When you work with an inbound marketing agency, conversations can sometimes be confusing because it’s full of terminology you don’t use in your day-to-day. So, we put together a list of terms we typically throw around while we’re working with a new or current client. You can use it as a reference, but always feel free to ask us if you’re confused!
Common HubSpot Inbound Marketing Terms
Terminology for the Buyer’s Journey
The buyer’s journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, consider, and decide to purchase a new product or service. It’s broken into 3 stages:
The Awareness Stage - During the awareness stage, the buyer realizes they have a problem through online research.
The Consideration Stage - During the consideration stage, the buyer determines their problem and researches options to fix it.
The Decision Stage - During the decision stage, the buyer chooses a solution.
Educational content and conversion opportunities are different for every stage of the buyer’s journey. As you can see above, in each stage the buyer is looking for different content or conversion opportunities to educate them further or to contact your team.
Awareness Stage Content - During this stage, a prospect is looking for high-level (also known as the top of the funnel) educational content to help them diagnose their problem. This type of content is typically in the form of blog posts, ebooks, and checklists.
Consideration Stage Content - If a prospect is on your website and looking for consideration stage content, this means you’ve already caught their attention. They know what type of problem they have, so they’re researching solutions. This type of content is usually in the form of webinars, comparison white papers, videos, and live interactions.
Decision Stage Content - During the decision stage, buyers have already decided on their solution. They’re looking for comparison and pros/cons content. This is also a great stage to have case studies and testimonials on your website.
Terminology for an Inbound Campaign
Each piece of content in the buyer’s journey should connect to a campaign. A campaign typically consists of the following elements:
Landing Page - A landing page is where a visitor lands after they click a link in an email, an ad, or CTA on your website. It’s a stand-alone website page that was created specifically for a campaign with one goal.
Check out our resource: 3 Landing Pages All Businesses Need
Thank You Page - A thank you page is the website page you see directly after filling out a form on a landing page. A thank you page is the final stage in your conversion process.
Call-to-Action (CTA) - A button or image a prospect clicks on to take the action you want them to take.
The goal of every inbound marketing campaign is to produce leads. The leads that convert on your site are then added to your CRM so you can track them.
CRM Terminology: Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status
Lifecycle Stage - In the HubSpot CRM, the lifecycle stage refers to where the prospect is in the sales process, from a new lead to a closed client. This contact property contains the following eight stages:
Subscriber - Contacts who are aware of your business and have filled out a form to subscribe to your email newsletter.
Lead - Contacts who have shown interest in your company by downloading a content offer.
Marketing Qualified Lead - Contacts who have engaged with your business's marketing efforts, but are still not ready to have a call with your sales rep.
Sales Qualified Lead - Contacts who are ready to have a sales conversation. This is obvious to your sales team because the contact has filled out your contact us or RFQ form with a direct question or request.
Opportunity - Contact who are real opportunities for your business.
Customer - Contacts with closed deals.
Evangelist - Your customers who advocate your business and provide you with referrals.
Other - A stage you can use when your lead doesn’t fit into any of the above stages.
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Lead Status - Your lead status property describes the stages within your sales qualified lead lifecycle stage. This CRM property helps you to prioritize your outreach by knowing the sales activities for these leads. These fields are customizable in HubSpot, and can be updated to match the activities your sales team regularly uses.
HubSpot’s default lead status options are:
New - Leads you have not reached out to yet.
Attempted to Contact - Leads that you’ve reached out to, but haven’t connected with yet.
Connected - Leads you’ve been able to connect with, but there are no opportunities to close a deal yet.
Open Deal - Leads that have an interest in buying your product or service.
Unqualified - Leads that were not ready to purchase. This can be for a number of reasons. However, it can be an opportunity to give the lead back to your marketing team to nurture.
Are you doing research for your own inbound marketing campaign or HubSpot CRM implementation? Book a 20-minute audit so we can uncover what you’re doing well, what you’re not doing well, and how to optimize your efforts.
