SaaS Marketing Glossary for Founders Who Hate Marketing
Key Marketing Terms Defined. No Fluff.
This guide explains the important marketing words you need to know as a SaaS founder. Get clear on what they mean, so you can stop guessing and confidently start marketing your business.
We’ll keep adding terms, this is a living doc. last updated : 11/06/25
1. Getting Clear: Your Product & Audience (aka: What are we even doing?)
Start here if you're not sure how to explain your product or who it's for. These terms will help you get clear on your core message and target audience.
Understanding Your Audience & Market - Customers, customers, customers
You'll typically see these terms when you're doing customer research (talking to people who might want to buy from you), on discovery calls, and when naming the people you're trying to reach.
- Customer Research: Learning about customers. You can gather background information from places like Reddit, forums, and reviews. Or, you can use surveys.
- Customer Interviews: Talking to people one-on-one. This can be through calls, video, or in person.
- Customer Snippets: These are direct quotes or exact phrases from customers. You get them from their conversations, feedback, or reviews.
Use them to:
1. Create marketing messages (like LinkedIn posts and blog posts).
2. Improve products. This includes building new features, changing how people start using the product, or updating website text.
- Customer Research Database: This is your central spot for all customer information that isn't numbers. It holds insights and descriptions gathered from your research and interviews. It can also be a view in your CRM if marketing and sales are playing nice.
- Target Audience: The broad group of people who might be interested in your product or service.
- Customers: Individuals (Users) who pay for your product.
- Users: Individuals who use the product. They may or may not pay for it. Most customers are a user. Not every user is a customer.
- Market Segmentation: Breaking a large group of potential customers into smaller, specific groups. They share common traits. These traits can be:
Physical/demographic: Like age, gender, or life stage. (Example: Targeting teenagers for a new social media app.)
Psychological: Like interests, values, or lifestyle. (Example: Targeting eco-conscious consumers for sustainable products.)
Job traits: Like their industry, company size, or role. (Example: Focusing on small business owners in the retail sector for accounting software.)
Location: Where they live or work. (Example: Marketing a snow removal service only to areas with heavy snowfall.)
Or any mix of these.
- Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): A detailed picture of your best-fit customers. It includes more than just company details. It covers their problems and what makes them buy. Often used as a synonym for Buyer Persona.
- Buyer Persona: A detailed picture of your ideal customer. It's built from what you learn about people who already buy from you. Often used as a synonym for ICP.
- Decision Maker: The person in a company who approves a purchase.
- Pain Points: Specific problems or difficulties a potential customer faces. Your product or service aims to fix these.
- Jobs to Be Done (JTBD): Looking at problems customers are trying to solve with a certain product or service. Term coined by Clayton Christensen in 2003.
- "Aha!" Moment: This is when a new user truly sees your product's value. If they hit this point quickly, they're more likely to keep using and paying for the tool. This means they stick around longer.
- Product-Market Fit (PMF): Your product perfectly meets a strong market need. People really want it and are happy to pay.
- Messaging-Market Misalignment: What your product says about itself doesn't fit the market. The target audience doesn't understand or need its value.
- Messaging-Market Alignment: What your product says about itself matches the market. The target audience understands and needs its value.
- Best-Fit Customers: The people or businesses who most need and will get the most good out of your product/service.
Defining Your Product & Brand Identity
Before you even start marketing, you need to know exactly what your product is. You need to know who it's for. And you need to know why people should care. The terms below help you find your product's special place. They also help you build a brand that people truly connect with.
- Positioning: Clearly showing how your product is different and better than other options. This shapes everything from your homepage to sales pitches and emails.
- Unique Value Proposition (UVP): A single, sharp sentence that explains what your product does, who it's for, & why it's the best choice. This should be based on customer research (bottom up) instead of management’s opinion (top down)
- Differentiation: What makes your product or offer stand out from similar ones. It's not just about features, but about clear uniqueness.
- Category Creation: Making your product the leader in a new or redefined market. For example, before Salesforce, companies bought business software on CDs and installed it on their own computers. Salesforce didn't just sell a new product; they created a whole new category by showing that SaaS was possible! This made them the leader of a new market. However, this is very hard to do & rarely done well. It’s better to focus on solving existing customer problems instead.
