If you’re like most coaches we work with, marketing on its own can be overwhelming.  There is so much to learn.  And as soon as you learn the “newest” tactic, things change and there is something else to master.  You probably start off thinking you can do stuff yourself (with a little help from $97 courses), but then burnout sets in and you quickly realize marketing is not your sweet spot.  As a matter of fact, you don’t even enjoy it.  So you hire your first marketing freelancer or agency and they start throwing around all kinds of marketing terms you’ve never heard of.  As if you understand all this mumbo jumbo.

Before I started writing this blog, I did a little research myself to see what marketing terms I wanted to teach you about.  One article identified 75 different marketing terms.  Even my head started to spin.  Hold the presses.  You don’t need to know all the marketing jargon to make informed decisions.  So I want to simplify things for you and break down some simple marketing terms based on different phases of your business.

But let’s first look at the different phases.  This is a framework we use when we work with all our clients.  And I can tell you from experience that your business is probably in one of these phases right now.  If you have smooth sailed through all these phases, you most likely know all these marketing terms, and probably don’t need much help from me.  So give yourself some street cred and rock on!

However, you’ll want to stick around if you recognize your business in one of these phases. Read through the terms in that phase, or take a quick scan through all the terms and see which ones create pause for you. This cheat sheet is not designed for you to read from beginning to end.

Marketing Terms in the Foundation Phase

During this phase, you are working on the foundation from which you start building brand awareness.  This can include your brand, your messaging, your offers and all the marketing materials that support your business.

Niche: 

In the most simplest terms, your niche is your area of specialty that you want to be known for.  Examples include: marital coaching, mindset coaching, or writing coaching. Depending on the saturation level of your niche, you can choose to narrow your niche by specializing in a smaller subset of your niche.

Target Market: 

Your target market is who you serve with your specialty.  You need to be specific so you stand out.  Marital coaching for the Jewish community, mindset coaching for holistic female business owners, writing coach for people who wish to write creative nonfiction are all examples of healthy target markets.

Market Research:

Market research refers to the research you do to gain insight into your target audience’s challenges, desires, buying patterns, habits, language, demographics and more. This information helps you know your audience on an intimate level and sets you up for marketing success.

Brand Voice:

Your brand voice refers to the personality, tone, and style that you use in your communication with your ideal clients. It is the verbal expression of your brand’s values, purpose, and messaging. Your brand voice could be formal and professional or casual and humorous, as an example. It represents how you want to be perceived and will help set you apart from competitors.

Messaging:

Messaging is a part of your overall brand voice and includes the words that you use to build relatability and establish credibility with your audience.  Your messaging is one of the most critical elements of your marketing strategy because these words must resonate with your ideal clients, in order to convert them.

Unique Selling Proposition:

A unique selling proposition, or USP, is a statement that sets your offer apart from your competitors. It is the reason why a client should choose you over others in the market. A strong USP clearly communicates the value a client can expect to receive by using your product or service. It differentiates your offering from similar options and makes your brand memorable and desirable.

Offer:  

Your offer is any service or product that your clients purchase from you.  It could be a 1:1 coaching package, a self-study course, a group program, a mastermind or anything else that you use to help your clients create a transformation.  Sometimes an offer can be something free as well, like a free webinar or eBook.  Offers help you test your market’s interest level.

Color Palette: 

A color palette is your set of brand colors that should be used throughout your entire website, social media, and marketing materials.  When someone sees your coaching business anywhere on or off the internet, your colors should be easily recognizable.  If you are mixing any and all different colors, you are not operating within a brand color palette.

Typography Suite: 

Like your color palette, your typography suite is part of your brand and represents the fonts that are used throughout your marketing materials.  They are normally set up by the person who designs your website.  Consistency in fonts helps create consistency in your brand.

Website Wireframes:

When you hire a freelancer or company to build your website, they will talk with you about wireframes. These are essentially graphical representations of each of your website pages. They show you what type of content is going to be placed where on the page. It gives you a visual and also guides the copywriter and designer when writing copy and designing the pages.

SEO:

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, refers to the process of optimizing your website and online content to improve your ranking on search engines. Essentially, SEO involves making sure your content is structured and written in a way that makes it easy for search engines like Google to understand what your content is about. With better optimization, your website will appear higher in search engine rankings, leading to greater visibility and ultimately more traffic. 

Marketing Terms to Know in the Visibility Phase

The purpose of the visibility phase is to raise awareness with your target audience that your business exists and exactly how you can help them. It includes a variety of both online and offline tactics to generate traffic and leads for your business, ultimately bringing in new clients.

Funnel:

A funnel is, in simplest terms, a digital pathway that takes prospects on a journey from first hearing about you to getting to know, like and trust you on a deeper level, ultimately leading to a client relationship.  If you picture a real live funnel, at the top are all the many prospects that first hear about your business.  Some of those people will opt into the funnel and start moving on down to various stages. The goal is for prospects to move all the way down the funnel and become clients.

