Glossary
Growth marketing glossary.
Every term buyers and operators use in 2026, defined without jargon.
ABM
Account-Based Marketing. A go-to-market motion where marketing and sales agree on a target account list and run coordinated outreach, content, and paid against those accounts specifically instead of broad demand generation.
AEO
Answer Engine Optimization. The practice of structuring content, entities, and site architecture so that large language models cite you when they answer buyer questions. Sits alongside SEO: SEO wins the ranking, AEO wins the citation inside AI answers.
See our AEO service →AI Overviews
Google's generative answer surface at the top of search results. Answers are synthesized by Gemini and cite specific pages. Winning AI Overview citations is a distinct discipline from ranking in the ten blue links below.
Attribution
The assignment of pipeline or revenue credit to a marketing touchpoint. Single-touch attribution (first, last, U-shaped) is directionally useful; multi-touch and modeled attribution are closer to reality but never perfect.
CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost. The total marketing and sales spend divided by the number of customers acquired in the same period. Usually paired with LTV to judge whether a channel is worth running.
CAC Payback
The number of months of gross-margin revenue required to recover the CAC of a customer. Under 12 months is the healthy target for most B2B SaaS; consumer software targets are shorter.
Cluster (Topical Cluster)
A pillar page plus supporting sub-pages that together cover a topic comprehensively. Cluster architecture is the standard SEO pattern for building topical authority in a category.
Comparison Page
A landing page that compares your product to a specific alternative on features, use cases, pricing, and fit. Comparison pages routinely rank for high-intent shortlist queries and get cited in AI answers.
Core Web Vitals
Google's set of user-experience metrics (LCP, INP, CLS) that measure how fast and stable a page is for real users. Poor Core Web Vitals suppress SEO performance.
Demand Gen
Marketing focused on creating and capturing buyer demand across the funnel: paid, content, SEO, AEO, and events working together to drive qualified pipeline. Distinct from lead gen, which optimizes for form fills regardless of quality.
Entity Graph
The structured data (usually JSON-LD) that tells search engines and LLMs what your organization, products, services, and people are, and how they relate. A complete entity graph increases AI citation likelihood significantly.
ICP
Ideal Customer Profile. The specific type of company (or consumer segment) most likely to buy, expand, and refer. A sharp ICP is the single most important input to every downstream marketing decision.
Read our approach →Intent Data
Third-party signal indicating which companies (or people) are researching a category or product right now. Providers include 6sense, Bombora, Clearbit, and RB2B. Used to prioritize paid and outbound.
JSON-LD
A JSON syntax for structured data embedded in web pages. It is how you tell Google and LLMs that a page is an Article, a Product, a FAQ, or an Organization. JSON-LD is the primary vehicle for entity graph work.
LLM
Large Language Model. The class of AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) that answer buyer questions with synthesized answers and citations, directly influencing shortlisting.
llms.txt
A proposed standard file (like robots.txt) that tells LLM crawlers where the important pages on your site live and how to interpret them. Not yet universally supported but is a low-cost hedge for AEO.
LTV
Lifetime Value. The gross-margin revenue expected from a customer over the length of their relationship. Paired with CAC to judge unit economics.
MER
Marketing Efficiency Ratio. Total revenue divided by total marketing spend, usually calculated in a rolling 90-day window. A common consumer software growth metric that avoids the pitfalls of last-click attribution.
MQL
Marketing Qualified Lead. A lead that has met marketing's threshold for hand-off to sales. Increasingly treated as a leading indicator only, not a real success metric; qualified pipeline is what matters.
Non-Branded Traffic
Organic search traffic from queries that do not include your brand name. The most reliable SEO health indicator, since branded traffic mostly reflects other marketing (paid, PR) rather than SEO itself.
Off-Page SEO
SEO signals that come from outside your site: backlinks, brand mentions, third-party reviews, and PR. Off-page compounds slowly but is what separates a category winner from a category also-ran.
On-Page SEO
SEO signals within a page: title, description, headings, internal links, structured data, and content quality. The fastest lever a new SEO program can pull.
Pillar Page
The comprehensive, definitive page on a specific topic in your cluster architecture. Usually 2,000+ words, targets a broad head term, and links out to supporting sub-pages within the cluster.
PLG
Product-Led Growth. A go-to-market motion where the product itself is the primary acquisition and expansion driver, usually through free trials or freemium. PLG changes SEO and content requirements: docs and onboarding pages become primary marketing surface.
Programmatic SEO
The templated creation of many similar landing pages targeting long-tail intent (e.g., 'X for Y', 'X alternatives'). Done well, it captures thousands of low-competition queries; done badly, it creates thin content Google penalizes.
ROAS
Return on Ad Spend. Revenue attributed to paid campaigns divided by paid spend. Useful for consumer software; less reliable for B2B where deals close months after the ad click.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization. The practice of engineering site, content, and authority to rank in search engines for the queries your ICP uses. In 2026, SEO is inseparable from AEO for most software companies.
See our SEO service →SGE
Search Generative Experience. Google's original name for AI Overviews. Some content still uses SGE; they refer to the same surface.
SME
Subject Matter Expert. In content marketing, the person inside your company (product manager, engineer, customer success lead) whose real knowledge is what makes content credible. SME interviews are the difference between AI-generated slop and content that ranks and converts.