There’s a sentence on our Maze Map page most agencies would never print, and that is, “No guaranteed results, ever.”
Nobody controls Google, the AI engines or your market, so I don’t pretend to. What I promise is a number on every goal, written down before any money moves.
That’s also why I’m suspicious of marketing vocabulary. A lot of it exists to make results sound better than they were.
“ROAS improved this month.”
It sounds like good news, until you learn that ROAS ignores your margins. A proposal promising “increased impressions” sounds like progress, until you learn that impressions say nothing about whether anyone noticed.
Marketing has a vocabulary problem. Terms get used loosely, sometimes on purpose, and business owners end up paying for things they can’t evaluate because nobody explained the language.
This glossary defines 77 terms in plain words, in the context of how marketing actually works for Nigerian businesses. Where a term is commonly misused, the definition says so. Each entry has its own link, so you can send a colleague, client or supplier straight to the one you mean.
Jump to: Measurement & Analytics · Getting Found · Turning Visitors Into Customers · Keeping Customers · Messaging & Automation · Nigerian Context
Measurement & Analytics
Attribution. The method used to decide which marketing touchpoint gets credit for a sale. Every model is a simplification, so the useful question is whether your decisions change depending on which one you use.
Baseline. The measured current value of a metric before any change is made. Without one, any claimed improvement is unprovable.
Conversion. Any action you’ve decided counts as success, like an enquiry, a booking or a purchase. Define it precisely, because platforms will happily count things you would not.
Conversion rate. The percentage of visitors or leads who complete a defined action. Always state what the percentage is of, because conversion rate of clicks and of leads are very different numbers.
Cost per acquisition (CPA). Total marketing spend divided by customers acquired. The number that decides whether advertising pays, and the one most often confused with cost per lead.
Cost per lead (CPL). Spend divided by enquiries. Useful for comparing channels, dangerous on its own, because cheap leads that never buy are the most expensive kind.
CRM. Customer Relationship Management system, the database that records every contact, conversation and deal. In a working marketing system, it’s the source of truth that platform dashboards are checked against.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC). The full cost of winning a customer, usually including more than ad spend, such as staff time, tools and fees. Compare it against LTV, not against the first sale alone.
Customer lifetime value (LTV). The gross profit a customer generates across their whole relationship with you. Estimate it from real repeat-purchase records, not from hope.
Dashboard. A visual summary of metrics. Most show what’s available rather than what matters. A good one fits on one screen and answers whether marketing made money.
Gross margin. Revenue minus the direct cost of delivering it, as a percentage. The right number to compare acquisition costs against, rather than revenue.
Platform-reported conversions. The results an ad platform claims for itself. Typically generous, often double-counted across platforms. Useful for optimising campaigns, unreliable for judging them.
Return on ad spend (ROAS). Revenue divided by ad spend. A ROAS above 1 can still lose money once margins are counted. Always check it against gross profit.
Source of truth. The single system whose numbers win when two tools disagree. Decide it before a campaign starts, never after.
UTM parameters. Tags added to links (e.g. ?utm_source=instagram) so analytics tools know where visitors came from. The cheapest measurement improvement most businesses haven’t made.
Vanity metric. A number that rises easily and proves little, like followers, impressions and reach. Not worthless, but never a goal on its own.
Getting Found
AI search / generative search. Search results produced as written answers by tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews. Being cited in these answers increasingly depends on clear, factual, well-structured pages.
Backlink. A link to your site from another website. Still one of the strongest signals search engines use to judge credibility. Earned links from relevant sites matter far more than volume.
Bid. The maximum you’re willing to pay for a click or result in an ad auction. The price you actually pay is set by competition, ad quality and targeting.
Cost per click (CPC). What you pay each time someone clicks an ad. For Nigerian advertisers on dollar-billed platforms, it rises in naira terms whenever the exchange rate moves against you, even if the dollar price is flat.
Cost per mille (CPM). Cost per thousand impressions. Useful for comparing reach, not for judging whether ads produce customers.