Lead Magnet:

Your lead magnet is a free piece of valuable content that you give away in exchange for your prospect’s email address.  This can be in the form of an ebook, checklist, webinar, video series, swipe file, step-by-step guide, or anything else that will help your prospects create a transformation in their lives.

Optin Page:

An optin page is a landing page on your website or funnel software that enables your leads to sign up for some particular offer:  lead magnet, pre-launch webinar event, multi-day challenge, etc.  It normally includes fields to provide first name and email address and these leads are then stored in your email marketing software.

Email Sequence:

An email sequence is a series of emails that serve a particular marketing purpose. They could be a series of welcome emails introducing new subscribers to your company.  Email sequences are also used for sales during a launch. Essentially they are a string of emails that are set up to automatically deliver to your email list of subscribers.

Automation:

This is a term used to describe any technology that enables something to run automatically.  Automations are set up to save time and allow processes to run in the background without your assistance. Once they are set up, unless there are tech glitches, these automations tell your software what to do and when.

Hooks:

Marketing hooks are phrases used in content that are designed to attract your reader’s attention.  Sometimes they speak to your prospects’ pain points, challenges, or desires. Other times it’s an intriguing statement or fact that peaks curiosity and entices people to read more. Hooks are used in website content, social media, email marketing, advertising and anywhere else you need to stand out.

Organic vs. Paid Social Media:  

Organic social media is essentially “free” marketing (although nothing is really free) and is designed to attract followers without spending money on advertising.  Paid social media refers to any type of advertising that you spend money on to gain followers or sign ups.

Keyword research:

Keyword research is an essential aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing. It involves identifying search terms and phrases that users enter into search engines to find products or services similar to what your business offers. By conducting keyword research, you can optimize your website content, increase visibility, and drive more traffic to your website. Effective keyword research tools include Google AdWords Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Moz.

Joint Venture or Guest Partnerships:

These are collaborations you form with people to create a win-win in your marketing and sales efforts.  You might be a guest on a podcast, or do a guest blog. You could partner with a complimentary business to yours and exchange referrals or freebies. The possibilities are endless and it’s a great way to grow your business.

Evergreen Content:

This refers to a piece of content that lives indefinitely on the internet and is often searched and consumed by users over a long period of time.  Examples include YouTube videos, blog posts and podcast episodes.  It does not include social media as that is often short lived.

Nurture Content:

Nurture content is any piece of content that is designed to nurture your audience and help build a know, like and trust factor with prospects.  This could include weekly emails to your list or social media content for your followers.  

Followers / Subscribers:

When we talk about followers, we are typically referring to the people who are following you on various social media channels. Subscribers, on the other hand, have given you their email address and are on your email list.  Subscribers are much better than followers because you own your email list, but you’re at the mercy of large social networks to feed your content to your followers.

Open Rate: 

When you do email marketing, your open rate refers to the percentage of people that actually open and hopefully read your emails. Different industries have different average open rates but a good average is somewhere between 17-28%.  If you are exceeding that, you are doing well.

Click Through Rate: 

The click through rate, however, is the percentage of people that click on a particular link in your email.  These links could lead to a blog post, a sales page, a YouTube video or any other piece of content that you want your readers to consume.  The click through rate gauges interest in what you have to offer and is considered good if it’s between 2-5%.

Engagement Rate:  

Engagement rate is the percentage of your audience that interacts with your content on social media platforms such as likes, comments, and shares. It measures the effectiveness of your content and how well it resonates with your target audience. A higher engagement rate indicates that your content is meaningful and valuable to your audience, which in turn can lead to increased brand awareness, customer loyalty, and sales.

Website Traffic: 

Normally tracked through Google Analytics, your website traffic is an important metric to pay attention to. You can track the number of visitors to your website, how long they stay on your website, pages that are being visited, where the traffic is coming from, the demographics of your website traffic and so much more. 

Launch Phase Marketing Terms

During the launch phase of your business, you are engaged with a sales and marketing campaign that is aimed at selling one of your products or services to your target audience. It is an exciting and busy phase and is often repeated multiple times throughout the life of your business.

Sales Page or Landing Page: 

Your sales page, sometimes called a landing page, is a relatively long piece of online content that outlines the features and benefits of your offer, among many other elements. The messaging and design used in your sales page is intended to convert your readers and result in sales for your business.

Pre-Launch Event:

Pre-launch events are gatherings that help to create hype and excitement around an offer before its official launch.  It normally gives the audience a sneak peek into what could be expected if the participant were to invest in the main offer.  They normally involve a live component, hosted by the owner of the business, which gives prospects an opportunity to experience what it’s like to work with this person.  Lastly, the pre-launch event usually includes a sales pitch at the end, and often marks the official open cart kickoff.

Sign ups:

When a marketing professional talks about sign ups, they are referring to the number of people that sign up for a particular pre-launch event.  Sign ups are used to gauge whether or not your event is of interest to your market.  But remember, just because someone signs up for your pre-launch event, that does not mean they will buy your offer.

Sales webinar: 

This is an event that is held the day you open the cart during a launch. It is a live webinar designed to not only give your audience value, but also allow you to introduce your offer and give prospects an opportunity to buy. It can also be a time for you to answer any questions people might have about your product or service.

