15 expressions explained to make the online marketing space easier to understand

When being new in business, and the whole online marketing space, there are a lot of expressions people use that you are just expected to know. Sometimes it takes a while to get the hang of all the new lingo (words). I asked people in my network what expressions they had a hard time figuring out when they started. To be honest, I had to look some of them up even now – And I have a masters degree in marketing. So don’t feel bad if you have to look up terms, most of us do it 😉

That is why I have chosen to explain them in this post – If you feel like some expressions are missing please let me know.

1 – Audience

The people who consume your content, these are the people you talk to, inform and inspire. This is your potential customer.

2 – Lead

A lead is a potential buyer, someone who is in your target group. You can have both warm and cold leads. A warm lead is someone who has shown interest for your product or service. This could be people on your email list, or people who have already visited your website. A cold lead on the other hand is people who do not know you. This could be random people on the internet that you think would be great customers in your business. It takes a lot more work to make a cold lead buy something than a warm lead. As the warm lead has already shown interest for your product or service.

4 – Freebie

The same as a lead magnet, something that the person signing up, does not pay any money for, but they pay with their email address. Be aware that in some countries (like Denmark), you cannot call a product free if people need to give their email address to get access to it. This is why I in general try not to say that my freebies / lead magnets are free.

5 – Landing page

When you have something you want people to get, this could be a freebie or they want to buy your course, for example. Then you send them to a landing page. It’s the page you would most like them to land on for that specific thing.

Here are a couple of examples of a landing page:

Deb Wertz

House of Creators

There is only ONE purpose to a landing page, and that is getting people to sign up / buy what the focus of the site is. This is why it’s a good idea to remove the menu and all other distractions from that specific site. Then on your thank you page, you can have the menu back, so that people can look around your site.

6 – Sales page

This is kind of what the name says it is, it’s a page you sell from. A sales page can also be your landing page, but it does not have to be. Often a sales page has a lot more information on the page.

7 – Opt-in form/page

This is a term used for where you have people sign up for your email list. This can either be a page or a pop-up on your site. Another term for this is a Squeeze page.

Then you have double opt-in also. This is the best way to make sure that bots are not joining your list, and also since people confirm their email you are more likely to have more engaged people on your list. You also make sure that people do not add random emails to your email list. When you have double opt-in activated (and you should), when people sign up for your email list, they first get an email where they need to confirm that they actually did ask to be on your list. I’m sure you have tried this yourself 🙂

9 – Email provider

This is a system you use to send out emails to your list. There are many reasons an email provider is a great idea. For one it’s difficult to keep track of people’s emails in an excel document, but it is also easier to collect emails through pop-ups on your website, when using a email provider. When the time comes, you can also use them to segment your audience into different groups, and to send automated emails. There are a lot of different providers out there, I chose Mailerlite because they have all the options in their free version including of automation, which is nice when starting out. – This is an affiliate link, to read more about them see expression number 13.

10 – Email automation

When people sign up for your email list, you can set up an automation sequence with your email provider. This means that when someone signs up for your list, they will automatically get a certain amount of prewritten emails from you. This will often be a sequence of emails leading to an offer to buy something. But remember this should also be adding value to your reader.

11 – Tripwire

When buying something from someone, it’s an act of trust, which makes it easier to buy from that person again later on. This is why a lot of online business owners use tripwires. A tripwire is a small sell, something low cost, that is an easy decision to make for the customer, but the real idea behind the product is not to earn money, but to create trust, to make it more likely that the customer will buy your larger offer later in the sales process.

12 – Sales funnel

This is the customer journey. The reason it’s called a funnel is that you can think of it that way. At the top you have a lot of people, all the people you market to and by marketing and communication to them you are getting people down the funnel. For each thing you do, some people will like you more and go further down your funnel, and some will choose not to. By the end you then have the people who actually end up buying from you. You can automate this process a lot, using ads and email automations.

13 – Affiliate

Or affiliate marketing, is a way people have others help them market their product. And for you as a business owner, you can be on both sides of this.

As a business owner with a product affiliate marketing is a smart strategy, because you only pay the marketing fee when there is an actual sale. You can consider it as direct marketing, where you have someone else do the actual marketing for you, and you only pay when there is a sale.

Say you have made a course and you want to sell it for 1000 USD, then you can use affiliate marketers to do the marketing for you. Making an agreement with someone who gets maybe 20-30% of price on all sold courses. So if I sell a course for you to someone else, I will get $200-300 USD from you.

This is a strategy a lot of online business owners use, as we often recommend the things we use ourselves, we might as well earn money on it, at no additional cost to the customer. If you go to my resources page, you will see that some of the resources I recommend are affiliate links. This means that if you sign up, using my link, you get the same price as normal, sometimes you even get a discounted price, or a trial period, and you help me earn a bit of money based on what you buy.

One of the largest affiliate programs is Amazon, where you can earn money if people use your link when they shop – This is an affiliate link.

14 – Facebook pixel

This is a small tracking program you install on your website, that makes it possible for you to retarget potential customers who have visited your site before. This is what is happening when you for example have visited an online bookstore, and then you get ads from that book store on your facebook profile in the next time period.

15 – Open and closed registration

This is something often used as part of your marketing, and can be used both for courses and memberships sites.

An open registration means that your customer can register whenever they want. So the cart is always open. A closed registration on the other hand is then you only sell your course or open the doors to your membership for a short period of time. This can be 1-4 times a year. The thing about closed registration is that it creates a fear of missing out (FOMO) with your potential customers. This will make them more likely to buy when the cart is open, for that short period of time.

As I kept writing more words came up, so the list is already long, but I’m also probably missing some. So if you have any words on here that you feel like I’m missing, please do send them to me, and I will add them to the list.

Always remember – Have fun and Get Shit Done!

Diana Lund