The growth marketing glossary

ROAS

Return on ad spend - revenue generated per rupee/dollar spent on ads.

CAC

Customer acquisition cost - the full cost to win one new customer.

CPA

Cost per action - what you pay for one conversion event.

CPL

Cost per lead - the acquisition cost of one inbound lead.

CTR

Click-through rate - the share of viewers who click your ad.

CPC

Cost per click - what each ad click costs you.

CPM

Cost per thousand impressions - the price of attention.

Retargeting

Showing ads to people who already visited, viewed or abandoned.

Lookalike Audience

Meta's modeling that finds new people similar to your best customers.

Advantage+

Meta's automated campaign type that hands targeting and mix to the algorithm.

Quality Score

Google's 1-10 rating of ad relevance and landing experience.

Search Intent

The real goal behind a search query - informational, navigational or transactional.

Geo-targeting

Restricting or weighting ad delivery by location.

Frequency

How often the same person sees your ad - the fatigue dial.

LinkedIn Ads

Professional-targeting ads for B2B pipeline, not impressions.

SEO

Search engine optimization - earning organic visibility in search results.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust - Google's quality lens.

Domain Authority

A 0-100 estimate of a site's ranking strength (Moz metric; similar: DR by Ahrefs).

Backlinks

Links from other sites to yours - the original currency of authority.

Technical SEO

The crawl, index, speed and structure layer search engines require.

Core Web Vitals

Google's speed/stability metrics: LCP, INP, CLS.

Local SEO

Winning map-pack and near-me visibility for physical businesses.

Google Business Profile

The listing that powers maps, local pack and direct calls.

Topical Authority

Depth of coverage that makes you the source on a topic, not a page.

Schema Markup

Structured data that tells machines exactly what your content is.

Lifecycle Marketing

Messaging systems mapped to where a customer is - not calendar blasts.

Email Flow

Triggered email sequences that fire on behavior, not schedules.

WhatsApp Marketing

The 98%-open-rate channel - broadcasts, flows and commerce in chat.

RFM Segmentation

Segmenting customers by Recency, Frequency, Monetary value.

Segmentation

Splitting your audience by behavior, value or traits - and messaging accordingly.

Opt-in

Explicit consent to be messaged - the license for every lifecycle channel.

Drip Campaign

A time-based message sequence that 'drips' education or offers over days.

Winback

Campaigns that reactivate customers who stopped buying.

Churn

The rate at which customers or subscribers stop being customers.

Retention

The share of customers who come back and buy again.

Personalization

Adapting messages, offers and pages to the individual's behavior.

LTV

Lifetime value - total profit a customer generates across the relationship.

MER

Marketing efficiency ratio - total revenue / total ad spend, no attribution.

Attribution

Assigning credit for a sale across the touchpoints that produced it.

Conversion Rate

The share of visitors who take the action you built the page for.

CRO

Conversion rate optimization - systematic testing to raise conversion.

A/B Testing

Splitting traffic between variants to prove which performs better.

Creative Testing

Batch-testing ad creative to find winners fast.

KPI Dashboard

One live page with the numbers that decide decisions.

Payback Period

How many months until a customer's profit repays their acquisition cost.

Unit Economics

The per-customer profit math: margins, CAC, LTV, payback.

First-party Data

Data customers give you directly - the post-cookie advertising asset.

Landing Page

A single-purpose page engineered for one action, free of site navigation.

Message Match

Continuity between the ad's promise and the page's headline.

CTA

Call to action - the single, unmistakable next step you want.

Lead Magnet

A valuable free asset traded for contact details.

Lead Scoring

Ranking leads by fit and intent so sales works the best first.

Lead Nurturing

Systematic follow-up that moves a lead to a decision.

SQL

Sales-qualified lead - a lead vetted as ready for a sales conversation.

B2B Funnel

The multi-stage journey from cold audience to closed contract.

Social Proof

Evidence that others trusted you - reviews, logos, results, numbers.

Urgency & Scarcity

Real time or inventory limits that make deciding-now rational.

AOV

Average order value - the mean revenue per order.

Upsell & Cross-sell

Offering a better version (upsell) or complement (cross-sell) at peak intent.

Cart Abandonment

The ~70% of filled carts that never check out - and the flows that save them.

Repeat Purchase Rate

The share of customers who buy a second time.

GMV

Gross merchandise value - total sales before costs and returns.

D2C

Direct-to-consumer - brands selling straight to buyers, owning the relationship.

Marketplace vs D2C

Selling where the traffic is (Amazon, marketplace) vs owning the customer.

Hyperlocal

Serving a tight geographic zone - delivery-radius businesses.