(Because the terms keep changing.)

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From foundational acronyms to newer B2B-specific concepts, this is a curated glossary of demand generation terms every B2B marketer should know, from strategy, to execution, to performance measurement. This glossary will continue to be updated as marketing and demand generation practices evolve — because they always do!

A

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

A B2B strategy where marketing and sales focus on high-value accounts through targeted campaigns to drive pipeline such as paid ads, email segments, and events. Today, ABM strategies have evolved into three types: 1:1 ABM (strategic ABM, 1-5 high-value accounts), 1:few (ABM lite, 5-10 accounts per cluster), and 1:many (programmatic ABM, hundreds of lower-value accounts).

AI Marketing

Marketing that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve decision-making, workflows, and customer experience through tailored ads, audience segmentation, customer service assistants, and more. AI has become increasingly standard, which means that now more than ever, human-centered marketing will be key to standing out from the flock.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

Optimizing content in order to surface your brand in AI-generated search engine answers such as Google snippets and Google’s AI Overview. Today, AEO has become a core discoverability tactic along with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

B

Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) Marketing

Marketing content created for the final decision-making stage of the customer sales journey, such as product demos, case studies, or pricing pages.

Buyer Persona

A fictional profile of an ideal buyer’s demographics, motivations, and challenges to help your team align on your target audience and messaging. These personas can be included in buying group models to map out how decisions are made.

Buying Group Marketing

An account-centric B2B marketing strategy that targets the group of stakeholders who influence purchases within an account, communicating messaging across a committee rather than a single lead.

C

Closed-Loop Marketing

A marketing strategy that analyzes the end-to-end data of an account’s sales journey, including gathering sales feedback on marketing tactics for future improvements.

Content Syndication

A marketing practice where the same content piece is republished across different platforms to increase its reach, traffic, and brand awareness (e.g. an article republished on a news outlet, or an infographic reposted on another brand’s social media). Its effectiveness has been decreasing since the early 2020s as B2B buyers get more comfortable with the traditional playbook.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as clicking an ad, downloading an eBook, or signing up to a newsletter. This is a key metric to evaluating content performance.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

The cost required to generate a conversion, dividing the marketing cost of a specific action by the number of new customers acquired (e.g. If you’ve spent $1,000 on an ad campaign that brought in 100 purchases, the CPA is $10 per customer). 

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

The total cost to generate one lead, dividing the marketing cost by the number of new leads generated (e.g. If you’ve spent $10,000 on a marketing campaign that brought in 100 newsletter signups, the CPL is $100 per lead). 

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The total sales and marketing cost to acquire a new customer. Ideally this number is low, to signal that you’re using your resources effectively (e.g. If you’ve spent $100,000 on marketing and sales in a quarter and acquired 1,000 customers, the CAC is $100 per customer).

Customer Churn Rate

The percentage of customers who stop doing business over a certain period. This is used to measure retention health and guide lifecycle strategy, and can be calculated by dividing the number of churned customers by the total number of customers.

D

Dark Funnel

Any untrackable part of the buyer journey, such as private conversations about a company at an in-person event or researching a company on a private forum. 

Data Enrichment

Enhancing your account records with additional actionable data. This should be an ongoing process to boost lead targeting, and can involve external tools to fill in missing fields or adjust inaccuracies.

Database Marketing

Uses customer data to create targeted campaigns. This involves segmenting customers into specific groups to personalize their messaging and experiences. While this is largely considered a staple practice now, there’s often numerous challenges around bad-data preventing or limiting the performance of campaigns using the database.

Demand Generation 

Coordinated programs that generate demand for a company’s products and services. This can include inbound, outbound, paid, and organic activities such as content marketing, events, and SEO tactics to create a strong qualified pipeline.

Direct Sales

A model where a product or service is sold directly to customers. This is often blended with other marketing tactics to support pipeline creation and conversion.