Invitation, Registration and Show Up Emails: 

These are a set of emails that are used to get people to attend your pre-launch event or sales webinar.  The invitation emails invite your list to the event and drive traffic to your sign up page. The registration email lets your sign ups know they are registered and the show up emails go out a few days/hours before the event to encourage people to show up live.

Sales sequence:  

A sales sequence is a series of 5-8 emails that are designed to sell a particular product or service.  They are used during your launch and are normally spread out over a period of 7-10 days.  These emails introduce your offer, position your offer as the solution your clients need, help to overcome any objections and are ultimately designed to convert prospects into clients.

Paid partnerships:

A paid partnership is a business relationship you use to advertise your event and/or offer during launch.  These partnerships typically serve the same audience as you, but in a different capacity.  You pay these businesses to advertise for you and they share your offer with their audience.  These paid partnerships ultimately help you grow your email list and increase your likelihood for more clients.

Conversion Rate:  

Conversion rate is a critical marketing metric that measures the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter. Simply put, the higher the conversion rate, the more effective your website is at turning visitors into customers. Calculating this rate helps you optimize your digital marketing campaigns by identifying potential areas of improvement and tracking progress over time.

Cost per Click:

Cost per click (CPC) is a metric used in advertising that denotes the price an advertiser pays for each click on an ad. Essentially, it is the amount of money an advertiser pays to a publisher every time a user clicks on an ad. This model is prevalent in search engine advertising and paid social media campaigns, and allows advertisers to track their return on investment and optimize their ads for maximum profitability. 

Cost per Lead:

Cost per lead (CPL) is a marketing metric used to measure the expense incurred by a company for generating a single customer lead. This metric is calculated by dividing the total cost of a marketing campaign by the number of leads generated. CPL is a valuable tool for coaches looking to monitor marketing expenses and evaluate the effectiveness of their lead generation strategies.

ROAS:

ROAS stands for Return on Advertising Spend, which is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of a specific advertising campaign or channel. It represents the total revenue generated from a campaign divided by the total cost of the campaign. This enables coaches to assess which channels are driving the greatest revenue and optimize their ad spend accordingly.

Growth Phase Terms

Revenue:

As a coach, understanding revenue is crucial for building and sustaining a successful business. Revenue refers to the amount of money your business earns from selling your products or services. This is typically measured over a certain period of time, such as a month or year. It is important to note that revenue does not take into account the costs of producing or delivering the products or services, which will affect a company’s profitability.

Net Profit:

Net profit refers to the amount of revenue you generate after deducting all operating expenses, taxes, and interest. It is a measure of your profitability and reflects the financial health of the business. Higher net profits indicate better efficiency in operations, better pricing strategy, and effective cost management. It is essential for you to understand this metric as it helps you evaluate the financial performance of your business and make informed decisions to improve it.

Team Expenses:

As your business grows, you will absolutely need a team to help relieve you of all the day to day business tasks. For you to be able to focus on your zone of genius and provide an outstanding coaching experience for your clients, you will need marketing, creative, operational and financial professionals. The cost of all these individuals or companies is a necessary expense for you to be able to scale.

Software Stack:

This is simply a list of all the software that you need to effectively and efficiently run and grow your business.  Your software stack normally includes a marketing software suite, financial software, client management software and operational software. Some coaches choose to use all-in-one software while others pay for individual software for each area of their business.  Software is an important but also significant expense for businesses, so it’s important to choose wisely.

Offer Stack:

Your offer stack is a look at all your offers and how they fit with one another. Think about the path your client would go on if they continued to work with you over time.  For instance, you may have a low entry offer to give clients a small taste of what it’s like to work with you. Then you may have a core offer, which outlines your primary way for creating transformation with your clients. For clients who want an even deeper experience, you could have a premium offer.  The purpose of your offer stack is to make sure all your offers follow a customer journey or path to promote long-term clients.

CLV:

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a measure of the total worth of each customer to a company over the course of their lifetime as a customer. It takes into account not only the initial purchase, but also the value of potential repeat business and referrals. By understanding CLV, you can better calculate the long-term revenue potential of each customer and make informed decisions about your marketing strategies and investments.

KPIs:

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are quantifiable measures that track progress towards achieving specific business objectives. These metrics provide insight into the success of marketing strategies and help you make informed decisions about future campaigns. Examples of KPIs include website traffic, conversion rates, and social media engagement. By analyzing KPIs, you can determine what is working and what needs improvement in order to ultimately boost the success of your marketing efforts.

Phew!  That is a lot of marketing terms to understand and remember.  Even I, as a marketing professional, have new terms to learn all the time.  Business and marketing is always changing so all we can do is our best as we continue to scale.  Stick around and I will do my best to keep you current on what you need to know to grow your coaching business.

Lori Young, is the founder of Amazing OBM, a boutique digital marketing agency providing done-for-you marketing services for coaches and course creators.  With services to support you in all phases of your business, we will reduce your marketing overwhelm and be your business growth partner.  Schedule a call today so you can get back to your zone of genius – coaching your clients.