Top 5 Marketing Buzzwords Explained

If you work in the marketing/advertising field, you’ve probably heard the same few buzzwords floating around. Or, maybe your boss has told you, “Hey, we need to focus more on content marketing. Can you work with John to put something together?” Wanting to be helpful, you nod your head and as soon as s/he walks away, you scramble to Google, “What is content marketing?”

These days, content marketing is only one of many buzzwords floating around, which is why we’ve got the top marketing buzzwords all in one handy place for you. So that next time your boss says, “We need to do more content marketing to get more customers to like our brand,” you can impressively come back and say, “Well, I’m not sure that’s exactly what we need to do to. Maybe we should try influencer marketing instead.”

On with the post!

Content Marketing

• What it is: Content marketing, in a nutshell, refers to producing and distributing your own relevant, unique, and high-quality content. This content can be anything from blog posts to infographics to whitepapers, and it can be distributed in multiple ways, including email, social media, and paid advertising.

• Why it’s important: For a few reasons.
  • First, it’s a new way to reach your audience without really “marketing” to them. Consumers today are bombarded with thousands of advertisements a day and are getting better and better at shutting them out (think DVR and AdBlocker). But when you’re producing unique content that consumers can’t get anywhere else, they’ll keep coming back to your brand because you provide value to them.
  • Content marketing, when done correctly and consistently, establishes you and/or your company as the expert in your field. When consumers see your informative and relevant posts they begin to see you as the authority or expert on that subject. They now trust you as the go-to company for that product or service.
  • Content marketing is also a great way to reach new potential customers. Our client Blue Moon Rising is an excellent example of content marketing done right. Blue Moon Rising generates unique content on their blog – take their post on the best places to grab a beer in Deep Creek Lake. It’s informative, interesting to read, and provides value to site visitors. According to the analytics for this particular page, 82.35% of the visitors to this page in 2016 were new.
  • Finally, content marketing is very helpful for SEO. Search engines love unique content that drives value to users, and your website will be rewarded for that with higher rankings.

• How to do it: One of the best ways to do content marketing is to have a blog on your website. If you really want to get fancy, you can do keyword research and try to figure out what potential customers are looking for and where there are content gaps (where customers are not finding the information they need). Then, you can try to fill that gap with your own content. In the example with Blue Moon Rising above, we found that people were searching for good bars to go to in Deep Creek Lake, but they weren’t finding the answers they needed. So, we generated content to fill that gap and optimized it for keywords like “best bars in Deep Creek Lake.”

Influencer Marketing

• What it is: Influencer marketing is a fancy word for word-of-mouth marketing. It involves reaching out to specific individuals who have a high influence in a specific field and asking them to promote your brand. Essentially, these people become ambassadors for your company.

• Why it’s important: Everyone knows that word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful form of marketing. Think about it. When you’re looking for a new restaurant for date night, what do you do first? You probably ask your best foodie friend if they have any recommendations. And since that person is a reliable source who has no incentive to give you false information, you probably trust their opinions and go to that restaurant. Similarly, with influencer marketing, you’re getting people who don’t work for your brand to promote it to their networks. If done right, this can be very effective.

• How to do it: There are a few ways, but the easiest one is through social media. You can actually identify influencers in your field and reach out them and ask them to promote your brand. This can be informal, or it can be in a more structured form of a brand ambassador program with incentives for successful ambassadors. We started a formalized brand ambassador program with our client Mya Hookah and it’s been extremely successful so far – our client is reaching entirely new markets and people than ever before. Helpful tools for finding influencers are Buzzsumo and Followerwonk.

Agile Marketing

• What it is: Agile marketing refers to marketing campaigns that are generally flexible, unplanned, and posted in real-time based on what is going on at that point in time. Two great examples are Kit Kat’s hilarious tweet when One Direction announced they were breaking up (a personal favorite) and Oreo’s tweet when the lights went out at the Superbowl in 2013. Agile marketing doesn’t just happen on social media, but it’s a good place to start.

• Why it’s important: Agile marketing is a great way to stay engaged with your audiences as you produce relevant, shareable content. If it goes viral, your brand could gain a lot of exposure and reach a wider audience. Plus, it’s just fun!

• How to do it: Just make sure you stay on top of what people are talking about. Sign up for Google Alerts and monitor top trending topics on Twitter. When you find your opportunity to get involved in the conversation, make it unique and shareable.

Retargeting/Remarketing

• What it is: Have you ever searched for shoes on Zappos and then a few days later, you log into Facebook and your sidebar is filled with the same shoes you looked at? That’s remarketing – when you target a customer who’s already visited your site and send them ads to try to convert them.

• Why it’s important: This one’s pretty obvious. If someone has already looked at your site, chances are, they’re probably interested in what you’re selling. Maybe they just haven’t made up their mind yet; or maybe they are considering a few companies at once. If you retarget them, you’re sending them a friendly reminder: “Hey, pick me! I know you already like me. I’m your best choice!”

• How to do it: That depends on your end goal, but many paid advertising options offer remarketing options. See remarketing for Google AdWords and Facebook. It usually involves adding a snippet of code to a page on your website and whenever someone visits that page, they get “tagged” and tracked throughout the web.

Yes, I searched for personalized M&Ms on Groupon. Guilty as charged.

Geotargeting

• What it is: Not a new concept in marketing, but will quickly become a new way for brands to reach customers as geotargeting becomes more and more advanced. Geotargeting refers to delivering different kinds of content to a user based on their location. When you’re searching for a restaurant in Yelp and you see ads in your search results, the advertiser likely used geotargeting to show that ad to you since you fall within x miles of their location.

• Why it’s important: This is just a form of delivering more targeted content to your users. The more targeted your content is, the more relevant it is to the user, and the more likely it is that user will convert. This is a great option for local businesses who are trying to reach out to other locals in the area. Geotargeting will soon become a huge strategy for retailers to reach new customers (think geofencing: when you are within a store’s geographic area, you can get an alert to your phone with today’s deals and coupons). The search term “[Grocery stores/bars/spas] near me” in Google doubled in 2015, according to Search Engine Land.

• How to do it: Like remarketing, this depends on your end goal, but both Facebook and Google AdWords offer geotargeting options when running paid ads.

Have any other buzzwords you’ve seen floating around? Comment them below!