36 sales/marketing terms that every entrepreneur should know
36 Sales/Marketing Terms Every Entrepreneur Should Know
As a startup, you need to know your stuff. Whether defining roles and expectations for your employees, engaging with customers, or pitching investors for capital: there can be no ambiguity.
Problems often arise when we believe we’re talking about the same thing, only to find out at a later stage that we’re not.
So do you know your USP from your VP, understand the role of a GP from an LP and know whether you’re fundraising against a Pre-Money or Post-Money valuation?
Sound confusing? Then you probably need to take a read through our key terms that every startup founder needs to know.
The differences between sales and marketing
We’ve grouped these 2 categories together, but it’s important to know the differences between sales and marketing.
Types of Sales:
Sales is a broad category, so let's break down the main roles
- 1. Inside sales: an inside sales rep is the point of contact for their company's existing clients. Role is to retain their business and maintain relationships.
- 2. Outside sales: a traditional sales method, the sales rep interacts face-to-face with prospective customers.
- 3. Sales support: this is the supportive role in a team-based sales operation. Role include investigating leads, analysing data and general research.
- 4. Client services: similar to inside sales, this role involves ensuring customer satisfaction by building strong relationships to increase the companies growth via existing customers.
- 5. Lead generation/development: responsible for conducting research and networking and much more to create new business contacts.
- 6. B2B: business-to-business. Priority of B2B businesses is generating leads, repeat and referral business, the focus is on building relationships to drive long term business.
- 7. B2C: business-to-consumer. The goal of B2C is to push consumers directly to your company's website to drive sales, the customer experience on the website needs to be seamless, and the marketing strategy is focused on the product.
- 8. B2B2C: business-to-business-to-consumer. An e-commerce model where a business accesses customers through another business.
- 9. D2C : direct-to-consumer. Selling products/services directly to the consumer, bypassing third party retailers, wholesalers, middle-people.
- 10. B2E: business-to-employee. An intrabusiness network allowing companies to provide products/services to their employees.
Sales Terms:
Key sales terms explained
- 11. USP: Unique Selling Proposition. This is the first bit of copy you'll see on a company's headline. It should be a unique single sentence, sometimes with a subheading. The USP defines the company's position in their market, and a good USP makes a point (singular) to differentiate them from their competitors. This is the very essence of what makes a company different from the competitive landscape. Remember, only one company can ever be the cheapest or the fastest, so these don’t make for a great USP.
- 12. VP: Value proposition. Is the demonstrable value added that the product/service will give to the customer.
- 13. Pre-Money valuation: refers to the value of a company not including external funding or before the latest round of funding.
- 14. Post-Money valuation: includes outside financing or once the latest capital has been secured. It is important to know which valuation is being referred to, as they are critical concepts in valuation.
- 15. GP: General partners. A GP raises money from a Limited Partner.
- 16. LP: Limited Partners put money into a fund.
Types of marketing :
Online marketing is a big driver for businesses, different approaches depend on your business model and target audience
- 17. Content marketing: blogs, e-books, white papers, podcasts. These formats are an effective tool to attract customers by providing interesting and informative solutions around subject matters relevant to your product/industry.
- 18. Social media marketing: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Clubhouse, Youtube. The marketing strategy for each channel varies, but posting consistently is key for all channels.
- 19. Search engine optimization (SEO): This is the ongoing process of optimizing the content on your website, getting high-quality backlinks, updating your website regularly, among other methods so that you appear in search engine results when your keywords are searched. The most efficient way to drive organic traffic to your site.
- 20. Email marketing: Promoting products or services via email. Including creative ideas to attract interest. To manage distribution lists, campaigns, and analytics, many companies use email marketing software.
- 21. Consumer direct marketing: A type of Network Marketing in which all distributors must also be customers, meaning they must purchase the product for their own use.
- 22. Multi-level marketing (MLM): aka Network Marketing. In this business model sales reps receive commission on their own sales as well as on the sales of their downlines.
- 23. Advertising: attracting public attention to a product or industry, such as through paid advertisements in print, broadcast, or electronic media.
- 24. Pay-per-click marketing: these are paid ads that appear on search engines. Such as Google AdWords, you pay to appear when your keywords are searched, the more competitive your keywords, the more you pay-per-click.
- 25. Advertorials/Advertainment: paid content that appears and feels like a genuine story or blog post. The word "entertainment" means that readers are interested enough that they don't mind being pitched. As the cost and efficacy of display ads have declined, more businesses turn to advertorials to generate ad revenue.
- 26. Print marketing: your good old fashioned ad printed in a newspaper/ magazine. Either through sponsorship or paid advertising space in the publication. These are targeted towards a readership who read that particular publication.
Marketing terms:
Key digital marketing terms explained
- 27. A/B Testing: allows a company to test two versions of online content — such as a marketing email, blog post, or Web page — and see which version receives the most engagement. This type of testing helps to narrow down marketing and advertising avenues and anticipate which alternative will be more popular with the general public.
- 28. Consumability: the ease with which information can be accessed, consumed, and remembered.
- 29. Content curation: creating visual/audio content to share on online platforms.
- 30. Downline: In a MLM company, the group of individuals who have signed up under an individual and who receive payment for their sales.
- 31. Engagement: tracking engagement is the process of analyzing how many people view your content and how often they interact with your social media efforts. The more engaged your audience is on social media or on your website, the more you can be sure your message is delivered.
- 32. FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. Offering short term promotions, or having a limited stock creates a sense of "FOMO" and can drive sales.
- 33. Growth hacking: a marketing strategy that focuses on achieving scalable growth using non-traditional and low-cost methods such as social media. A process of looking for the right trick or "hack" to make for faster and more consistent development.
- 34. Impressions: the number of unique times a particular social media post is seen by individual accounts/users.
- 35. OMNI Channel: "omni" = all encompassing. An omni channel approach integrates and connects all experiences - physical and digital - for each user, improving the level of customer experience.
- 36. Organic traffic: content that's found and viewed using keywords/hashtags on social media channels rather than paid adverts or promotions. Organic traffic to a website is when users have found the website through keywords using a search engine (such as google), not through paid ads.
To read more helpful tips: 33 Tips on Being Investor Ready, 10 Books Every Startup Founder Should Read.