Entity. Something a search engine understands as a distinct thing (a business, person or place) rather than just a string of words. Consistent names, descriptions and structured data help search engines recognise yours.
Featured snippet. A direct answer displayed above standard search results. Won by pages that answer a specific question clearly and early.
Focus keyword. The main search phrase a page is designed to rank for. One page, one primary intent. Pages trying to rank for everything usually rank for nothing.
Impression. One display of an ad or search result. It says nothing about whether anyone noticed it.
Indexing. A search engine adding a page to its database. A page can be indexed and still receive almost no visibility if it isn’t considered relevant or authoritative.
Keyword intent. What someone actually wants when they search, whether to learn, to compare or to buy. Matching page content to intent matters more than matching exact words.
Organic traffic. Visitors from unpaid search results. Slow to build and doesn’t reprice with the exchange rate, which makes it unusually valuable in Nigeria.
Quality Score. Google Ads’ rating of ad relevance and landing-page experience. Higher scores lower what you pay per click, so improving pages is also a cost-reduction strategy.
Schema markup / structured data. Code that describes page content to search engines in a standard format, such as a business, an article or an FAQ. It helps search engines and AI tools interpret your pages accurately.
Search engine optimisation (SEO). Improving your site and reputation so you appear in unpaid search results for searches that matter to your business.
Turning Visitors Into Customers
A/B test. Showing two versions of a page or message to comparable audiences to see which performs better. Needs enough traffic to be meaningful. Tiny samples produce confident-looking noise.
Above the fold. The part of a page visible without scrolling. On mobile it’s small, so the first screen has to establish what you do and what to do next.
Bounce rate. The share of visitors who leave without further interaction. Context matters, because a high bounce rate on a page that answers a question completely isn’t necessarily a problem.
Call to action (CTA). The specific next step a page asks for. One clear CTA usually outperforms several competing ones.
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO). Systematically improving how many visitors take a desired action. Often cheaper than buying more traffic, because it improves the return on traffic you already pay for.
Friction. Anything that makes an action harder, like extra form fields, slow pages, unclear pricing, required account creation. Removing friction is one of the most reliable ways to raise conversion.
Funnel. The stages a buyer moves through, from first awareness to purchase. Useful as a map of where people drop off. Misleading if treated as a straight line.
Landing page. A page built for one campaign and one action. Sending ad traffic to a homepage instead is one of the most common and expensive mistakes in paid advertising.
Lead. Someone who has expressed interest and given a way to contact them. Not every lead is a buyer. Define what makes one qualified.
Lead magnet. Something valuable offered in exchange for contact details, such as a guide, template or diagnostic. It must be useful, or it attracts people who will never buy.
Qualified lead. A lead that meets defined criteria (budget, need, authority or timing) that make a purchase plausible. The definition should be written down and applied consistently.
Retargeting. Showing ads to people who have already visited your site or engaged with you. Effective, but it only works on audiences you’ve already built.
Speed to lead. How quickly you respond to a new enquiry. Often the largest and cheapest conversion improvement available, because many buyers choose whoever answers first.
Trust signals. Elements that reduce a buyer’s perceived risk, like a physical address, real photographs, clear pricing, verifiable reviews, secure payment, reachable humans.
Keeping Customers
Churn. The rate at which customers stop buying or cancel. A business with high churn has to keep paying to replace customers it already paid to acquire.
Cohort. A group of customers who started in the same period, tracked together over time. Cohort analysis shows whether retention is actually improving.
Email list. Contacts who have agreed to receive your emails. An asset you own, rather than an audience you rent from a platform.
Loyalty programme. A structured reward for repeat purchases. Works when the reward is valued and the rules are simple. Fails when it’s a points system nobody understands.
Net Promoter Score (NPS). A survey measure of how likely customers are to recommend you. Useful as a trend within one business. Weak as a comparison across businesses.
Opt-in. A clear, active agreement to receive marketing messages. Required for sustainable email and WhatsApp marketing, and specifically required by platform policies for WhatsApp business messaging.
Referral programme. A structured way of rewarding customers who bring you new customers. Often the cheapest acquisition channel a business has.
