You know the drill, I'm sure you do, someone drops a fancy acronym in a meeting or a Facebook live stream, and if you didn’t take notes, you’re left nodding your head while secretly googling. “Content marketing,” “CPA,” “APIs,” “Smarketing”, and everyone’s talking in a secret code, and you didn’t get the decoder ring.
So in Episode 150 of Monday Morning Marketing, we did something different: we broke that code. We explained jargon so you don’t have to guess what it means and more importantly we did it in plain English.
Welcome to Real Talk on Jargon
We kicked things off by admitting we used to be baffled by this stuff too. But over years of working in marketing, we realised these terms aren’t meant to make you feel small, they’re meant to help you understand and use your tools better.
What is Content Marketing, Anyway?
Content marketing: simply put, it's content that markets your business. That means blogs, videos, social posts, infographics, even a poster on a bus. It's non-salesy content created to attract, inform, and engage your audience. It’s education before drip-feeding the pitch, and it’s the backbone of inbound marketing. There's another word for you to learn!
Unlocking Acronyms You'll Actually Use
Here are the most useful terms we covered, no silliness or pretension included:
- KPI (Key Performance Indicator): How do you measure success? That could be sales numbers, webinar sign-ups, or email opens, whatever goals matter most to you.
- CPM (Cost Per Mille): How much does it cost per 1,000 ad impressions? Yes, “mille” means thousand, not a million, silly but true, because that would be way too expensive.
- API (Application Programming Interface): The technical term for how tools connect and share data, like Agorapulse pulling stats from your Instagram or Facebook account.
- CTA (Call to Action): That click-worthy button or message, for example "Read more," “Book now,” “Send DM,” etc. Without these, your audience has no next step.
- Gated Content: When you require someone to fill in an email or register to access content (like a PDF or webinar), that’s gated content. It's not a block, it’s an invitation.
- CMS / CRM: A Content Management System (CMS) is where you update your website/blog. A Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) manages your contacts and helps funnel them toward a sale.
- Lead Gen / Lead Nurturing: How you attract people (lead generation) and build trust over time until they become customers (lead nurturing).
- Smarketing: Marketing and sales working together (hopefully) sometimes by the same person, seamlessly. If you're both at once, congrats, you’re a Smarketing Manager.
- Remarketing: Ads that show up for people who have already visited your website. Think: “You looked at that product? Here it is again!”
Why It Matters
You don’t need to memorise all this. But here’s why it matters:
- Knowing what they mean means you can ask the right questions.
- Recognising jargon helps you see what’s actually happening behind your tools.
- And most importantly it genuinely helps you take action, rather than feel confused.
Your Next Steps (Without Feeling Overwhelmed)
- Pick two or three terms from above.
- Apply them this week. Tell someone you ran a campaign by looking at KPI “email conversions” or used your CTA links properly in your next video.
- If new jargon pops up, don’t pretend you know it, ask or Google it. Seriously, we ALL do it.
It's the "In Crowd"
Jargon doesn’t have to be scary. It's just shorthand for complex ideas. Once you understand the shorthand, you can focus on what really matters, creating content, connecting with your audience, and getting results.
If you’re curious about a term and we probably skipped a hundred, we’d be happy to demystify a few more. Just drop us a message!
Until then, keep it simple, keep it real, and keep marketing.
🧡 Esther & Melanie
