Rethinking Traditional Marketing Terms
Many of the core terms and strategies in marketing remain unchanged from the old patriarchal paradigms and Mad Men values of competition and exclusion.
In the past, when I’ve tried to “beat out the competition” or keep up with the latest marketing trend du jour, I’ve been exhausted and overwhelmed by my business. Constantly trying to be something I’m not felt icky, too.
In this post, I reimagine conventional marketing terms and reframe them in ways that have given me better mental health as an entrepreneur and given me and my clients better results. Let’s get into it.
A new glossary of marketing terms
These are in a rough alphabetical order, laid out in a way that builds upon ideas and concepts. Enjoy! And let me know if there are any I missed!
Branding
Branding is anything you repeatedly do.
That's it! There’s no need for most small business owners to get more complicated with it.
The things you do over and over again create an expectation of what people are going to get from you. They are the evidence of your promise to your clients.
Yes, colors and fonts are in there, too, but behaviors and habits are the most meaningful parts of our brand, and they often get overlooked.
And they simply boil down to whatever you repeatedly do. Late all the time? That’s part of your brand. Are you consistently funny and warm? Part of your brand.
The trick here is to know what you’re doing over and over again. Many business owners aren’t aware of their repeated behaviors and that creates unconscious branding that’s harming their relationship with their clients.
To get clear on your brand, examine what you repeatedly do, or better yet, get feedback! And think about what you're promising to deliver and how your clients perceive you.
Elevator pitch
The art of non-attachment in front of a potential client or customer.
Seriously.
That's all a great elevator pitch is--clarity on your gifts, who needs them, and the ability to talk about it all without desperately needing people to buy it or like you.
A script can help, but even better than a well-crafted script, is confidence in what you do and clarity on what’s special about it.
In that case, you don’t need to memorize a script. Instead, you can talk spontaneously and organically about what you do.
Passion and confidence will beat rote memorization every time.
Get clear
This refers to one of my core principles—that when you're crystal clear on what you want to accomplish in your biz, and you know what you do well and who you serve with it, you're much more likely to be successful and satisfied in your business.
This is also the name of my signature process I use in my coaching because I believe so much in the power of clarity.
Marketing
This is your brand in action.
If you're not clear on your brand, your marketing won't be effective.
This is usually the problem when people spend tons of money on advertising and it doesn't work. It's usually not a marketing problem. It's a brand clarity problem.
To fix this, get clearer on what you love about what you do, why you love to do it, who needs it, and how you're going to talk to them about it.
Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
This is your special blend of genius and gifts.
It’s what sets you apart from your competition, and makes you unique.
It’s why your clients will choose you over your competition.
The problem with this concept is that most entrepreneurs try to figure out what their USP is by looking outside themselves to what they think people want and trying to do whatever that is better than their competition.
This leads to self-betrayal and self-compromise as they constantly compare themselves to their competition and try to keep up with the latest marketing trends.
It’s exhausting.
Instead, you can discover your USP by getting really clear on yourself, your passion for your work, and what makes you naturally special and unique.
From that lens, your USP is simply the combination of all the things that you love about what you do.
These are things that give you more energy in your work, that you happily give away for free to family and friends, and that you deeply enjoy doing.
This combo completely solves a problem for your niche. It’s exactly what they’re looking for!
Once you identify these things, think about what you could do to bring more of them into your work, or how you can outsource or stop doing what's not on the list.
Your ideal clients
These people love you and are your superfans.
They are totally served by your service or product, they love the way you deliver it, and they refer their family and friends to you. These people are the backbone of your business.
Their qualifiers are:
They need exactly what you love to do in your work. (See your USP above).
They need it now.
They have money to spend on it.
If they don't have money to spend on it, or they don't need your solution right now, they aren't your Ideal Clients.
They're your Sorta Ideal Clients, and they may boost your numbers on social media, or refer some of your ideal clients to you, but they aren't in that group yet.
And although your Ideal Clients only make up about 20% of your business, you can't succeed without them.
They do so much for your business--from referrals to talking you up on social media--but perhaps their biggest gift to you is giving you a clear demographic to market to.
The clearer you are on who they are, the easier it is for you to send out your message. Then, your Sorta Ideal Clients can find you, and they make up the bulk of your business.
Your sorta ideal clients
These are clients who are just enough outside your Ideal Client category that you wouldn’t include them in your Ideal Client Avatar. They’re just not the people you’d immediately picture as your niche.
