Copy And

45. Marketing Acronyms Unpacked: Vocabulary Guide

• Samantha Burmeister • Episode 45

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 18:58

In this episode, Samantha breaks down the marketing acronyms small business owners hear constantly but are too embarrassed to ask about. The episode came from a client conversation where Samantha's client admitted she didn't know what ESP meant, even after running her own email marketing for months. Samantha realized that marketing jargon gets thrown around so casually that most business owners are just nodding along, hoping no one quizzes them on it.

Samantha covers acronyms across four categories: paid ads, money math, marketing tools, and funnel stages, plus a handful of extras that show up everywhere in the online business space.


What You'll Learn

  • The four numbers every ad campaign lives or dies by (and which one matters most)
  • Why MRR means two completely different things, and how to tell which one someone's talking about
  • The acronym soup behind your tech stack: SaaS, ESP, and OSP, decoded in plain English
  • What TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU mean for your content strategy (and why "bottom is buy" is the one to remember)
  • The difference between your ICP and your ICA, and why both matter for who you're writing to


Resources Mentioned

Connect with me:

Nomad Copy Services → sales pages, emails, websites, and more.

Get on my calendar → if you’d like me to write your sales copy for you!

Free Opt-In Copy Bot → Write high-converting opt-in pages in minutes

Watch episodes with subtitles on my YouTube 

Nomad Copy Agency writes copy that CONVERTS for service-based businesses. Inquire about done-for-you services here.

