sales funnel that is priced lower than other products. Typically a downsell will come in a funnel after a customer has said no to a higher priced product, in which case you can come in and say “ hey I know you’re interested in topic X, but you don’t want to spend the $199 for product Y, how about just the cliff notes version for $29 instead?
Email Marketing – is using email to connect and communicate with prospects and customers. Using different software and technologies we can capture someone’s contact information and then follow up about relevant services and offerings related to your business. You can send both broadcast emails or use automated messaging to send out messages X days after someone takes a specific action. Check out this in depth guide to email marketing and automation.
Evergreen – an evergreen offer is an offer that lives on your website and is available to anyone at any time.
FB Group – A facebook group (not to be confused with a facebook page) is a private community on facebook that you can create to engage with your customers or tribe members.
FB Page – A facebook page is a public facing page that you can post to on Facebook and anyone can come and visit to discover your content.
Flash sale – A flash sale is a sale that you run in your business to generate cash flow that involves offering a certain product or service at a discount for a limited time that encourages your audience to take action now!
Freebie – a “freebie” is something that you give away for free on your website in order to get their contact information.
Funnel – a sequence of steps that a user must take in order to reach the desired end conversion. Also called a sales funnel or marketing funnel. For more read “How Marketing Funnels Work”
Funnel hacking – Funnel hacking is the process of getting out your credit card, going through a funnel online, and reverse engineering the process that they use to turn prospects into paying customers. Check out the Ultimate Guide to Funnel Hacking
Funnel Math – Funnel math is the mathematical calculation of “is this funnel going to be profitable” by determining what are the conversion rates that you need to get along each step of the way in order to stay in the green with your sales funnel. If it doesn’t work on paper, it’s not going to work in real life.
Gateway Program – A gateway program, or “tripwire,” is a low barrier to entry offer that let’s people give you and your products or services a test run before fully committing to your core offer.
Indoctrination Campaign – an indoctrination campaign is a series of automated emails that goes out to a new email lead in order to educate them about your business, tell them what you are all about, and let them get to know you after signing up for your freebie or lead magnet
Key Performance Indicator (or KPI) – a KPI is the the primary measurable value that you want to watch when running a campaign to or optimizing a funnel.
For example – if you are running a campaign to a webinar funnel, you might know that your KPI is to get signups for $75 each. At $75, with your current conversion rate, you know you will be profitable. If you go over that number in your campaign, you will no longer have a profitable campaign.
Landing Page – a “landing page” is any page on the web on which one might land that 1) has a lead capture form and 2) exists solely to capture a visitor’s information through that form. Read more about landing pages here.
Lead generation – this is the systems and strategies used by marketers and online businesses to collect people’s’ contact information from their website and other digital assets.
Lead magnet – a lead magnet is a free giveaway in exchange for someone’s contact information. Get great ideas for your lead magnets here.
List Building – is the process of collecting leads in order to grow your email list so that you can follow up with your email leads about relevant content, services, and offerings.
Marketing Automation – automation (or marketing automation) is using software to automate marketing actions. For repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions you can use different software to trigger an action at a certain time without having to actually do it manually.
Membership Site – is a gated part of your online business where only members who subscribe can access the content you’ve placed behind the gates. Typically membership sites are paid, but can also be free.
Niche – Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well defined segment of the population.
For example: rather than being a “health coach” you can niche down to a “health coach that works with mothers over the age of 30 who love running and want to improve their running capabilities.”
Nurture – (or lead nurturing) is the process of developing relationships with new email subscribers buyers at every stage of the sales funnel. It focuses marketing and communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects, and providing the information and answers they need. Read this for more on lead nurturing.
One-click upsell – is a option in a sales funnel that allows customer to add on a product or service with “one-click” after entering their purchase information. This is an option with Clickfunnels as well as a number of paid plug-ins for your website.
Opt-In – When someone “opts-in” to your email list they are filling out a contact form typically in exchange for a freebie or lead magnet and thereby joining your email list for future updates.
Opt-In Rate – You opt-in rate is the percentage at which you website visitors or a segment of your website visitors joins your email list.
Payment Processor – a payment processor is a piece of technology needed on your website and in your sales funnels in order to accept online payments from customers. Big names payment processors are Stripe and Paypal.
Pixel or Script – a “pixel” or “script” is a piece of javascript code that is added onto your website typically to track user engagement for a particular marketing software or platform. Facebook, ActiveCampaign, Google Analytics, each one of these has their own tracking script or pixel for you to place on your website in order to relay information back to the software about user engagement.
Profit Maximizer – is a service or product that offers the highest level of value to a customer at a high price point. It is a business growth method to increase the average transaction value per customer.
- If you sell plasma TVs, your profit maximizer is your warranty
- If you sell online small group coaching, your profit maximizer is your high cost 1-on-1 calls.
- If you offer 30 day meal planning guides, your profit maximizer is your exercise plan and video coaching upsell.
Repurposing (content) – repurposing refers to taking the content and information that you have already created and turning into other mediums for people to digest. If you recorded your latest YouTube video, repurposing is taking that content and turning it into a podcast episode or blog post.
Retargeting – retargeting is a form of online advertising that keeps track of the people who have visited your website and displays relevant ads to them as they visit other websites online. Have you ever noticed how when you go look at a new purse on amazon the next day you see an ad for the exact same purse? That’s on purpose. Read more about retargeting here.
Reverse engineer – reverse engineering is the process of working backwards through a series of steps to get to the endpoint you desire. You can reverse engineer a sales funnel by going through the funnel and picking out all the points that make it successful (with sales funnels this is called funnel hacking).
Self-liquidating offer funnel – the goal of a “self-liquidating” offer funnel is to have your frontend product, usually priced from $7 – $97, to cover the expenses of buying traffic. After an opt-in for a free lead magnet the immediate next page is for the tripwire, typically with the goal of breaking even on the paid traffic.
Squeeze Page – A squeeze page is the same as a landing page. A “squeeze page” or “landing page” is any page on the web on which one might land that 1) has a lead capture form and 2) exists solely to capture a visitor’s information through that form. Read more about squeeze pages here.
Tech stack – Your “tech stack” is the tools, technology, and software that you use to build your online business. For more on a tech stack check out 25 tools to run your online business.
Tracking – refers to your digital analytics, which tracks and collects data about what actions users are taking on your website and in your sales funnels.
Traffic – refers to the number of visitors that you have to your website and sales funnels. Essentially – your traffic is the people that visit your website properties. Check out this massive list of traffic resources for your sales funnels.
Tripwire – a low barrier to entry offer that is designed with the goal selling new leads into a low priced item and then up-selling those who buy into one of your main products or services.
- A health coach can offer a $27 jumpstart program
- A custom guitar building can sell guitar picks
- A web designer can offer $50 website audits.
Check out How to Master Tripwire Marketing here
Upsell – a sales technique where a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale and increase the average transaction value.
Value Ladder – a fundamental structure in your business designed to have products and services that appeal to your target audience at different phases of their growth.
In the chart above, as you increase the value that you provide to your customers the cost for those products and services increases. If you have a product or service for each step of the value ladder, you give customers the ability to start where they need to and then ascend up the value ladder.
It gives you a competitive edge because it ensures you have products or services available to continue to serve your clients as they grow with you.
Video Sales Letter (VSL) – a video sales letter is a common marketing technique where you use a video instead of a traditional sales page. A VSL helps you get your message across better than text or audio, educate your target audience more visually, build trust and a connection with potential customers, and converts better than “normal” sales letters.
Got some new keywords we need to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below
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