So, you might not recognize them, but the important part here is that they recognize you. When you talk clearly and specifically to your Ideal Clients in your marketing, they recognize a part of themselves in your messaging.
They see themselves in something that you’re saying, maybe your values, or your approach, or maybe just a specific thing you’re offering.
The important part is that they will come to you. You don’t need to market to them.
In fact, if you tried to market to them, you'd dilute your message too much for anyone to hear you.
If you try to talk to everyone, you’ll end up talking to no one.
So, your best bet is to stick to the narrow niche of your Ideal Clients and trust that your Sorta Ideal Clients are recognizing themselves in your message and coming to you.
Your Why
This is the big picture of why you love what you do.
It’s what you're taking a stand for in the world and it literally creates the container for your biz. If you're weak in this area, you likely don't have a clear funnel or overall strategy.
This is both the most woo-woo spiritual and most practical aspect of my work with clients because it’s the driving force behind every business.
We can create a fun, sustainable strategy for you all day long, but at some point, running your own business is going to be difficult. Your Why will motivate you through all the tough parts as long as you’re clear on it.
Your business strategy
This is how you want to receive your business.
Note that I didn't say how you want to DO your business. This part is about receiving.
When you're clear on what you do, why you do it, and who you do it for, your overall strategy simply becomes how you're letting it come to you.
It involves some details like your brand, logo, color scheme, messaging, sales funnel, pricing strategy, etc. but it all boils down to how you most want to live your life.
If you’re not creating your business strategy with this in mind, it will eventually collapse and you’ll just be going through the motions, letting your business run you instead of you running it.
Sales pitch
A great sales pitch is curiosity + non-attachment.
That's it. Just curiosity about your potential client’s problem (to see if you're a good fit for them) and non-attachment to the sale (so there's no pressure on them if they don't buy).
We can also include lots of little things like being quiet after you give them your price, but these are secondary.
Just get curious, be of service, and be willing to receive. That’s the foundation for great sales.
Techie Terms
Alt text
This is text in the code of a site that tells search engines what an image is.
Since search engines can’t see pictures, alt-tags are necessary to give visually impaired viewers information about a website’s images. They also create better SEO and a better experience for visitors overall.
Anchor text
This is the text that has a hyperlink attached to it; i.e. the text a user would click to follow a link
Headings
This is text inside a heading tag, e.g. H1, H2 or H3.
This font is often bolded and/or in a different font than your paragraph font, but it doesn’t have to be. Whoever coded your site can set these to whatever default you prefer.
The important thing to know about headings is that Google weighs these more heavily than other text. So you can increase your rankings if you’re thoughtful about the keywords you use in them.
Meta tag
These are lines of code in the background of your site that do everything from establish page titles and descriptions, to state who built your site.
Their primary function is to tell search engines what your site is about, although they’re rarely used by search engines anymore.
To read more about meta tags, check out #5 on my Website Audit Blog post or the technical SEO strategies in this SEO post.
Plugin
These are bits of code that work behind the scenes on your site to perform a specific function.
Squarespace has a few you can use. WordPress has a zillion.
Widget
This is the face of a plugin, i.e. what you can see on a website’s page. If the plugin is the code doing stuff behind the scenes, the widget is what you see on the website.
For example, if you use an outside email marketing software like ConvertKit, the signup form on your site is the widget.
Search engine
A search engine is any internet service that searches the web and responds to requests for information via customer searches to produce (hopefully) accurate links of what you searched for.
Bing and Yahoo are examples, but they have no game compared to Google, which makes up over 90% of all online searches. So, usually when we say "Search Engines" we just mean Google.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
This is how highly you rank on search engines Google for certain search words.
Keep in mind that this value is relative, so if you rank highly to your name + your biz name + your industry and city, I'm not all that impressed.
If you rank highly to more general search terms that come from a highly used phrase searched for by your demographic, then you've really accomplished something.
Spider
This is a tiny bit of code from Google that ‘crawls’ your site to read it and see what it’s about. It’s what tells Google what your site is about so it can rank and index your page appropriately.
To Sum Up:
I hope it’s clear that how you think about these things can really change how marketing feels. By challenging conventional wisdom, we can shift the way we approach our businesses, our clients, and our confidence in our sales. It can be a huge shift that frees up inner resources and produces better results!
