B2B Marketing: terms & concepts

A/B Testing

A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of something, a page, an email, an ad, by showing each to a randomly split audience and measuring which performs better against a chosen goal. It replaces opinion with evidence.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B marketing strategy that targets a defined set of high-value accounts as markets of one, concentrating effort on those specific companies with tailored campaigns, rather than casting a wide net to attract individual leads.

Attention Interest Desire Action (AIDA) Model

The AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is a classic marketing and sales framework describing the four stages a person moves through on the way to a purchase: capture attention, build interest, create desire, and prompt action.

BOFU (Bottom of Funnel)

BOFU, or bottom of funnel, is the final, decision stage of the buyer's journey, where a prospect has defined their problem and evaluated options and is choosing what to buy. BOFU efforts aim to convert that decision into a purchase.

Buyer Journey

The buyer journey is the process a buyer goes through from first realizing they have a problem to choosing and purchasing a solution, seen from the buyer's perspective, the path of awareness, consideration, and decision.

Buyer Journey Mapping

Buyer journey mapping is the practice of documenting the stages a buyer goes through on the way to a purchase, capturing what they think, feel, need, and do at each step, and the friction they encounter, so a company can align its marketing and sales to that journey.

Call To Action (CTA)

A call to action (CTA) is a prompt that tells the audience exactly what to do next, such as book a demo or start a trial. It is the explicit ask that turns attention into a measurable action.

Campaign

A campaign is a coordinated set of marketing or outreach activities, run across one or more channels over a defined period, aimed at a single goal such as generating leads, launching a product, or driving pipeline. It is the unit of planned, measurable effort.

Chat Widget

A chat widget is the embedded chat window in the corner of a website that lets visitors start a conversation without leaving the page. In sales it is a direct line to a high-intent visitor and a tool for capturing and qualifying leads.

Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition is the function and process of winning new customers, the coordinated marketing and sales activities that take a stranger from awareness through interest and evaluation to a paid purchase, treated as a repeatable, measurable system.

Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is the practice of dividing customers or prospects into distinct groups that share meaningful characteristics, so a company can target, serve, and communicate with each group in the way that fits it best.

Direct Competition

Direct competition refers to companies offering essentially the same product or service to the same target market, solving the same problem for the same buyers, so a prospect chooses between them on a like-for-like basis.

Firmographic Data

Firmographic data is the set of company-level attributes used to describe and segment businesses, such as industry, company size, revenue, location, and structure. It is to organizations what demographic data is to individuals.

Funnel Optimization

Funnel optimization is the practice of improving the rate at which prospects move from one stage of the sales or marketing funnel to the next, finding where people drop off and fixing those points to convert more of the traffic and leads you already have.

Growth Hacking

Growth hacking is an approach to growth that uses rapid experimentation across marketing, product, and data to find scalable, often unconventional ways to acquire and retain users, typically with limited budget.

ICP vs Buyer Persona

ICP vs buyer persona is the distinction between two targeting concepts: an ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the kind of company that is the best fit to buy from you, while a buyer persona describes the kind of person within that company you sell to.

Industry-Specific Solutions

Industry-specific solutions are products, or tailored versions of products, designed for the particular needs, workflows, terminology, and compliance requirements of a single industry, rather than serving every market with one generic offering.

Landing Page

A landing page is a standalone web page built around a single goal, getting the visitor to take one specific action such as filling out a form or requesting a demo, designed to convert campaign, ad, or email traffic into a defined next step.

Lead Funnel

A lead funnel is the staged path a potential customer travels from first awareness to becoming a qualified opportunity, narrowing in volume at each stage from top of funnel through middle to bottom of funnel.

Market Development

Market development is a growth strategy that takes an existing product into new markets, new geographies, industries, or customer segments, rather than building something new. The product stays the same; the audience changes.

Market Fragmentation

Market fragmentation is a condition in which a market is divided among many small competitors or split into many distinct customer segments, with no single player or product dominating.

Market Research

Market research is the systematic gathering and analysis of information about a market, its customers, competitors, and dynamics, to inform business decisions, replacing guesswork with evidence about who buys, what they want, and how the market behaves.

Marketing Penetration

Marketing penetration is the share of a target market that actually uses a product or buys from a brand, and, as a strategy, the effort to grow that share within an existing market rather than expanding into new ones.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that marketing has judged ready to pass to sales, based on fit and engagement, but who is not yet ready to buy. It sits earlier in the journey than a sales qualified lead.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The middle of the funnel (MOFU) is the consideration stage of the buyer's journey, where prospects who are aware of their problem are actively evaluating possible solutions but are not yet ready to buy.

Multi-Touch Attribution

Multi-touch attribution is a model for crediting revenue across all the marketing and sales touchpoints a buyer interacted with, rather than just the first or last, to fairly assess which efforts contributed to the win.

Omnichannel

Omnichannel is an approach to engaging buyers across multiple channels in a coordinated, connected way, so context carries across email, phone, social, chat, and web and the experience feels like one continuous conversation rather than disconnected interactions.

Organic Growth

Organic growth is business growth that comes from a company's own operations and non-paid sources, content, search, word of mouth, product usage, and retention, rather than from paid advertising or acquisitions. It is growth a company earns rather than buys.

Product-Market Fit

Product-market fit (PMF) is the degree to which a product satisfies strong demand in a well-defined market, the point where it is clearly the right solution for customers who genuinely need it and pull it faster than the company can push it.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is the practice of deliberately encouraging existing customers to recommend you to others, making word-of-mouth systematic by giving happy customers a reason and an easy way to refer, often with a reward.

Website Personalization

Website personalization is the practice of adapting what a visitor sees, headlines, offers, content, and calls to action, based on who they are and how they behave, so each visitor gets a more relevant experience than a one-size-fits-all page.