Discoverability

How easy it is for buyers to find and understand your brand and product/service. Traditionally, this includes SEO and paid search; today this also includes visibility in social media and AI answers.

Drip Campaign

A series of automated, pre-written emails sent on a pre-set schedule to nurture leads, moving them through the funnel based on their engagement levels.

E

Email List Building

Growing your brand’s mailing list of contacts through tactics like website contact forms, special offers, or gated content. Today, list quality and engagement are more important factors than the size of the list itself.

Enablement

The act of empowering marketing and sales teams with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their roles. This can involve equipping them with new tools, resources, and training/coaching.

Engagement Rate

Measures the effectiveness of your content based on the amount of audience interaction. Often this is calculated by dividing the total number of engagements (e.g. likes, comments, shares, clicks, saves) by the total number of impressions, multiplied by 100.

Enterprise Marketing

A strategy used by large companies to drive growth and expansion on a global scale. This involves a combination of complex, large-scale marketing budgets and tactics. 

Evergreen Content

Content designed to stay relevant over time (e.g. how-to guides, case studies, and FAQs), which boosts SEO and audience trust.

F

Firmographics

B2B’s version of demographics: while demographics are used for describing people (e.g. age, gender), firmographics are for describing businesses (e.g. industry, size). These can help guide targeting and  scoring.

First-Party Data

Information collected directly from audience interactions, such as contact info, website activity, or social media engagement. This can be gathered through touchpoints such as form submissions or analytics, and used to better understand and personalize customer experiences. In practice, the definition of first-party can get complicated, as many intermediaries may be the actual collector of data, highlighting the importance of data collection hygiene and practices in organizations.

Funnel Marketing

A strategy that separates a customer’s journey into different buying stages, from awareness and discovery, to consideration and research, to conversion and purchase. Today, funnels are generally seen more flexibly to reflect non-linear buying decisions.

Fractional Marketing

When a company hires an experienced marketer part-time for their specialized expertise, for a fraction of the cost of a full-time employee. Today, this is increasingly common during growth or transition periods.

G

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

GEO is focused on optimizing content to appear in AI-generated responses across multiple AI interfaces and chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. This is often combined with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) practices.

Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy 

A detailed plan for launching a product/service, involving every step from market research to determine buyer personas and messaging, to developing a sales and marketing plan, to execution and subsequent optimization. 

Growth Marketing

A full-funnel marketing approach focused on optimizing the entire customer journey, prioritizing pipeline and revenue to reach long-term sustainability.

H

Hand-Off

The process of transferring a customer from one team to another as seamlessly as possible (e.g. marketing to sales, or sales to customer success). This involves sharing both quantitative and qualitative data to ensure that everyone is aligned.

High-Quality Lead

A potential customer who fits your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), and is showing great interest in your business through activities like social media engagement, downloading resources, or requesting a demo.

I

Ideal Customer/Client Profile (ICP)

A description of the perfect company for your business to target: one the most likely to buy and succeed with your product. This includes factors like company size, budget, and location, and guides messaging and mapping buyer personas within the company.

Inbound Marketing

Attracting buyers through valuable content and experiences in order to build awareness, trust, and pipeline through SEO, content, and social media. For more predictable growth, this is often paired with paid and outbound marketing tactics. With the rise of AEO and GEO, inbound has taken a backseat in the spotlight, yet remains an essential approach to both those areas of marketing.

Intent Data

Information that signals a lead’s interest based on their behavior such as social media interactions, website visits, or resource downloads. This can be used to prioritize accounts, personalize messaging, and segment audiences. This type of data is often included in AI products like Clay. 

J

Journey

The path that a buyer takes from problem awareness to purchase, used to map funnel touchpoints. Today, journeys are increasingly understood as non-linear and driven by committees rather than individuals.

K

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A measurable value that tracks performance or progress towards a goal. In B2B this can be broken down into categories to measure the success of specific processes, like activity KPIs (e.g. number of meetings booked), cost KPIs (e.g. customer acquisition cost), or retention KPIs (e.g. churn rate).