- Branding: Building a unique name, look, and identity for a product or company in people's minds. Goes deeper than just a logo or slogan. your long-term differentiation framework:
- Establishes who you are
- Why you know the problem
- Why you’re qualified to have built a solution
- Why they should listen to & trust you
- Brand Personality: If your brand was human and people met it for the first time, how would they describe it? What way would your brand talk or sound like?
- **Brand Archetypes:** These are common personality types a brand can use. They help show what the brand is truly about and how it talks to people.
Common Archetypes:
- Innocent: Simple solutions for a happy life. Example: Dove (focus on purity and natural goodness)
- Sage: Trusted knowledge and insightful guidance. Example: Google (information and knowledge at your fingertips)
- Explorer: Discover new horizons and experiences. Example: Jeep (adventure and freedom to explore)
- Founder’s Brand: The reputation and personality of the founder—often the most powerful marketing asset for early-stage companies.
- Brand Voice: The consistent tone and language your brand uses. Often infused with the Brand Personality. This is especially helpful when the founder isn't writing every message.
- Voice of Customer (VOC): These are the exact words and phrases customers use. They talk about their experiences, needs, and thoughts about your product or service.
- Style Guide: A set of rules for how to write and design things for your brand, making sure everything looks and sounds consistent.
- Brand Kit: This is a collection of all your official brand items. Think logos, colors, fonts, and guidelines. It ensures your brand looks the same everywhere.
- Brand-Marketing Fit: How well your brand's identity shows up in all your marketing. This helps you connect with the right audience.
- Minimum Viable Brand: These are the core elements you need for your brand to get started. Think main colors, fonts, and personality. They let you talk to your audience.
- Messaging: The consistent words and themes you use in all your marketing. They show what makes you special and connect with your audience.
- Messaging Matrix: Messaging Matrix: A tool to organize and match your marketing messages. It helps you tailor messages for different audiences, customer types, or stages in their buying journey.
Strategic Planning
Once you know what you sell and who your brand is, it's time to figure out how to reach your customers. These terms talk about the big plans and steps. These guide all your marketing work. They help you work well to reach your business goals.
- Marketing Plan: A full document that spells out your marketing goals, who you're trying to reach, and the specific actions you'll take to get there over a set time.
- Marketing Roadmap: This is your strategic plan. It shows the main marketing projects, goals, and timelines for a set period. It guides all your marketing activities.
- Go To Market (GTM): Bringing a new product or service to market. It covers all the coordinated efforts and actions to achieve business goals.
2. Growth Models & Marketing Styles (aka: Which growth style fits us?)
These terms are about how your business can grow. There are different ways to get new customers and make your business bigger. Knowing these styles helps you pick the best one for your company.
Overall Growth Strategies
First, let's look at terms about the big ideas for how a business grows. These are the main plans or ways you can get more customers and grow your company over time.
- Product-Led Growth (PLG): Your product attracts customers and drives growth on its own.
- Sales-Led Growth (SLG): New customers mainly come from your sales team directly selling.
- Content-Led Growth: High-quality content drives sign-ups and sales.
- Customer-Led Growth: Growth comes directly from customer insights and actions.
- Founder-Led Marketing: This is when the company's founder is the main face, voice, and often the primary marketer. It's common in early-stage SaaS businesses.
Understanding Leads & Marketing Efforts
These terms & phrases help you understand who might become your customers. It also explains how your marketing work turns these people into actual buyers.
- Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): Someone who showed enough interest in your marketing (like downloading a guide) to likely become a customer.
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): Someone your sales team has checked. They are ready for a direct sales conversation.
- Marketing Sprint: This is a short, focused period. It's often 1-2 weeks long. Its purpose is to get a specific set of marketing tasks done.
3. Funnels & Journeys (aka: How do users go from ‘never heard of us’ to paying?)
This part explains the path people take. It shows how they go from not knowing about your product to becoming a paying customer. You'll learn how to guide them every step of the way.
Understanding the Customer Path
Before we guide customers, we need to understand their trip. This section explains the different stages people go through when they are thinking about buying your product.