Hello friends, and welcome back to Copy and the Marketing Podcast, where I teach you how to write sales copy that sounds like you but converts better. Today we're talking about vocabulary and some of those questions that you've always wanted to know but are too afraid to ask And where this comes from is I was talking to a client recently, and she said, "Hold on, what is a nurture email?" And then I explained what a nurture email was, and she said, "Okay, great." And so I told her that she needed to upload it into her ESP, and she said, "Sam, you're a safe person to ask. I don't want you to think I'm a dumb-dumb, but, like, what is an ESP?" And I said, "Oh, it's your email service provider. How are you sending your emails?" And she told me who she was sending her emails on. So that's where this comes from, is that I have a marketing degree, so I speak marketing. I work in marketing, so I speak marketing. And it's something that we're all guilty of that we're gonna speak jargon. We're gonna speak the language that we know best, especially our professional language. So today I'm talking through some of the acronyms that we hear all the time in marketing that you've probably heard and are just too afraid to ask the question of, like, "What does this even mean?" So let's go ahead and just dive right in. I'm gonna break this out into a few categories so first one is we're gonna talk about acronyms that you probably hear when you're running Facebook ads, Google ads, any type of ads. They could also come up when you're running funnels. And the first one is your CTR, or your click-through rate. This is the percentage of people who saw your ad or your email. We use click-through rate in emails, too. It's the percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on it. That is your click-through rate. So if 100 people see your ad, 3% of people click on it, your click-through rate is 3%. People treat a CTR, a click-through rate, like it is a mystical, magical number. Really what the click-through rate shows is, is the copy making it interesting? Is what you wrote on the ad clickable? That is your click-through rate. Also, in ads, you're gonna hear about CPC, or cost per click. That's exactly what it sounds like, but you just might not have heard cost per click yet. It's how much you're paying on average every time somebody clicks on your ad. So if you spent $100 and got three clicks, that was a 3% click-through rate, then your cost per click is about $33.3 per click, i'm not the person to ask if those are good numbers. I just threw out 3%, that's $30 per click. Some people that I highly recommend taking a look at are Kwadwo of The Art of Online Business. He has a really great ads course, as does Litchfield Media. So if you want help with your ads, those are people to ask a little bit more in-depth questions about these ads questions. Another acronym that we hear a lot in the ads world is ROAS. It's spelled R-O-A-S, and it stands for return on ad spend. This one probably matters way more than the other two acronyms that I mentioned, cost per click or CPC, and CTR, your click-through rate. ROAS is your return on ad spend. So ROAS tells us how much revenue you make for every dollar you put into your ads. So if you spend $100 and make $400 back, your ROAS is four or four to one ROAS. Ultimately, we want this number to be positive, that You wanna be making more money than what you're putting into your ads. So as long as this number is positive, you're on the right track. We wanna make that number as large as possible So that's ROAS, and then CPA is your cost per acquisition. Yes, in the business world, your CPA might also be your certified public accountant. But in this case, we're talking about your CPA as your cost per acquisition, which is how much it costs you in ad spend to get one customer or paid lead, depending on how you're tracking it. Again, I'm not an ads expert. I've written copy for a ton of ads, but if you're looking for somebody who's an expert, I highly recommend Melissa Litchfield at Litchfield Media or Kwadwo Swampanie-Kessie at The Art of Online Business. So the way that these four things work together is, let's say you're running ads for your course, per se. Your CTR, your click-through rate, tells you if your ad is interesting enough to get a click. Your CPC, your cost per click, tells you what that click is costing you. Your CPA tells you what a sale or lead is costing you, and your ROAS tells you at the end of the day if you're making money, if it's worth it, if you are getting positive return on ad spend with your ROAS Now, when we talk about numbers, I always talk about vanity numbers because we wanna make sure that your ads are actually making you money, and all of these things are important to track. But what I will say before I move on to the rest of this vocabulary lesson, just 'cause I want it to be heard by somebody who has worked with a lot of ads funnels in the past, is that your CTR is the first thing. Your click-through rate is the first thing. Let's make sure that ad is getting clicked. Then we start to look at what is your ROAS, and is your ad actually making you money, okay? So pay attention to all of those numbers. My unsolicited advice from a copywriter to somebody who may be running ads is pay attention to all of those numbers, but don't necessarily put all of your stock into one specific number, and always look to an ad specialist if you have questions. Next group is the money math group. So that was the Facebook and funnels type of questions. Now we're talking about money and math. The one that I hear all the time in online business is MRR, and I always thought of it as monthly recurring revenue. However, there's a second meaning out there that's called master resell rights, and this is something that I do not touch, I do not play with. But if you're in the online space and you're on any sort of social media, you've probably heard about, like, the coaches coaching coaches to coach more coaches, right? There's, there gets to be a level of, an MLM vibe, which MLM is another acronym that means multi-level marketing. So MRR is master resell rights. Master resell rights is when you buy resell rights to a course, so you're ultimately acting as an agent of something that someone else created. If someone's talking about MRR in the context of recurring revenue and subscriptions, they mean monthly recurring revenue, which is