With all those terms and acronyms and jargon we use as growth marketers, there is a major need for a Growth Marketing Dictionary.
Our lingo is often full of jargon and fancy acronyms for simple, common words (like OPN – Other People’s Networks or OMTM – One Metric That Matters). In this article, I am creating a growth marketing dictionary with the purpose of reference for all growth marketers and growth hackers.
Some of the terms growth marketers say mean something completely different in regular English use while we are actually referring to something else.
I’ve been executing and managing growth marketing processes for 60+ businesses and startups over the past 10+ years and this list is a compilation, from my experience, of what we as growth marketers really mean when we use all this jargon. Welcome the ultimate growth marketing dictionary of terms and let’s get started!
P.S. The terms are in alphabetical order and the complete growth marketing dictionary with updates will be available on the growth hacking mastery course.
Let’s get started…
Growth Marketing Dictionary Terms List:
GROWTH MARKETING DICTIONARY
A/B Testing
Comparing 2 versions to check which performs better, by changing one element or parameter at a time. More on A/B testing here.
A3R3 Funnel
The updated 6-stage growth hacking funnel. Read the original guide to the A3R3 funnel here.
Agile
Smaller iterations, incremental changes, frequent feedback, and change; related to moving quickly and sometimes breaking sh*t.
AHA Moment
The time it (the growth hack or an idea or an experiment) clicks
API
Application programming interface; used as a way to gather data or execute integrations
Automation
Using technology to automate part of the growth hack or the process
Backlog
The backlog is where growth hacking ideas are stored that are waiting to be executed; usually used in a positive way by growth hackers.
Bandwidth
Forget about telecom, bandwidth actually means availability of manpower, resources, and working hours; the juice we can squeeze out of growth hackers.
Bottom-of-the-funnel
The output from the growth hacking funnel
Channel Personas
Detailed definition of how your target channels look.
Channels
Usually the source of users or traffic; can be used anywhere in the funnel
Churn Rate
Lost customers over time, opposite of retention rate.
Cohorts
Portions of the users based on WHEN they signed up. Example: November Cohort = Everyone who signed up in November.
Core Growth Skillset
This is the foundational skillset for growth marketing. It is a growth marketer’s backbone. Without building this skillset, you won’t be able to go a long way on this journey. See all the core skills here.
CRO
Conversion Rate Optimization
Custom Audience
Refers to an audience created using existing data from an app or website or a custom list (hopefully your own list)
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The cost of acquiring a customer can be calculated by finding the total investment in the experiment over the number of customers acquired.
Deep Dive
Contrary to popular belief among scuba divers, this actually means an In-depth analysis of any metrics or in-depth study of a particular data point in lean analytics.
Deep Hunting
The process a growth hacker uses to hunt for tools – especially finding tools that serve a different purpose but using them as leverage
Demographics
parameters that define the user like age and gender; useful for targeting and creating audiences
E-Shaped Growth Marketer
A growth marketer having all the fundamental and general skills and 3 specialist skills. You can check the list of all the skills here.
Eliminate Waste
A term used when a growth marketer takes a systems view of their growth experiments and campaigns – and looks at parts of the system where they can go lean and eliminate waste. Learn more with an example here.
Evergreen funnel
A fancy term for an automated growth hack (popularised by digital product marketers)
Experiment Success Score (ESS)
A sigma equation as a next-step analysis after the OMTM to make it easier for us to make YES or NO decisions for our growth experiments.
Full-stack
A full-stack growth hacker is the next level of the T-shaped growth hacker. Unfortunately, this person does not exist – just like a unicorn – or exists only in resumes and movies.
General Growth Skillset
The general skillset is a set of growth marketing skills all managers and marketers must develop. You must be able to utilize all these skills and apply them to all your growth marketing experiments. See all the general skills here.
Go lean
Unlike what fitness experts think, this phrase actually means to get more value from fewer resources.
Growth Experiment
A potential growth hack, currently in the experiment stage.
Growth Hacking Mindset
Growth is about mindset more than skillset and toolset. The growth hacking mindset is a combination of 5 mindsets: analytical, experimental, process-oriented, focused, and the default-doubting mindset.
Growth Integration
Integrating growth as a process into the main marketing system once it’s a successful experiment.
Growth Triangle
Relationship between Patience, Budgets, and Growth explaining the need for growth hacking.
Hacks
Innovative low-cost high-impact scalable process-oriented methods (for growth).
Heatmap
A map that shows how users interact with a website.
Hustling
Working outside your comfort zone in the growth hacking execution phase (does not include checking Instagram unless that’s the growth experiment)
ICE Score
The Impact-Confidence-Ease Score; score each factor from 1 to 10 and average (divide by 3) – Use your best judgment.
Influence Hacking
Leveraging influence using hacks.
Iterating/To Iterate
Repeat the Cycle of “Experiment > Adjust > Experiment”; Adjust after each lean analytics phase.
Landing Page
The first page visited by a user
Landing page CRO
Conversion Rate Optimization for sales pages
Lead Magnet
An offer used to attract users, usually top-of-the-funnel; Bribe visitors to get lead info, sometimes the first step inactivation.
