Marketing terms can feel like alphabet soup. One minute it’s CAC and CLV, the next it’s KPI and SEO. But for ecommerce business owners, this mix of acronyms and buzzwords isn’t just noise—it’s the language of growth.
Marketing is a broad field that’s often better understood as a collection of subspecialties than as a single discipline. Running an ecommerce business can require expertise in website infrastructure, messaging strategy, visual branding, ad buying, market analysis, and more. Few business owners have experience in all of these areas, so they hire marketing specialists or contractors to round out their capabilities.
Understanding common marketing terms helps you cut through the jargon, communicate effectively with professionals, and make smarter growth decisions. Here’s an overview of nearly 40 key marketing terms for ecommerce businesses, including insights from leaders in the field.
39 important marketing terms
- Marketing strategy
- Marketing mix (4 Ps)
- Marketing campaign
- Digital marketing
- Multichannel marketing
- Omnichannel marketing
- Direct marketing
- Outbound marketing
- Inbound marketing
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Earned, owned, and paid media
- Mobile marketing
- Customer journey
- Marketing funnel
- Call to action (CTA)
- Landing page
- Customer segmentation
- Buyer persona
- Lead generation (lead gen)
- A/B testing
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Return on investment (ROI)
- Conversion rate
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Bounce rate
- Key performance indicator (KPI)
- Attribution model
- Customer relationship management (CRM) system
- Content management system (CMS)
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Google Ads
- Retargeting (remarketing)
- Marketing automation
- Brand marketing
- B2C and B2B marketing
The terms below cover the strategies, tools, and metrics most ecommerce businesses encounter on their path to growth. Some may already be familiar, while others are industry shorthand that marketers and ad agencies use every day:
1. Marketing strategy
A marketing strategy is a plan that guides your business’s marketing efforts. It includes marketing goals, market research findings, target audience details, key messages, and the channels you’ll use to reach customers. Your strategy may be traditional or unconventional.
For example, cosmetics brand Fluff opens its website for sales only four times per year for seven days at a time. “It allows us to generate demand for the product,” founder Erika Geraertz says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “And when the site is closed, we focus on messaging that builds our brand and community. With each drop, we see our audience base grow with the help of social media.”
2. Marketing mix (4 Ps)
The marketing mix, often called the “4 Ps,” refers to product, price, place, and promotion—the four elements companies adjust to bring a product or service to market. Balancing these factors helps businesses position offerings and meet customer needs effectively.
3. Marketing campaign
A marketing campaign is a set of coordinated activities and messages designed to achieve a specific marketing goal within a specified timeframe. You might design a marketing campaign around a product launch or a holiday sales promotion, for example.
4. Digital marketing
Digital marketing refers to promoting your brand online. It includes tactics like paid search, paid social, and audience segmentation. “All founders should learn the basics of digital marketing,” says Shizu Okusa, founder of the herbal medicine brand Apothékary. “You’ll be a much stronger steward of capital.”
5. Multichannel marketing
Multichannel marketing is the promotion of your products or services across multiple channels where customers already spend time, such as social media platforms, online marketplaces, and brick-and-mortar stores. Because most consumers interact with brands on more than one channel, businesses need to understand how those touchpoints overlap and reinforce one another.
"Multichannel, at its core, is understanding how those channels interact," says Marc Weisinger, Shopify’s former director of merchant revenue acceleration.
6. Omnichannel marketing
Omnichannel marketing ensures a seamless, unified shopping experience across all touchpoints and channels. It’s a customer expectation that can be challenging, according to Kerri Economopoulos, managing director of audio/visual gear maker Titan AV. But tools can help.
“Shopify Plus has allowed us to centralize our branding to efficiently and consistently manage all our channels from a single dashboard,” she says.