what I love and love to talk about because so many of my clients create monthly recurring revenue in their businesses by having subscription or membership models inside of their business. So MRR, the way that I like to talk about it, is monthly recurring revenue. Monthly recurring revenue, or MRR, is defined as the total amount of money you can expect to come in every month from your subscribers. Something that would not count towards your MRR number would be one-time purchases like digital products or if you just launched something and there's no recurring revenue on the back end. MRR is just what is more or less automatic. That's that, like, big, elusive passive income number that people talk about. their lifetime value may be a couple hundred dollars." So it's a good way of looking at the lifetime value of people who purchase from you to see where your opportunities are and where you could sell into your existing audience versus selling to new people. Those low ticket buyers may also be your best high ticket buyers as well if you're keeping them in your circle for a long time. Final one here is CAC or your customer acquisition cost, and that's how much it costs in total to acquire one customer. This one's really tough to track as a small business owner because we spend a lot of time doing things that don't necessarily cost money, but also take up a lot of our time. For example, if you're posting on Instagram, then it might be, free for you to acquire a customer. I always encourage small business owners when I'm, in a mentoring capacity, track your time when you're first starting out so that you know where you're actually getting ROI or return on investment, and you could be investing your time or your money, to know where your best clients are coming from. So that could be, though, if you're spending money on later.com to schedule your posts that go onto Instagram, or if you're paying for CapCut Premium or an editing software or something like that, you could be putting a cost into client acquisition just through marketing. So that's why LTV, lifetime value, and CAC, customer acquisition cost, are best friends. Because if you are paying, say, fifty dollars a month for all of these softwares and you are converting only one client or one new customer at, like, twenty-seven dollars a month, let's say, if you're selling digital products, then you're actually seeing a negative ROI on your marketing. If you have a cost per acquisition where you're spending, like, fifty dollars a month on these softwares, but you're getting, like, dozens of digital product sales that add up to hundreds of dollars, then your customer acquisition cost is super low. It might be a couple of cents per person when you look at it that way. So it's something to think about, something to track. Honestly, I don't think that it's something... If you're listening to this, first of all, I am really good at personal finance and business finance, but I am not officially any sort of business coach. So if you're interested in that, I would chat with your bookkeeper, would be the best person to talk to about that. Next number that we would talk about in the business space or acronym tied to a number is AOV or average order value. This is also really similar to the lifetime value of a client. Honestly, I use ThriveCart for all of my digital products. I'll link it in the show notes. ThriveCart does have a filter where you can click on a client, and it'll show you their lifetime value, and average order value as well. It'll show you everything that somebody has purchased. So your AOV is average order value, which is the average amount that someone spends in a single transaction. So if you sell a $50 product, but people are consistently adding on a $20 order bump, which by the way, order bump will be one of those things that we cover in the next episode. Today is acronyms. Next one is phrases. But if people are buying a $50 thing plus a $20 thing, then their average order value is gonna be higher than just the $50. You can look at this in terms of per person, or you can look at this in terms of what is the average order of every order that comes through your ecosystem. Okay, this next group of acronyms is just a little bit elusive, because This is more of like a catch-all category of like other acronyms that we use a lot. The first one is SaaS, S-A-A-S. A lot of people will capitalize S-A-A-S. A lot of people will capitalize just the S's. Technically, if you want somebody who comes from a tech background, 'cause I was in tech sales for 10 years, only the S's should be capitalized if you wanna be correct about it. SaaS is software as a service, and it just means that software that you access online, typically through a subscription, that you don't have to download or install into your computer. You just log into the website and it works. So for me right now, I'm recording this podcast on Descript. That is software as a service. It could also be your ESP, which stands for email service provider, is likely a SaaS tool. If it is a software that is delivering you a service, then you probably have a whole bunch of them in your business. Slack would be a SaaS product. If you're using anything with Circle or Mighty Networks would be a SaaS product. Airtable is a SaaS product. WhatsApp is a SaaS. There's plenty of them. So it's just a software that you will access online. ESP, as I mentioned, is an email service provider. This is the platform that you use to send your emails. The ones that most people in my world are using are ConvertKit, Flodesk, ActiveCampaign, or Drip. Some that are on the lower end of the spectrum would be MailerLite or MailChimp. If you're on either of those, I highly recommend getting off of them before you hit your 250th subscriber. Otherwise, you start getting charged to use them. And if you really want a recommendation, I recommend moving to Kit. I just moved from ActiveCampaign to Kit, and I am a very happy customer. So I'll make sure that Kit is also linked in the show notes if you'd like to use it. Final one, for this category is OSP. This one I don't hear used very often, but it has come onto my radar a couple times recently, and that just means online service provider. This is a bit of a broad topic. I think people are just like... I think this is more of a lazy one than an official acronym. But it's just any company providing internet-based services. So I am an