Keywords

Search terms or phrases that your customers use when researching problems and solutions — these are often even more niche and industry-specific in B2B. Keywords are essential for guiding Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid search, and content strategy, as well as Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

L

Landing Page

A standalone webpage designed to drive conversions for a specific marketing campaign, such as a newsletter sign-up page or a demo request page.

LLM (Large Language Model)

A type of AI trained on massive datasets to understand and generate text, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. In B2B, LLMs can help automate workflows, but should act as assistive tools, not strategists or final decision-makers. LLMs have also driven interest in AEO, an emerging area in optimization — however there's much debate on the best practices to show up in LLMs consistently, similar to the early days of SEO. Most focus on consistent naming and structure across product, branding, and promotions.

Lead

Leads are a key unit of funnel reporting: an individual or company who has shown interest in your company’s products/services. Despite growing sentiment against “leads” as a measure, they remain the most relevant way to describe the group of interest-level behaviours taken by prospects 

Lead Generation

The process of attracting potential buyers’ interest through content and experiences both organic and paid, with the goal of converting them into customers.

Lead Magnet

Any free content or offers used to attract leads to your business by having them share their email for further nurturing. This can include a free trial, free resources, or discounts.

Lead Nurturing

The process of building relationships with leads at every stage of the funnel with resources and support, engaging and educating them so that they’re more likely to convert into customers.

Lead Qualification

The process of assessing whether a lead is a good customer fit and is ready to progress further down the funnel. This can include evaluation criteria, checklists, and scoring systems.

Lead Scoring

A numerical/ranking system used to determine how likely a lead is to become a paying customer. This can include gathering demographic data like form submission info or behavioral data like email opens in order to signal their sales readiness. While lead scoring is an important factor to consider, qualitative feedback from sales remains an undisputed method to acquire the best lead information.

Lookalike Accounts

An AI-generated or database-generated list of prospect accounts that resemble your ideal customers. This can be used to optimize your targeting in ads, messaging, and outreach.

M

Marketing Analytics

The process of tracking and analyzing marketing data in order to optimize performance. This can include data such as website traffic, email open rates, and number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). There’s often a lot of noise and buzz in analytics in times of new technological entrants, but in reality most analytics rarely change outside of conversion, revenue, and cost-level analysis.

Marketing Automation 

Using technology to automate repetitive tasks such as email drip campaigns, lead scoring, or generating data reports. Today, automation is nearly present in most major marketing technologies in some form (CRMs, ad platforms, campaign management platforms, email platforms and more).

Marketing Campaign

A planned series of marketing activities to reach a specific marketing goal. This can include paid ads, hosting educational events, or publishing eBooks relating to a specific product or message.

Marketing Channel

A medium used to reach and engage with your audience. This can include online channels such as social media or email, as well as offline channels like billboards or in-person events.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A potential customer who has shown a strong interest in your business and is likely to become a paying customer based on their engagement behavior. This is identified based on certain criteria that impacts their lead scoring such as multiple website visits, downloading eBooks, or regularly attending webinars. Today, MQLs are increasingly ignored as a KPI in favor of SALs or other MOFU or BOFU metrics.

Middle of Funnel (MOFU) Marketing

Marketing efforts that target the middle of the buyer’s journey when they’re evaluating solutions. This includes educational content designed to empower a prospect, such as comparison guides, case studies, or product demos. These efforts often need sales enablement motions to be truly effective.

N

Net New Leads

Potential customers who are brand new to your database, entering your funnel for the first time.

O

Omni-Channel Marketing

An approach that integrates both online and offline channels to create a consistent customer experience with unified messaging throughout. While previously thought as a novel approach, it’s become increasingly necessary to have at least a few omni-channel programs across a market, as a result of increased noise in all media channels.

Organic Search

Any unpaid visibility in search results, including unpaid search listings on search engines, as well as AI responses and summaries. These rankings are determined by algorithms and relevant keywords. It’s an increasingly competitive and crowded channel, as paid and AI listings take the first half of most organic SERPs.