Repeat purchase rate. The share of customers who buy again within a defined period. One of the clearest indicators of whether a business keeps what it wins.
Segmentation. Dividing contacts into groups based on behaviour or attributes, so each receives relevant messages instead of the same message for everyone.
Win-back campaign. Messages aimed at customers who have stopped buying, designed to bring them back before they’re lost for good.
Messaging & Automation
Automation. Software carrying out repetitive tasks, such as follow-ups, reminders and routing, without manual effort. Best applied to mechanical work. Judgement-heavy steps usually still need a person.
Chatbot / AI assistant. Software that answers questions in conversation. Good ones hand over to a human clearly and quickly when a question needs judgement.
Deliverability. Whether your emails reach the inbox rather than spam. Damaged by unverified lists, high bounce rates, spam complaints and poor sender authentication.
DKIM, SPF and DMARC. Email authentication standards that prove messages really come from your domain. Missing or misconfigured records are a common cause of legitimate email landing in spam.
List cleaning / verification. Checking an email list for invalid, fake or disposable addresses before sending. Protects deliverability and your sender reputation.
Suppression list. Contacts who must never receive marketing messages, for example after unsubscribing. In a well-run system, one central suppression list applies across every channel.
Template message (WhatsApp). A pre-approved message format required for businesses to start conversations through the WhatsApp Business API. Messages outside approved formats are restricted.
Unified inbox. A single view of conversations from several channels, such as WhatsApp, email, SMS and live chat, so messages aren’t lost between apps.
WhatsApp Business API. The official platform for businesses to message customers at scale on WhatsApp, with rules on opt-in, templates and messaging windows. Distinct from the free WhatsApp Business app.
Workflow. A defined sequence of automated or manual steps triggered by an event, such as a new enquiry creating a CRM record, notifying a salesperson and sending an acknowledgement.
Nigerian Context
Dollar-billed spend. Marketing costs charged in US dollars, including most ad platforms and many software tools. Their naira cost rises when the exchange rate moves, even if nothing else changes.
FX exposure. The share of your marketing budget whose cost depends on the exchange rate. Worth calculating, because most businesses have never done it.
Naira-native channel. A channel whose cost is incurred in naira, like organic search, referrals, local events, owned lists. These don’t reprice when the exchange rate moves.
NDPA. The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, which governs how personal data is collected, used and stored. It affects consent, privacy notices and how marketing contact lists are handled.
OTA. Online travel agency, such as a hotel booking platform. Useful for visibility, but commission-based, so hotels often work to shift bookings to direct channels.
Payment gateway. A service that processes online payments. Local gateways are widely used for naira transactions. Smooth checkout matters as much as marketing for online conversion.
Recommendation economy. The pattern in which purchases are validated socially, through WhatsApp groups, family and colleagues, before money moves. It makes reviews, referrals and forwardable information unusually important.
Reversibility anxiety. Buyers’ assumption that a bad purchase will be hard to undo, where refunds are awkward and warranties hard to enforce. It raises the evidence bar for every purchase and makes guarantees and low-risk entry offers effective.
Use It to Read Any Report
The quickest way to judge a marketing proposal or report is to check which terms it leans on. If most of its evidence comes from the weaker measurement terms, like impressions, reach and platform-reported conversions, and none from the stronger ones, like cost per acquisition, gross margin and source of truth, it’s describing activity. That isn’t necessarily dishonest. It is a good reason to ask for the missing numbers before you judge the work, and the written goal template shows how to agree them in advance.
Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary defined everyday words the way cynics actually use them. This glossary has a gentler aim: to show what each phrase in your marketing report should mean, and what to ask when it doesn’t.
If your reports are full of terms that never add up to results, the free 2-minute diagnostic will show which of your four walls is weakest, in plain English.
Businesses spending ₦1M or more a month on marketing also qualify for a free 30-minute Leak Check. No jargon, we promise.
This article covers one part of a bigger system. Our guide to digital marketing in Nigeria shows how the four walls fit together, and the order to build them in.
