Glossary/Brand & Performance Marketing

• 95-5 Rule

  The idea that only about 5% of B2B buyers are in market at any time.

• A/B Testing

  Comparing two versions of an asset to see which performs better.

• Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

  B2B marketing that targets specific high-value accounts with tailored campaigns.

• Ad Extensions (Assets)

  Extra information added to search ads, such as sitelinks, callouts, phone numbers or prices, now called assets in Google Ads.

• Ad Rank

  The value search engines use to set an ad's position and eligibility, combining bid, ad quality, context and expected asset impact.

• Affiliate Marketing

  Paying partners a commission for sales or leads they drive.

• Backlink

  A link from another site to yours, a key signal of authority for search engines.

• Brand Architecture

  The structure defining how a company's brands, sub-brands and products relate to each other and to the parent brand.

• Brand Awareness

  How familiar target customers are with a brand.

• Brand Equity

  The commercial value a brand adds beyond the product itself.

• Brand Guidelines (Brand Book)

  A document setting rules for how a brand's logo, colors, typography, imagery and voice must be used across all touchpoints.

• Brand Identity

  The visible and verbal elements a brand uses to present itself, including name, logo, colors, typography and voice.

• Brand Marketing

  Marketing that builds long-term awareness, meaning, and preference for a brand.

• Brand Purpose

  The reason a brand exists beyond making money, expressed as the positive impact it aims to have on customers or society.

• Brand Tracking

  Ongoing surveys that measure awareness, consideration, perception and preference for a brand over time.

• Brand Voice

  The consistent personality and tone a brand uses in its writing and spoken communication across channels.

• Branded House

  A brand architecture where all products sit under one master brand name, like Google Maps or FedEx Ground.

• Branded Search (Brand Bidding)

  Paying for ads on searches for your own brand name, often to protect clicks from competitors bidding on it.

• Brandformance

  Campaigns designed to build brand and drive measurable performance at once.

• Broad Match

  The loosest keyword match type, letting ads show for searches related to the keyword's meaning, even without its words.

• Category Entry Points

  The situations and needs that prompt buyers to think of a category.

• Content Marketing

  Creating valuable content to attract and retain an audience and drive action.

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

  Improving pages and funnels so more visitors convert.

• Creative Fatigue (Ad Fatigue)

  Declining ad performance as the same audience sees a creative too often, signaled by rising frequency and falling CTR.

• Creative Testing

  Systematically testing ad creative to find what drives results.

• Creator Economy

  The businesses and platforms built around independent content creators.

• Customer Journey

  The full set of interactions a person has with a brand over time.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

  Systems for managing customer interactions and data, such as HubSpot and Salesforce.

• Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs)

  Non-name cues such as colors, logos, characters, sounds or taglines that people reliably link to one specific brand.

• E-E-A-T

  Google's quality concept of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

• Exact Match

  The tightest keyword match type, showing ads only for searches with the same meaning or intent as the keyword.

• Full-Funnel Marketing

  Planning that connects awareness, consideration, and conversion activity.

• Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM)

  The plan for launching a product to its target market.

• Hook Rate (Thumb-Stop Rate)

  The share of video ad impressions where viewers watch past the first few seconds, measuring how well the opening grabs attention.

• House of Brands

  A brand architecture where a parent company runs many separately named brands, like Procter & Gamble's Tide and Gillette.

• Impression Share

  The percentage of eligible ad impressions you actually received, revealing how much demand you lose to budget or rank.

• Influencer Marketing

  Partnering with creators to promote a brand to their audiences.

• Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

  Coordinating all brand messages across channels for one consistent story.

• Intent Data

  Signals that show a person or company is researching a purchase.

• Keyword Match Types

  Settings that control how closely a search query must match your keyword to trigger an ad: broad, phrase or exact.

• Lead Gen Forms

  Native ad forms on platforms like LinkedIn and Meta that collect prefilled contact details without sending users to a website.

• Lead Scoring

  Ranking leads by their likelihood to buy.

• Lifecycle Marketing

  Messaging customers based on their stage, from onboarding to retention and win-back.

• Marketing Automation

  Software that automates repetitive marketing tasks such as email and nurturing.

• Marketing Funnel

  A model of stages a customer moves through from awareness to purchase.

• Martech Stack

  The set of marketing technologies a company uses together.

• Media Buying

  Purchasing ad space and time, directly or programmatically.

• Media Planning

  Deciding where, when, and how much to advertise to reach goals.

• Mental Availability

  How easily a brand comes to mind in buying situations (Ehrenberg-Bass).

• Negative Keywords

  Terms added to a search campaign to stop ads from showing on irrelevant queries, reducing wasted spend.

• Paid Search (PPC)

  Ads bought on search engines, usually paid per click.

• Paid Social

  Advertising on social platforms such as Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Snap.

• Paid, Owned, Earned Media (POEM)

  A way of classifying channels into media you buy, media you control like your site, and coverage or sharing you earn.

• Performance Marketing

  Marketing paid for and optimized against measurable actions such as clicks and sales.

• Phrase Match

  A keyword match type that shows ads for searches including the keyword's meaning, with word order and intent preserved.

• Positioning

  The distinct place a brand aims to occupy in customers' minds versus competitors.

• Price Anchoring

  Showing a higher reference price first so the actual or target price looks more attractive by comparison.

• Price Elasticity

  How much demand changes when price changes; elastic products lose many buyers when prices rise, inelastic ones lose few.

• Product Marketing

  Bringing products to market through positioning, messaging, and enablement.

• Quality Score

  Google Ads' 1-10 keyword rating based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.

• Rebrand

  A deliberate change to a brand's name, identity, positioning or messaging to shift how the market perceives it.

• Responsive Search Ads (RSA)

  Google search ads where you supply multiple headlines and descriptions and the system tests combinations automatically.

• Retention Marketing

  Efforts to keep existing customers buying and engaged.

• Schema Markup (Structured Data)

  Code that helps search engines and AI understand page content.

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

  Promoting a site through paid and organic search visibility.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  Improving content and sites to rank higher in organic search results.

• Spark Ads

  TikTok's ad format that boosts existing organic posts, from a brand or authorized creator, keeping their native engagement and handle.

• Target CPA (tCPA)

  An automated bid strategy that sets bids to get as many conversions as possible at or near a chosen cost per acquisition.

• Target ROAS (tROAS)

  An automated bid strategy that sets bids to maximize conversion value at a chosen return on ad spend.

• The Long and the Short of It

  Binet and Field's finding that a mix of long-term brand and short-term activation works best.

• Thought Leadership

  Content that establishes a person or company as an authority in its field.

• Tiered Pricing

  Offering several packages at different price points, such as Basic, Pro and Enterprise, each with more features.

• Usage-Based Pricing

  Charging customers by how much of a product they consume, such as API calls, seats used or data processed.

• User-Generated Content (UGC)

  Content about a brand created by customers rather than the brand.

• Value Proposition

  A clear statement of the benefit a product delivers and why it beats alternatives.

• Value-Based Pricing

  Setting prices according to the value customers perceive rather than production cost or competitor prices.

• Zero-Click Search

  Searches that end on the results page without a click to any site.