Organic Social

Any unpaid content shared on social media platforms (e.g. posts, videos, stories), used to build brand awareness and trust. This activity is not always trackable or searchable, making it a dark funnel driver.

Outbound Marketing

A strategy that attracts customers to your business through traditional advertising tactics such as cold outreach, print ads, or billboards. This is most effective when paired strategically with inbound marketing tactics.

P

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

A paid advertising model where you only pay each time an ad is clicked, used to capture high-intent demand in search and social. The PPC model of monetizing first-party data is becoming increasingly popular for enterprises with large databases, as a means to connect buyers and sellers (e.g. a grocery chain develops their own bespoke “Google Ads” for brands to put their products on).

Pipeline

A map of the sales process that guides a lead through the funnel, from the first touch to closing a deal. This is also a term used for the amount of sales opportunities that are moving towards close, used to forecast revenue and determine funnel health.

Programmatic Advertising

An automated pay-per-click (PPC) marketing process where ad placements are bought and sold in real time with the help of data-driven algorithms, improving reach and efficiency. 

Q

Qualified Account

A company that has been identified as a strong potential customer based on specific criteria, and who is deemed ready to be contacted by the sales team.

Qualified Lead

A lead who has the strong potential to become a customer based on specific criteria. This can be further categorized into a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

Quality Score

A rating used for Google Ad campaigns to help you measure your quality compared to other advertisers. This score is from 1-10, and can be used to help improve your ads, landing pages, or keywords. The higher your quality score, the more relevant your ad is to someone searching your keyword. It’s important to note that Quality Score is not a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), but rather a diagnostic tool to help inform your other data. 

R

Remarketing

A tactic where a business re-engages with audiences who have previously interacted with them. This can include ads to website visitors, webinar recording emails to no-shows, or special offers to past customers. It’s more critical now than ever to develop remarketing programs, especially in economies where buyers are smaller in number.

Return on Investment (ROI)

A metric of how profitable and effective a specific activity is. A general formula to calculate ROI is: (Net Profit ÷ Total investments) x 100.

Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) 

A metric used to determine how effective an advertising campaign was, measuring the total revenue against the total ad spend.

S

Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)

A lead that has been qualified by marketing as a strong potential customer and approved to be pursued by the sales team for further engagement.  

Sales Development Rep (SDR)

A sales role dedicated to qualifying and advancing prospects, working to identify whether they’re a good customer fit. Depending on the company size, they may set up meetings between a customer and an account executive as the next step, or close sales themselves.

Sales Cycle Length

The total time it takes to make a sale, from a prospect’s first touch to closing a deal. This can be calculated by dividing the total number of days it takes to close a deal, divided by the total number of closed deals.

Sales-Marketing Alignment

A strategic approach that ensures sales and marketing teams are well integrated in their processes and messaging, creating a seamless customer experience. This is even more critical now, when buying cycles are longer and more complicated in tight economies.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

One of a handful KPIs used to measure a demand gen team’s effectiveness, a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is the next stage after a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): a lead who has shown a very strong interest in your business, and is a priority for the sales team to pursue and convert. This is determined through high-intent activities such as requesting a demo, asking for pricing info, or booking a call. 

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

A paid marketing strategy that uses advertising to increase a business’ visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes bidding on specific keywords and using a pay-per-click (PPC) model. While this can still be an effective channel, it’s increasingly expensive and requires outside data to maximize performance.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

An organic marketing strategy with the goal of increasing a business’ visibility in search rankings with unpaid tactics, such as optimizing website content with specific keywords for search and building backlinks. SEO’s “death” is largely overreported, as its underlying activity is also foundational to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

The list of results and websites that display after a user searches a question or keywords a search engine like Google. This often includes a mix of organic search results, paid ads, video thumbnails, and more recently, AI summaries.

