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. ABM is an outbound discipline: Momentence runs the inbound side and refers ABM programs to our sister company Managed Outbound.
Inbound and outbound, side by side →AEO
Answer Engine Optimization. An industry term, not official platform terminology, and at Momentence an operating framework rather than a separate channel. It covers the on-site work that makes a page reachable, readable, and quotable by AI systems: crawler access, indexable rendering, a clear factual answer, consistent facts, and original evidence. Google states that its search fundamentals still apply to AI experiences and that no special AI schema is required, so AEO is mostly those fundamentals done deliberately.
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.
B2B Advertising Agency
An agency that plans, buys, and optimizes paid media aimed at business buyers, typically across paid search, LinkedIn, retargeting, review sites, and content syndication, and is accountable for cost per qualified conversation rather than clicks or impressions. Fees are charged as a percentage of media spend, a flat retainer, or a hybrid. Media spend, platform fees, and data licenses sit outside the fee and should be billed to the client directly without markup.
Channels, spend floors, and fee models →B2B Digital Marketing Agency
An agency that plans, executes, and measures the digital channels a business-to-business company uses to create and convert demand: the marketing website, organic search, AI search visibility, content, lifecycle email, and paid media, plus the analytics and CRM handoff that ties them to pipeline. The distinguishing work is budget allocation across channels, revisited on evidence rather than defended annually.
How we run B2B digital marketing →B2B Marketing Agency
An outside team that plans and executes the marketing system a business-to-business company uses to generate and convert pipeline. Full-scope agencies own the website, organic search, AI search visibility, content production, paid media, and measurement; channel specialists own one of those and coordinate with whoever owns the rest. Also called a B2B digital marketing agency, B2B growth marketing agency, or B2B marketing firm.
How we run B2B marketing →B2B Marketing Companies
The category of outside firms software companies hire for marketing, spanning five distinct types: full-service agencies, search and AI-search led integrated firms, paid media shops, ABM and outbound firms, and product marketing or brand consultancies. Each owns a different scope, prices differently, and fits a different revenue stage, which is why proposals from different types cannot be scored against each other.
Compare the five types →B2B Marketing Firm
An outside team retained to own and run B2B marketing execution with a strategist accountable for the plan. It differs from a freelancer, which covers one skill without strategy, from a fractional CMO, which supplies direction without production capacity, and from an in-house team, which trades slower ramp and higher fixed cost for deep context. Firms are usually bought as a retainer, a bounded project, or staff augmentation.
Models, cost, and contract terms →B2B PPC Agency
A paid media specialist focused on pay-per-click channels for business buyers, most often paid search plus retargeting. The distinguishing questions are the fee model, since percent of spend rewards scaling budget while a flat fee rewards efficiency, whether landing pages and CRM measurement are inside the fee, and whether the ad accounts, pixels, and audience lists stay in the client's name.
Fee models and real cost →Best B2B Marketing Agency
Not a ranking but a fit judgment. Because the category sells five different products under one label, the best agency for a given company is the one whose core build matches that company's binding constraint, names the people doing the work, commits to a dated 90-day list, reports through to pipeline, and writes down what it will not do. Published ranked lists are usually paid or affiliate placements and are useful only for generating candidates.
The five decision axes →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 describes your organization, products, services, and people, and how they relate. It helps machines parse a page unambiguously and makes a site eligible for certain search features. Google states no special AI schema is required, so treat it as clarity and eligibility work, not a direct cause of AI citations.
GEO
Generative Engine Optimization. Our label for the off-site half of AI discovery work. No one outside the model providers controls generated output, so the practical goal is improving the public evidence those systems read: consistent company and product facts, accurate listings and profiles, corrected stale claims, earned and disclosed coverage, and original research worth referencing. Progress is observed against a fixed prompt set rather than scored.
See our GEO service →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 convention, not a standard: a plain-text file listing the important pages on your site for AI crawlers. Google has stated publicly that it does not use llms.txt, and no major provider has documented it as a ranking or citation input. We treat it as an optional, low-cost experiment we publish and measure, never as a foundation of an AI discovery program.
LTV
Lifetime Value. The gross-margin revenue expected from a customer over the length of their relationship. Paired with CAC to judge unit economics.
Managed Outbound
An operating model where a single vendor runs the entire outbound sales function under one contract: GTM engineering, ICP list building, deliverability infrastructure, multi-channel sequencing, human SDR conversations, and CRM operations, reported on booked meetings rather than activity. It is the demand creation counterpart to inbound demand capture.
See our outbound partner →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 what turn a generic draft into content that ranks and converts.