Growth & Marketing

The discipline of turning awareness into customers and customers into expansion. This cluster covers the full marketing funnel from awareness to advocacy, every major acquisition channel (paid, organic, content, referral, influencer, affiliate), the metrics that govern each (conversion, CPA, CPC, ROAS), retention and customer success (NRR, churn, NPS, onboarding), brand (identity, voice, positioning, awareness), and the lifecycle marketing patterns that compound. 62 entries.

This is the cluster where the most cross-discipline vocabulary lives. Founders without marketing backgrounds need every term here.

The marketing funnel and growth model

• Marketing Funnel, the awareness-to-purchase path.
• Growth Marketing, broader than marketing; full-funnel discipline.
• Growth Hacking, the term, its history, and the criticism.
• Product-Led Growth, PLG; product drives acquisition.
• Top of Funnel, the awareness stage.

Acquisition strategy

• Paid Acquisition, paying for users.
• Paid Search, Google/Bing search ads.
• Paid Social, Meta/LinkedIn/TikTok social ads.
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing), broader paid search category.
• SEO, organic search.
• SEO Ranking, what determines ranking.
• Keyword Research, finding what to target.
• Backlinks, links from other sites as SEO signal.
• Organic Traffic, non-paid visits.
• Inbound Marketing, pull-based acquisition.
• Outbound Marketing, push-based acquisition.

Acquisition channels and content

• Content Marketing, creating content as marketing asset.
• Content Distribution, amplifying content across channels.
• Email Marketing, owned-channel acquisition and retention.
• Influencer Marketing, creator partnerships.
• Affiliate Marketing, pay-for-performance partnerships.
• Referral Program, incentivizing customer referrals.
• Public Relations (PR), earned media.
• Press Release, the formal announcement format.

Brand

• Brand Identity, visual and verbal expression.
• Brand Voice, how the brand sounds.
• Brand Positioning, competitive positioning.
• Brand Awareness, how well-known the brand is.
• Value Proposition, what the brand promises.

Acquisition metrics

• Cost Per Acquisition, CPA at the channel level.
• Cost Per Click, CPC for paid traffic.
• CPM (Cost Per Mille), cost per 1,000 impressions.
• Click-Through Rate, CTR.
• Conversion Rate, % completing a desired action.
• Conversion Rate Optimization, CRO discipline.
• A/B Testing, controlled experiments.
• Return on Ad Spend, ROAS measurement.
• Marketing Attribution, crediting channels.
• Multi-Touch Attribution, sophisticated attribution.
• Marketing Analytics, the broader analytics function.

Audience and segmentation

• Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), who you're targeting.
• Buyer Persona, the persona detail layer.
• Marketing Automation, HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot.

Lead generation and qualification

• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), marketing's bar.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), sales' bar.
• Lead Scoring, automated ranking by likelihood to convert.
• Landing Page, the conversion-focused page.

Activation, retention, expansion

• Activation, first value moment.
• Customer Onboarding, the 30-60-90 day setup.
• Time to Value, TTV as retention predictor.
• Retention, keeping customers active.
• Churn Rate, % leaving.
• Net Revenue Retention, NRR for SaaS health.
• Renewal Rate, % of contracts renewing.
• Customer Health Score, composite churn risk indicator.

Customer feedback metrics

• Net Promoter Score, NPS loyalty metric.
• Customer Satisfaction Score, CSAT transactional metric.

Lifecycle marketing

• Lifecycle Marketing, stage-based marketing.
• Customer Lifecycle, the journey from prospect to advocate.
• Drip Campaign, automated email sequences.
• Cohort Analysis, retention curves by cohort.
• Viral Coefficient, viral growth math (K-factor).