Segmentation

The process of dividing your audiences lists into separate groups based on certain traits or behaviors. This can be helpful for creating more targeted marketing campaigns and personalized communication. Today, most advertising, cold outbound, or email platforms allow segmentation, enabling a layered approach across the buyer journey.

Small to Medium-sized Business (SMB)

A business category for companies whose company size and revenue are smaller than a large enterprise. This generally includes organizations with less than 1,000 employees and less than $1 billion in yearly revenue. Today, this category is increasingly experiencing major growth and expansion.

Social Media Marketing

Using social media channels to build brand awareness and influence decisions. This can include paid ads, organic thought leadership, and community discussions to educate and nurture your audiences. Today, social media is no longer something to overlook in B2B and beyond, as narratives across channels have to be dictated by your organization—otherwise you risk leaving your brand open to interpretation.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

A cloud and subscription-based model that delivers applications and software online. SaaS growth relies on efficient demand generation that prioritizes both retention and expansion, and is increasingly becoming embedded with AI solutions.

Social Leads

A potential customer who has shown interest in your business through social media channels, such as someone signing up for a corporate newsletter through an employee’s LinkedIn post or booking a demo after clicking on an Instagram ad.

T

Target Account

A company that fits the ideal customer profile (ICP) of a business, and is identified as a high-value, high-priority account to pursue. 

Target Audience

The specific group that a business is offering their products/services to, used to guide messaging and personalization. In B2B, this is often a specific group of stakeholders who impact buying decisions at companies. As AI adoption increases, a root understanding of target audiences is even more critical to ensure the right marketing dollars hit the right people.

Top of Funnel (TOFU) Marketing

Marketing efforts that target the top of the buyer’s journey. This includes content designed to raise awareness, such as blogs or social media content on broader industry topics. With the proliferation of AI tools, TOFU marketing has become increasingly noisy, highlighting the significance of quality vs. quantity and understanding target audiences first and foremost.

Total Addressable / Available Market (TAM)

The maximum amount of revenue that a business can generate if it captured the entire market. The total number of possible customers helps a business identify a market’s potential and opportunity for growth. TAM has and continues to be an often overlooked part of GTM motions for new products and businesses.

Traffic

The process of users visiting your website, which can be through paid and organic channels such as social media links, search engine results pages (SERPs), or backlinks from external websites. For B2B companies, high-quality traffic is the goal, meaning users with good potential to become customers. While many dispute the effectiveness of driving traffic with the rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), it’s still essential to drive prospects to your page for a first-hand experience with your brand, even if overall traffic patterns are in decline. 

U

Unqualified Lead

A lead who has shown interest in your product/service, but does not currently meet the criteria to continue through the sales funnel and become a customer. Factors can include lack of budget, timing, or authority to make a purchasing decision.

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM)

A custom code added to the end of an URL to track a marketing campaign’s performance. This includes specific parameters such as source and medium to inform the marketer where the traffic has come from (e.g. a booking link in a whitepaper). Although considered a legacy practice due to automated tracking, UTMs still allow the most configurable and consistent reporting when configured across platforms.

User Experience (UX)

The quality of a user’s interaction with a product/service, used to improve conversion, onboarding, and retention. This can include making it easy to find pricing information, seamless integrations across your suite of products, and making it simple to contact support. Today, this remains an overlooked yet increasingly important brand differentiator.

W

Website Analytics

The process of tracking and analyzing data in order to optimize website and content performance. This can include metrics such as number of visitors, average time spent, bounce rate, or conversion rate. With increased privacy protection obscuring detailed data, and the rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), website analytics has taken a backseat in conversational relevance but remains an essential part of any reporting.

Z

Zero-Click Marketing

A marketing strategy where the goal is to provide audiences with the immediate information they need directly through a social media post or a search result, without having to click through and leave the website or platform they’re currently on (e.g. social posts, short-form videos, and search snippets). Today, this is an essential aspect to all marketing elements in digital campaigns.

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