Content marketing is the modern writer’s bread and butter. While writers are not expected to have a degree in or hands-on experience with digital marketing, it is important for them to know some basic marketing terms that will apply to the content they create for marketing campaigns. Below, I’ve put together a quick list of content marketing buzzwords that every writer should know:
1. Sales Funnel
The sales funnel is the buying process customers go through when purchasing a service or product. It helps to imagine a real-life funnel that is big at the top and small at the bottom. Lots of website visitors arrive at the top of the funnel, but only a few emerge at the bottom to make the purchase. Your job as a content marketing writer is to create content that keeps potential customers interested long enough to make it all the way through the funnel. Different types of content appeal to the target audience at each stage in the funnel, so it’s helpful to know what each stage looks like and how content plays a role in bringing customers further down the funnel.
2. Brand Identity
Brand identity is your client’s business persona or style; it is how they present themselves to their customers. Compare Dollar Shave Club’s cheeky, casual marketing with the elegant campaigns produced by Christian Dior – both brand identities match the merchandise they sell.
Sometimes you will establish the client’s brand identity in their content strategy. This is particularly true when creating website content or marketing materials for a new organization. However, more often than not, you will need to shape your content to fit the organization’s established branding. Whether you are creating content for the client’s website, crafting social media posts, or developing a whitepaper, every word you write should reflect your client’s brand identity and build upon it.
You might be surprised by how much nuance goes into matching a brand’s tone. It’s not just about coming up with clever sentences—there’s a subtle dance here, keeping everything consistent yet still fresh. Sometimes you’ll work with a client who’s never really nailed down their “voice,” and you’re kind of nudging them along, figuring it out together, sometimes by accident. And sure, there are guidelines, maybe even a corporate stylebook gathering dust somewhere, but living, breathing brands don’t always fit so neatly into bullet points.
It’s weird, too, how sometimes just the tiniest textual shift—like swapping “We’re thrilled” for “We’re excited”—can set off a cascade of internal debates. I once watched a brand team spend hours going back and forth on whether an exclamation point sent the right signal. That’s just part of the gig; you’re not just writing words, you’re calibrating emotions at a granular level. It can feel trivial but also kind of satisfying when you hit that note just right. Clients notice it, even if they don’t always say so out loud.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that brands can evolve right underneath you. What worked for a bank’s blog copy in 2022 may seem stiff or outdated by 2025. You have to keep an eye out for these shifts, whether they come from a rebrand, a new CEO, or just changing cultural vibes. If you’ve ever felt something just didn’t “sound right” out of the blue, you’re probably not imagining things—brand identity can be a moving target, for better or worse.
3. Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
The search engine results page (SERP) is the page where Google or another search engines will display its search results in response to the user’s query. In other words, when the search engine user types in words or a phrase into Google, the page that pops up with webpages fitting those keywords is the search engine results page. Ideally, you want your client’s webpages to appear at the top of the SERP.
SEO can feel a bit like chasing shadows—just when you think you’ve nailed it, the algorithms change, and suddenly what got results last season is ghosting you. Everyone’s got a theory about what’s actually working, though if you dig into SEO forums, nobody seems to agree. Sometimes, the magic is blending relevance for readers with those mysterious keyword choices, even when the science can feel a bit like folklore. I’ve seen simple, honest writing outperform keyword-stuffed essays more often than the “experts” like to admit. Real users notice when something’s written for humans, not bots, and somehow Google seems to respond to that these days.
The best way to help your clients appear at the top of the search engine results is by creating SEO content. SEO content is content that is optimized for the search engines through the use of certain topics, keywords, and phrases that appeal to the target audience and match their search intent.
4. Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A key performance indicator, or KPI, is a measurable value that is used to indicate progress toward a goal. In other words, a KPI is what you use to measure performance. KPIs are typically well-defined metrics that can be quantified. These key performance indicators will vary based on what you are measuring. Content writers might be working under certain KPIs like click-through rates (CTRs) or number of subscribers. While other digital marketing professionals might be working under KPIs like webinar attendance, retargeting ad spend, or number of followers on social media channels.
5. Call-to-Action (CTA)
A call-to-action (CTA) is an easy way to keep your readers moving forward in the sales funnel. As the name suggests, a call-to-action tells the reader what to do next. In most cases, you will put your CTA at the end of your content. For a blog, that might be in the closing paragraph. For a post on Twitter, it would be at the end of the tweet. Your call-to-action should be clear and actionable. It will often include a link to the next step in the funnel. For instance, you might link to your contact us page at the end of a blog post that’s aimed at people at the bottom of the sales funnel. However, if you were creating an infographic for people at the top of the sales funnel, you’d want your CTA to direct viewers to another piece of content in the middle of the funnel.
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