online service provider because I work entirely online with people. I do not physically deliver any products. Okay, one more category that I wanna go through that I have talked about previously in my Funnels 101 series, which I will make sure is linked in the show notes. But that is funnel stages, which you might have heard of as BOFU, TOFU, or MOFU, spelled T-O-F-U, M-O-F-U, and B-O-F-U. That just means bottom of funnel, middle of funnel, top of funnel. And really, top of funnel is somebody who just found you, somebody who might see a freebie or just see your posts on social media this is where we would just want to kind of like introduce ourselves and get them into your top of funnel, which is typically a free thing. Middle of funnel is somebody who's warming up to you. You've introduced yourself to them through a welcome sequence. They're probably on your email list or following you on social media, so they know who you are, but they're not buying yet. And then bottom of funnel is somebody who buys from you. So BOFU, think bottom is buying. There's different types of content that you would wanna target people at each stage with. That's why when somebody gets on your email list for free, you then want to start selling to them to take them from the top of the funnel So they were top of funnel. They opted in. They went to the middle of your funnel, where then you're warming them up to buy something from you. So bottom is buy, bottom of funnel. That's somebody who's ready. They're looking at your sales page. They're in your DMs asking questions. They're one nudge away from buying, so freaking sell them something. Content works a little bit differently. That's probably a whole other set of podcast episodes is what type of content to put at top, bottom, or middle of funnel. If you are really keen to hear about that, let me know. I have an ideal guest that I would bring on. Just shoot me a message on Instagram. I'm at nomad.copy on Instagram. Let me know if you wanna hear more about top, middle, and bottom funnel content ideas, and I will do that. So that's our funnels category. Last couple things that I wanna touch on are KPIs. That's a key performance indicator. Key performance indicators are just a fancy way of saying the numbers that you're tracking. So all of those ones that we talked about in the funnel would be KPIs. If you're looking at conversion rates on your sales pages would be KPIs. We could also even look at open rate, click-through rate on emails, or even growth on a social media account. How many listens you're getting on a podcast, something like that. If you really want to focus on one number, then that is your KPI. It's the number that we're tracking, the number that we have as a goal to focus on. Couple other ones, B2B and B2C would be B and then the number two C or B. That would be either business to business or business to consumer. It just talks typically about who you're selling to. So for me, I'm a B2B company because I sell to other businesses. If you're a B2C company, you might be selling something to individuals. So the difference there would be a B2B coach would be a business coach, somebody who's coaching another business owner. A different type of coach who would be B2C would potentially be, I have clients who are potty training coaches. They're, teaching individuals rather than companies. Life coaches who are working with individuals or professionals. That's the difference between B2B and B2C. Another one I see a lot is ICP or ICA. ICP is your ideal client profile. Your ICA is your ideal client avatar. That's typically just the person that we have in our heads as the ideal buying demographics, psychographics, et cetera. UGC is user-generated content. That is content that is made by real people or, actual customers versus your brand. So when we think UGC, honestly think about influencers, even though they're kind of part of the brand. But let's say that an influencer goes online and says, "Oh my gosh, I love Sam's Copy and Podcast," that would be UGC. When you tag your business bestie and talk about how great her strategy session is, that is UGC. That's user-generated content. It tends to not be very polished, but feels very real and has a really excellent example of social proof. It feels like a friend is telling you about something so last acronym is CTA, or call to action. This is where you tell someone what to do, and a call to action tends to be a button, in an email or on a video. If you watch YouTube videos and there's that button in the upper right-hand corner that says, like, "Grab it now" or "See our other podcast about this", something like that, that is a call to action. A call to action can also be spoken, but you should have call to action buttons throughout your website, sales pages, and emails. So to recap, the ads acronyms that we learned are CTR, that is click-through rate; CPC, cost per click; ROAS, return on ad spend; and CPA, that is your cost per acquisition. In the money math category, we had MRR, which for me is monthly recurring revenue, lTV is the lifetime value. CAC Which is customer acquisition cost, and AOV is the average order value. So those are some money numbers. Tools would be SaaS, S-a-a-S, software as a service, ESP, email service provider, OSP, online service provider, and our funnel stages category was TOFU, MOFU, BOFU, is top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel And the rest of 'em that I mentioned at the end are KPI, key performance indicator, B2B or B2C, business to business or business to customer, ICP or ICA, ideal client profile or avatar, UGC, user-generated content, and CTA, call to action. So those are a whole bunch of marketing acronyms that you may have heard and just were too afraid to ask someone. If there are other marketing acronyms that you hear all the time, like I say BTS a lot or BTW in my emails, that's behind the scenes or by the way. If you're seeing other acronyms out there and you're just like, "I don't know who to ask about this," shoot me a message on Instagram. You can find me at nomad.copy. I'm happy to answer your questions. And next week we'll pick up with some marketing words and vocab. So if you also have vocab terms that you are just not familiar with, shoot me an email. You can reach me at samantha@nomadcopyagency.com or send me a message on Instagram again or LinkedIn. I'm happy to add them to next week's episode. Have a great week