- Buyer Journey: These are the steps a potential buyer takes. It starts when they realize they have a problem. It ends when they make their final purchase decision.
- Customer Journey Map: A visual guide that shows every step a customer takes. This goes from first hearing about your business to becoming a loyal supporter.
- SaaS Marketing Funnel: This is a visual model. It shows the customer's journey, from first learning about your product, to becoming a paying customer, and finally, to staying with you.
- Top of Funnel (ToFu): Marketing activities for attracting wide attention. Like blog posts, glossary pages, and social media updates.
- Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Content to build trust and educate potential customers. Such as webinars, case studies, and introductory email series.
- Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Content for encouraging a purchase. Like pricing pages, product demos, or comparison tables.
- Pipeline: A visual way to show the different steps a potential customer takes. Begins from first hearing about you to finally buying. Often used by sales and marketing teams to see where things stand.
- Objection Handling: The process of listening to and addressing a potential customer's worries, doubts, or reasons for not wanting to buy.
Guiding & Nurturing Customers
Once you know the customer's path, you need to help them along. This part shows how to guide and care for customers at each step. This helps them move closer to buying and staying with you.
- Lifecycle Marketing: Marketing that adapts to where the user is in their relationship with your product. From their very first click to becoming a loyal, long-term customer.
- Onboarding Flow: Steps to help new users understand and start using your product.
- Email Sequence: Set of automatically sent emails after a specific user action,. Like signing up.
- Email Workflow: A visual map of an automated email sequence. This map shows all the emails, choices, and actions within that sequence.
- Trigger: An action or event that automatically kicks off an email or an email series. Like signing up or downloading something.
Customer Engagement & Retention
Getting new customers is great, but keeping them is key. This section talks about how to keep your customers happy. It also covers how to make sure they stick around and keep using your product.
- Activation: When a user experiences and understands the main value of your product.
- Retention: Getting users to continue paying for your product or service.
- Churn Analysis: Looking at why customers stop using your product or service. Finding common reasons can help figure out how to keep them.
- Customer Health Score: Shows how likely a customer is to stay with you or use more of your product. It's based on how they use it and how they interact with your support.
- Word of Mouth (WoM): When people share information, opinions, or recommendations about a product, service, or brand with each other casually.
Product Interaction & Data
How do customers actually use your product? This part explains what makes your product easy and fun to use. It also covers the important information you can learn from how people use it.
- User Experience (UX): How easy and enjoyable it is for someone to use your product or website.
- User Interface (UI): What your product or website looks like and how you click or tap on it.
- Customer Data: How customers interact with your marketing materials (like emails and website) and product. This data is usually managed using different tools for marketing and product analytics.
Distribution Strategies
You have a great product and know your customers. So, how do you reach them? This section explains different ways to get your message or product out to the right people.
- Pull Distribution: Marketing approach simplifying customers to find your content or products. Usually through active searching for solutions, like on Google or in app stores.
- Push Distribution: Marketing approach where you use ads or emails to put your content or products in front of potential customers.
4. Content, Conversion, and Distribution (aka: What should we actually publish?)
This part is all about what you share with the world. It covers how to make good content, how to get people to act on it, and how to make sure your message reaches the right people.
Content Creation & Strategy
This section helps you think about the content you'll make. It's about planning what to say, who to say it to, and why you're saying it.
- Content Marketing: Creating and sharing helpful, interesting stuff to attract and keep customers. Like blogs or videos.
- Content Strategy: Your main plan for why you're creating content, who it's for, and what you want it to achieve.
- Content Plan: Schedule and outline of what content you'll create and share. It includes the topics, types of content, and where it will be published.
- Editorial Calendar: This helps you plan, create, and publish your content. It ensures consistency across different places.
- Evergreen Content: Stays useful and interesting for a long time, so you don't have to update it often.
- Content Repurposing: Slicing the same content into multiple formats to save time.
- Info Product: This is a digital item, like an e-book or online course. It shares information or teaches something. Often, it's given away to attract new leads or sold at a low price.
- Lead Magnet: A free resource (like a PDF or checklist) used to capture emails.
Optimizing for Action
It's not enough to just put content out there. Make sure your content and website get people to do what you want them to do. Like sign up or buy.