7. Direct marketing
Direct marketing is a marketing strategy that delivers personalized messages straight to potential customers without mass distribution. Examples include direct mail, email marketing, social media, telemarketing, and in-person outreach. Direct marketing is often considered a form of outbound marketing, but it differs by focusing on targeted, one-to-one or one-to-few communication rather than mass outreach.
8. Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing is a strategy that pushes messages directly to potential customers, often through paid advertising, cold calls, email blasts, or direct mail. Unlike inbound marketing, which attracts customers by offering value, outbound marketing reaches out first.
9. Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that attracts customers via content, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media. Unlike outbound marketing, it brings users in with valuable or interesting content rather than pitching a product or service directly.
10. Content marketing
Content marketing involves creating and publishing valuable content that attracts and engages your target audience, builds brand awareness, and establishes authority. It is a common inbound marketing strategy.
11. Social media marketing
Social media marketing is the use of social media sites such as Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn to reach your target audiences. It includes publishing social media posts, engaging with customers in comment sections, and responding to direct messages (DMs).
12. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing leverages creators with engaged audiences to promote your products or services, often through sponsored posts or collaborations.
“We find different corners of the internet—people with big or small followings in their own niche areas—and reach out to them with product,” says Kara Brothers, former president of skin care company Starface. “From there, we leave it up to them. Many incorporate it into their lives and post pictures. For us, that’s free marketing.”
13. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing pays third-party partners (affiliates) a commission for generating sales through their promotional efforts. Unlike influencer marketing, which relies on an individual’s personal brand and audience, affiliate marketing is primarily performance-based and focused on measurable conversions.
14. Earned, owned, and paid media
Three types of marketing channels shape how your brand reaches audiences:
- Owned media. These are the channels you own and directly control, like your website, blog, or email list.
- Paid media. This includes advertising you purchase, such as search ads through Google Ads or social ads and promoted social posts.
- Earned media. This is the exposure gained through public relations (PR) efforts, reviews, or word-of-mouth referrals.
15. Mobile marketing
Mobile marketing refers to the process of targeting consumers on mobile devices through tactics like push notifications, SMS messaging, or in-app promotions.
16. Customer journey
The customer journey is the path a prospective customer takes from first learning about your brand through the buying process and into post-purchase interactions. Understanding the customer journey helps you improve the customer experience and optimize your marketing or sales funnel to boost conversions.
17. Marketing funnel
A marketing funnel models the stages of the customer journey—awareness, consideration, purchase, and loyalty. By focusing on one stage at a time, your business can optimize the marketing funnel as a whole, increasing your potential for sales.
18. Call to action (CTA)
A call to action (CTA) is a prompt encouraging your users to take a desired action, such as “Buy now,” “Sign up,” “Add to cart”" and “Claim offer.” Marketers often emphasize CTAs by placing CTA text on buttons and attaching hyperlinks that allow the user to complete the specified action.
19. Landing page
A landing page is a standalone web page, meaning that it’s generally not linked from your navigational menu or another location on your site. Customers land on these pages after clicking a CTA, and the page typically contains an offer or tailored message.
20. Customer segmentation
Customer segmentation groups customers based on relevant traits, such as purchase history, interests, or geographic location. Segmenting allows businesses to tailor marketing strategies to specific customer groups.
“Email accounts for 54% of our sales, and using tools like Klaviyo with Shopify lets us segment customers based on different events, like what they’ve shopped for and when. That efficiency has been huge,” says Vicky Pasche, co-founder of apparel brand Dapper Boi.
21. Buyer persona
A buyer persona is a fictionalized profile of your business’s ideal customer based on market research. It represents their goals, challenges, demographics, and behaviors, helping you design strategies that resonate with real-world prospects.
22. Lead generation (lead gen)
Lead generation is the process of attracting and capturing potential customers’ interest—often through forms, gated content, or promotions—so you can nurture them into buyers.
23. A/B testing
A/B testing compares two versions of a marketing asset—like an email subject line, marketing copy, or a landing page—by testing it with audiences to see which performs better.
24. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) refers to the total cost of advertising, sales, marketing, and other lead generation efforts to convert one person into a customer. CAC benchmarks vary by industry.
25. Customer lifetime value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value is the total revenue your business expects to earn from a customer over the course of the customer’s entire relationship with your company.
26. Return on investment (ROI)
Return on investment measures the profitability of a marketing activity compared to its costs, usually expressed as a percentage.
27. Conversion rate
A conversion rate is the percentage of users who complete a desired action (like purchasing a product or signing up for email marketing newsletters) out of the total who could have. Average ecommerce conversion rates are around 2.5% to 3%. Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving marketing materials to boost that percentage.
28. Click-through rate (CTR)
Click-through rate measures the percentage of users who click on a specific link, ad, or CTA out of the total who saw it. CTR indicates how effective an asset is at driving traffic, while conversion rate reveals what percentage of that traffic is taking the desired action.
29. Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on a page and then leave without clicking further or taking action.
30. Key performance indicator (KPI)
Key performance indicators are metrics that your business uses to evaluate progress toward its marketing goals. Examples include website traffic, conversion rate, click-through rate, customer lifetime value, and return on investment.
31. Attribution model
An attribution model is a framework for determining which marketing channel or touchpoint deserves credit for a conversion. Models may assign credit to the first or last channel a customer interacted with, or spread credit across all touchpoints.
“The biggest challenge with multichannel marketing, especially at scale, is attribution and identifying which channel is actually driving impact in order to put more budget and energy toward it,” says Dan Gray, co-founder and CEO of agency search platform Vendry.
32. Customer relationship management (CRM) system
A customer relationship management system is a software application that helps businesses manage and improve relationships with potential and existing customers.
33. Content management system (CMS)
A content management system is software that allows users to publish content online without writing code. It can include front- and back-end infrastructure or be headless (i.e., back-end only).
34. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the process of improving a site’s content and structure to increase visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), driving more high-quality traffic to your site. Although it can feel like a complex subject, SEO is something almost anyone can do.
“You don’t need to be an expert, especially now with the advent of so many AI tools. It’s very easy to build a keyword list based on competitiveness,” says Jeremiah Curvers, co-founder and CEO of mattress maker Polysleep.
35. Google Ads
Google Ads is an online advertising platform for running search, shopping, local, and display (or banner) advertising campaigns.
36. Retargeting (remarketing)
Retargeting displays ads to users who previously visited your site or interacted with your brand but didn’t convert. One of the most common examples is cart abandonment retargeting, which reminds shoppers who added products to their cart but left before checkout to return and complete their purchase.
37. Marketing automation
Marketing automation software streamlines repetitive tasks like sending emails, segmenting audiences, or running drip campaigns (scheduled message sequences that guide users through the marketing funnel). This software increasingly leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance marketing workflows.
38. Brand marketing
Brand marketing focuses on promoting your company’s overall brand identity, values, and positioning rather than specific products or services. It helps build emotional connection and long-term brand loyalty.
39. B2C and B2B marketing
Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing targets individual consumers, while business-to-business (B2B) marketing sells to business clients. The two marketing strategies differ to reflect the specific needs of the target audience.
Marketing terms FAQ
What are important marketing terms?
Some of the most important marketing terms include: search engine optimization (improving site visibility in search results), customer acquisition cost (how much it costs to gain one new customer), customer lifetime value (the revenue a customer generates over their relationship with a business), key performance indicators (metrics that track progress), and the marketing funnel (the stages customers move through from awareness to purchase).
What are the basic 4 Ps of marketing?
Product, price, place, and promotion make up the marketing mix, often called the four Ps. They matter because they give businesses a framework for shaping how a business develops, positions, and sells a product to the right audience.
What are buzzwords in marketing?
Marketing buzzwords vary by industry and business type. Marketing automation, predictive customer segmentation, and predictive analytics are trending topics due to recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.