Lean Analytics
Bare minimum tracking, reporting, and analysis; A minimalist 80/20 system of Analytics
Leverage
Often used as a verb in growth hacking; leverage means to be able to use something to derive the most value or advantage from it.
LTV
Lifetime Customer Value; Overall overtime worth of a client. Used to cap the CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). In most cases, you don’t want the CPA to be more than the LTV (there are exceptions – think)
Marketing Funnel
Visualization for understanding the process of marketing; how a high number of leads (usually) filter down to customers and beyond (refer to the A3R3 funnel above)
Micro & Macro Goals
Users usually complete ‘micro goals’ on your product or site before completing a ‘macro goal’. (All key micro and macro goals must be defined in Analytics for tracking)
North Star Metric (NSM)
Same as the OMTM. Some Growth Hackers prefer calling it the North Star.
O2I
Growth hacking by converting a process from Outbound to Inbound; a kind of growth hack.
One Metric That Matters (OMTM)
One growth goal is defined by a single metric that the entire startup should be working towards.
OPA
Other People’s Audience (used as Leverage)
OPNs
Other people’s networks (used as Leverage)
OPPs
Other People’s Platforms (Usually by leveraging other’s APIs or web scraping other’s platforms)
Organic
Usually from a free source; traditionally used by old-school Digital Marketers to refer to traffic coming from their search rankings
Pain point
A specific pain or obstacle that is common among your target audience & your business plans to solve.
Pirate Metrics
The old name for the new, improved A3R3 funnel that lists growth metrics in different stages of the funnel.
Pivot
Change direction as events and circumstances change. A growth hacking experiment pivot is somewhat similar to a startup pivot in that the plan remains the same but the direction in which to move to achieve the plan remains the same.
Product Market Fit
The Foundation for growth. The fit is achieved when offerings and audience are in sync.
Revenue per user
This one is really what it sounds like – the total revenue divided by the number of users; the average $$ generated from each user.
Roadmap
A visual plan of action (PoA) for implementing the growth hacking campaign.
Scalable Growth Hack
A growth hack with a YES output from the ESS (Experiment Success Score) can also be automated using tech (bots, scripts, etc).
Segments
The portion of the users is based on Segmentation. An example of Segmentation could be based on Gender.
SOP (Standard Operating Procedure)
Using pre-defined processes to save time and resources; essential for growth hackers who want to scale or repeat success. The process ensures the repetition of success.
Specific Growth Skillset
The specific growth marketing skills mostly focus on a specific channel (example: Email automation) or a specific type of growth experiment (example: side-project marketing) or a specific type of approach to growth. (example: viral mechanics).
You must deep dive into a few of these which you find your interest in. But first, you must try a little bit of everything to see what attracts you the most. As a growth marketer, you must learn the top 20% of all the rest of the skills in this list (and deep dive into a few). I call this lean skill development. See the complete list of specific skills you can develop here.
Sprint
Sorry runners but this actually refers to the given period of time when the team works to execute a specific process; usually, growth experiment sprints last around 30-45 days.
Systems Thinking
The deep understanding that everything which happens is part of a system (a sequence of interrelated cause and effect events)
T-shaped
Refers to Breadth and Depth of knowledge. Growth hackers leverage each other’s core competency to run campaigns as a team accordingly to their individual skills and depths. Sometimes, the terms ‘Pi-shaped growth hacker’ and ‘E-shaped growth hacker’ are also used – don’t believe in it unless you’ve experimented though!
TOFU, MOFU & BOFU
Acronyms for Top-of-the-funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom-funnel. It’s better to use the A3R3 funnel as a growth marketer rather than these terms.
Top-of-the-funnel
The initial lead phase at the mouth of the funnel
Traction
Momentum (referring to a growth experiment or a metric growth)
Triple Peak Effect
Describes the lifetime of any channel potentially used for growth hacking in 3 phases – Early Adopters (Hacks), Early Majority (Organic), Late Majority (Paid).
Unicorn Growth Hack
An exceptionally successful hack (Not to be confused with the financial unicorn).
User
A real person (hopefully) that we can funnel down in our growth marketing process
User Personas
Detailed definitions of how your target audience looks.
UTM
Refers to “generating” links that can be tracked. UTM actually meansUrchin Traffic Monitor (but who cares?)
Validation Marketing
A pre-growth hacking process that relies on lean marketing strategies to test and validate an idea or product. Learn more about Validation Marketing here.
Value Proposition
A statement that tells your potential customers exactly what benefit you are offering them.
Variant A / Variant B
The 2 variants that are being A/B tested to see which one performs better.
Viral Coefficient
Tells you how many NEW people are brought into your product because of your EXISTING users. If 50 visitors to your product bring in 100 new visitors to your product, then your viral coefficient would be 2.
Viral Mechanics
Engineering growth (virality) into the product itself; In-product growth hacking
That’s all for this article. The full list of growth marketing dictionary terms with video explanations is available in the growth marketing mastery course where I teach everything you need to know about your growth marketing journey.