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Changes to your website to get visitors to do what you want them to do. Like sign up or buy something.
- Landing Page Optimization: Tweaking headlines, copy, etc., on a webpage. The objective is increasing how many people take a desired action.
- Call-to-Action (CTA): The part of your site or email that tells the user what to do next.
- A/B Testing (Split Testing): Trying out two different versions of something to see which one works best. Like a webpage.
Reaching Your Audience
You've made great content, but how do people see it? This section how to get your message and product in front of the right customers.
- Marketing Channels: Different places you connect with your audience to promote your product. Like social media, email, or paid ads.
- Distribution Strategy: How you plan to get your content or product in front of real people.
- Above the Fold: The part of a webpage you see right away without scrolling down. It's important for quickly grabbing attention and showing key information.
- Keyword Research: Finding the exact words people type into search engines. Helps you create content that gets found more easily.
- Good Enough SEO: "Findable" by search engines. Not overly technical or perfect, especially for busy founders.
- How much a potential customer knows about a problem, a solution, or your product. From knowing nothing to being fully informed.
- Viral Marketing: Marketing strategy encouraging individuals to pass along a marketing message. Increases the message's exposure and influence.
5. Metrics & Money (aka: How do we know it’s working?)
This part is all about numbers. It shows you how to tell if your marketing is actually working. How to measure your money and how customers are acting. This helps you know if your business is growing well.
Core Financial Metrics
These are the most important money numbers for your business. They help you see how much money you're making, how much customers are worth, and how much it costs to get them.
- MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue): Predictable income your SaaS business makes month after month.
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): How much money a customer will bring to your business over time.
- ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): How much money you make, on average, from each user within a certain period.
- ROI (Return on Investment): How much profit you made from money you spent. Compares what you gained against what it cost.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much it costs to get one paying user. Including expenses like ad spend, time, and tools.
- CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): How much it costs you to get one new paying customer from one marketing effort.
Customer Behavior & Health Metrics
You also need to know how your customers are doing. How much customers use your product and if they are happy or likely to leave.
- Activation Rate: Percentage of new users actually 'get' and start using your product.
- Customer Engagement Rate: How much customers are using your product, brand, or content.
- Churn Rate: User percentage who stop using your product or service within a time frame. Lower rate is better.
- Churn Prevention: Stopping customers from leaving or canceling your product or service.
Strategic Metrics & Experimentation
These numbers help you see the big picture of your business. They also cover how to test new ideas safely and know if your experiments are going well.
- North Star Metric: The single, most important number. Shows how much value your product brings to customers. The main indicator of your business's growth and success.
- Vanity Metrics: Numbers that look impressive. Like many social media likes or website visits). They don't actually show real business growth or help you reach your main goals.
- Guardrails: Specific limits or warning signs you set for your marketing tests. If these limits are crossed, it tells you there's a problem, and you should probably review or stop the test.
6. Tools & Infrastructure (aka: Do I need to buy anything?)
This part talks about the different tools and systems you might use for marketing. You'll learn what software and setups can help you get your marketing work done.
Data Management & Insights
You need to understand your customers. This section explains how to collect and keep track of information about them.
- Quantitative Data: Information that can be counted or measured. Usually collected from things like surveys, website analytics, or tracking how users behave.
- Qualitative Data: Information that describes qualities or characteristics. Often gathered by talking to customers, reading their open-ended feedback, & watching how they do things.
- Single Source of Truth: Important data stored in a reliable and easy-to-access place. This helps make sure everyone in the company is looking at the same, correct information.
- Analytics Platform: Tools that help you understand who visits your website and what they do there.
- Software to gather information for a complete view per customer. Makes it simpler for marketers to understand and connect with them.
Core Marketing Systems
The main software tools that help your marketing run smoothly. They let you manage customer relationships and handle many marketing tasks automatically.
- Marketing Stack (or Martech Stack): The set of tech tools and software we use for our marketing.
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Software to manage your interactions and relationships with customers. You generally only need one once you're getting a lot of leads.
- Marketing Automation Platform: For routine marketing tasks automatically. Like sending emails or posting on social media.
Conclusion
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