Content marketing is a strategy of creating and distributing content that captures the attention of your audience by being informative, relevant, and captivating.

A strong content marketing campaign will be consistent and compelling. The goal of content marketing is not to sell directly, but to drive sales by cultivating a targeted audience and building brand awareness, and eventually, brand evangelism.

Content marketing should engage through all available channels.

Social media is online communication via websites and other virtual communities in which people can create, share, and collaborate.

Social media is a key marketing tool that can be utilized to expand awareness of your company or product, drive traffic to your website, and increase your customer base.

Some common social networks are Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

The goal of search engine optimization, or SEO, is to make your website visible by earning a high ranking in the search results pages of a search engine.

To effectively employ SEO, your marketing team must know how search engines work, what people are searching for, the terms and keywords entered into search engines, and which search engines your targets uses.

SEO does not affect paid or sponsored search results.

PageRank is one part of the algorithm used by Google to decide placement in search engine results. PageRank scores websites based on factors such as importance, reliability, and relevance.

The goal of earning a high PageRank is not necessarily to obtain a high placement in search results, but to have your site viewed as important. 

Paid search, a form of web marketing, is advertising within the sponsored listings of a search engine.

Two primary types of paid search:

• Cost-per-click – You pay the search engine for each individual click
• Cost-per-impression – You pay the search engine for every 1,000 times ad appears on page

Organic traffic accounts for visits to your website due to relevancy, not paid advertisements. These visits come from people clicking on the unpaid search results of a search engine.

As organic search results account for almost two-thirds of web traffic, taking the time to produce strong content and create value for visitors of your website can really pay off.

Direct traffic is the number of visitors who directly accessed your website.

Direct traffic is important, because these visitors directly sought you out, meaning that they already have some interest in what you do.

Referral traffic is visitors to your website that have arrived from links on other websites.

Referral traffic is useful to track, because it gives you an idea of what sources are sending the most visitors to your website.

Link popularity is the number of quality links to your website from other sites. It is one of the factors that affects search engine results placement.

Three types of links increase link popularity:

• Internal Links – Links within a website
• Inbound Links – Links to your website from other websites
• Outbound Links – Links to other websites from your website

Bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who leave your website after only viewing one page.

A high bounce rate indicates that your website may be lacking in speed, functionality, or information that visitors seek.

A call-to-action is just what it sounds like, a prompt to a user to take action. They can take the form of a button, banner, graphic, or text on a website.

A good call to action should be clear, attractive, hold a value proposition, and lead to a specific landing page.

A Landing page is a specific, stand-alone webpage designed to receive visitors, usually those who have clicked on an SEO search result or online advertisement.

The two most common types of landing pages are Click-through and Lead Generation.

The sales cycle is the process that takes place from initial contact with a lead to close of sale. 

A lead is a potential sales contact that may have the interest, authority, and budget to purchase your product or service.

• Unknown/Raw Lead – An unqualified contact
• Scored Lead – Lead that has been evaluated for further qualification

Lead generation is the act of developing consumer awareness and interest in your products and services.

Lead generation fuels the early stage of your sales cycle.

Lead scoring is a way to evaluate a lead’s level of interest by assigning them a value ranked against a defined scale that you’ve created. This scale must be agreed on by both sales and marketing. It is based on both explicit and implicit information about a prospect:

• Explicit – Factors such as size of company, industry, title, etc.
• Implicit – Factors such as engagement with marketing, page visits, email opens, etc.

Lead scoring is a crucial step in the sales process, because it allows you to filter your lists.

A marketing qualified lead is a lead that has shown a level of interest based on their interaction and engagement with your marketing efforts. These leads can be nurtured further or given to your sales team.

This lead will often be one of the strongest leads you can pass to your sales team for further qualification.

A sales accepted lead is a marketing qualified lead that has been passed to and accepted by the sales team for further qualification.

A sales qualified lead is a lead that has met the qualifications of the sales team. These leads have a good probability of closing. 

Lead nurturing is raising your company’s profile in a prospect’s eyes. Though that prospect may not be ready to buy at the time, they can still be led toward a sale through personalized messaging and contact. 

Pipeline is a representation of the sales process of a business. Effective pipeline will have clearly defined stages that an opportunity or lead will place into along the sales cycle.

Managing your pipeline allows you to keep track of how business is doing as well as allow you to most effectively nurture your leads.

Pipeline velocity is a metric used to measure the rate of change in your pipeline.  A high velocity means that sales are closing at a good pace and business is running well.

An opportunity is a qualified lead that has reached the point of near-term close. An opportunity is a lead that has a defined pain, the authority, an established time frame, and the budget to make a deal.

Pain is a need that a customer has that a business aims to solve. A customer is not going to buy a product or service if they do not have a problem that requires a solution.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the projection of the value a customer has to a business over the duration of their relationship, based on historical and predictive data.

Predictive CLV is useful because it gives you an idea of whether or not the future relationship is worth the potentially high cost of acquiring a customer.

Churn is the turnover of your customers. Churn rate is the percentage of customers lost. 

For a business to succeed, it needs to have a higher growth rate than churn rate. 

Metrics are measurements, statistics, or analytics used to track progress. Tracking metrics is crucial to knowing how your business is doing. 

Leading indicators are used to predict the outcome of a process. They allow you to get a sense of future business.

Lagging indicators follow an event or process. They allow you to measure how things are going.