The words, defined.
Most arguments between marketing and sales about paid social are really arguments about words. A lead means one thing on a dashboard and another in a pipeline review. These are the definitions we work to, written plainly enough that both sides can disagree with them precisely.
Glossary terms
A
- Ad creative
- The visual, written, and interactive assets used to communicate an advertising message.
- Ad fatigue
- A decline in audience response that can occur after repeated exposure to the same creative.
- Attribution
- The method used to connect a marketing interaction with a later conversion or commercial outcome.
- Audience hypothesis
- A testable assumption about which group will respond to a specific message or offer.
- Awareness
- A campaign objective focused on reaching relevant people before they show immediate buying intent.
B
- Bid strategy
- The platform setting that guides how an advertiser competes for available advertising opportunities.
- Buyer journey
- The sequence of questions, interactions, and decisions a person makes before becoming a customer.
C
- Call to action
- A clear instruction that tells a visitor or viewer what they can do next.
- Conversion
- A defined action that signals progress, such as a form submission or booked conversation.
- Conversion tracking
- The setup that records chosen actions so campaign activity can be evaluated against them.
- Cost per lead
- The media cost associated with generating one recorded lead under an agreed definition.
- Creative brief
- A document that explains the audience, message, constraints, and learning goal for an asset.
- Creative testing
- A structured comparison of messages or formats intended to reveal useful audience response patterns.
- Customer acquisition
- The broader process of creating and converting demand into new customer relationships.
D
- Demand capture
- Marketing activity that reaches people already looking for a relevant solution or provider.
- Demand creation
- Marketing activity that helps a relevant audience recognize a problem or possible solution.
E
- Engagement
- Observable interaction with an ad or page, such as viewing, clicking, or responding.
F
- Funnel
- A model for the path from attention to a more valuable commercial action.
- First-party data
- Information collected directly through an organization’s own interactions, systems, and consented records.
H
- Hook
- The opening idea that earns attention by naming a relevant tension, outcome, or question.
L
- Landing page
- A focused web page that continues an advertising promise and guides a visitor’s next step.
- Lead
- A person or organization that has provided information indicating possible interest in an offer.
- Lead quality
- The degree to which a lead matches the commercial criteria agreed by a sales team.
- Lookalike audience
- An audience created by a platform from patterns associated with a selected source group.
- Lead form
- A set of fields that collects contact and qualification information from an interested person.
M
- Media spend
- The budget paid directly to an advertising platform for the delivery of advertisements.
- Message-market fit
- The alignment between a campaign’s language and the problem an intended audience recognizes.
P
- Paid social
- Advertising distributed through social platforms to reach selected audiences with defined messages.
Q
- Qualified lead
- A lead that meets agreed relevance criteria and merits a sales conversation or follow-up.
- Qualification path
- The messages, questions, and handoffs that help determine whether a prospect is a fit.
R
- Retargeting
- Advertising to people who previously interacted with a site, ad, or other tracked touchpoint.
S
- Sales feedback loop
- The recurring exchange of lead-status information that helps marketing improve campaign decisions.
- Segmentation
- Grouping an audience by meaningful shared characteristics so communication can become more relevant.
- Social proof
- Evidence that helps a prospect assess credibility through another person’s experience or endorsement.
T
- Targeting
- The platform controls used to define which people may be eligible to see an advertisement.
- Testing agenda
- A prioritized list of learning questions that guides which campaign changes happen next.
- Tracking pixel
- A small piece of code that records selected website activity for advertising measurement purposes.
V
- Value proposition
- A concise explanation of why a specific audience should care about an offer.
- Vanity metric
- A visible measurement that may look positive without showing meaningful commercial progress.
W
- Website conversion
- A valuable action completed on a website after a visitor arrives from another source.
Use the terms to sharpen the next decision.
Clear definitions make it easier to align marketing and sales around the signals that actually decide whether a campaign is working.