The Cynic’s Marketing Directory or what marketing terms really mean

Here are some gems for a real world marketing directory.

Content calendar What we’ll do if everything works perfectly, you pay on time and nobody has a day off.

 

Content. Lorem ipsum Polyfilla to anyone except the harmless drudge who has to write it.

 

Best Practice. What everyone else pretends to do. Or, alternatively, don’t do as I do, do as I say.

 

Click-through rate. The number of people you are renting from Google to ignore your website.

 

Gamification. The accurate theory that people can be persuaded to do almost anything in return for digital badges and sound effects.

 

Managing Expectations. It’s going to be delayed. (via Andrew Terry)

 

Press release. PRs pretend to be excited. Journalist pretend to be interested. Quotes are made up.

 

Traffic. The number of bots, site scrapers, internet trolls and hackers that visited your website plus your mum.

 

SEO. There are three secrets that are guaranteed to put your site at the top of Google’s search results but nobody knows what they are.

 

Metrics. What agencies use to convince you that their plan is working.

 

Outbound. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

 

Influencer. You don’t know where they work or what they do but your PR firm says they’re important.

 

Open rate. The number of angels that can dance on a pinhead.

 

Social media. Where your expensive content goes to be ignored.

 

Your call is important to us. But not enough to employ sufficient call handlers and anyway you might just go away and leave us alone, especially if you really want something. (via Heather Yaxley)

 
Need to kill it at your next meeting?  Try these phrases.

 

H/T to the wonderful Articulate Marketing for their marketing directory.