The corporate branding stage is where startups begin to turn their product(s) into an established brand. Successful startups use this phase to forge name recognition and carve a lasting place in the marketplace. These companies determine the strengths of their brand's perception and play to these strengths.
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Corporate Branding
Activation - The process of an individual becoming aware of a brand.
Affiliate Marketing - A sales method wherein companies present their products to other individuals or companies who will sell the company’s products for a commission.
Archetype - An unconsciously inherited and ever-present idea or notion. (see Customer Definition: Customers Are People Too to learn more)
Backlink - Incoming links to a website or a particular web page.
Banner Ad - Online advertising tactic wherein an advertisement is embedded in a web page. (see Tips To Be Competitive In The Mobile App Industry)
Boilerplate - An organization’s standard description that is used repetitively. Oftentimes, boilerplates are placed at the bottom of email correspondence.
Brand Activation - Integration of all available communication streams in order to activate consumers and generate brand recognition.
Brand Architecture - The “family tree” of a company, detailing the different brands controlled by a company and their relationships. (see A Simple Template to Build Your Startup’s Brand Foundation)
Brand Equity - A brand’s power, derived from name recognition and reputation, that has been earned over time. Brands with high equity often generate higher sales and relatively increased profit margins.
Brand Experience - A brand’s reputation as perceived by an individual.
Brand Extension - The launching of a new product in a new market area under an established brand from a different market.
Brand Identity - The intended customer perception of a brand, orchestrated via name, logo, practices, and communication style.
Brand Image - The bundle of associations, within a customer’s mind, between a brand and the rest of the world.
Brand Licensing - The act of allowing a manufacturer to produce and sell products under a particular brand name in return for a percentage of the sales profit.
Brand Narrative - The story of a brand’s ideas, origins, and experiences as they relate to customers. (see A Beginner’s Guide to Brand Storytelling)
Brand Personality - The attribution of human traits or personality to a brand in order to achieve differentiation and authenticity.
Brand Strategy - The details of to whom a brand intends to appeal and how this will be achieved. (see Startup Branding Lessons from the Founder of Zipcar)
Click Through Landing Page - A landing page with the goal of sending a user forward to another page.
Click Through Rate (CTR) - The amount of users who click a certain link compared to the amount of users who visit the page on which the link resides. This is often expressed as a percentage.
Content Marketing - A marketing approach based on the creation and distribution of valuable and relevant content for potential customers to digest. (see Startup Marketing: 7 Steps to Getting Started with $100)
Cost Per Action (CPA) Marketing - Online advertising pricing strategy in which payment is based upon the effective results of that advertisement, oftentimes measured in sales or registration numbers.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - A standard measurement for the cost of advertisements, measured by cost of advertisements per 1,000 created impressions.
Direct Marketing - A form of advertising featuring physical items for customers in order to communicate information about a product and create a lasting impression.
Drip Campaign - Marketing method designed to attract customers through repetitive marketing actions and advertisements.
Embargo - An agreement to provide a particular press agency with a story but delay publication of that story.
Growth Hacker - An employee who creates viral results quickly.
Growth Hacking - Coined by Sean Ellis, this term refers to the art of generating fast attention and customer base growth via unconventional means. (see Startup Growth Hack Strategies to Get You to 1000 Users and Beyond)
Hashtag - A tag or phrase preceded by a hashmark (#) in order to establish a keyword or topic of discussion.
Hybrid Viral Model - Supplementing customers gained by viral campaigns with customer acquisition through other means, like paid search or SEO.
Impressions - Metric to determine the amount of newly generated users as a result of a particular advertisement.
Influence Marketing - Identifies the individuals or organizations who have influence over potential buyers and attempts to market towards those influencers.
Jumping the Shark - The point in time when a brand’s evolution begins to decline.
Lead Generation - The process of attracting potential customers and capturing interest in a given product with the intention of developing the sales pipeline.
Lead Generation Landing Page - Landing page that is used to capture user information and enter potential customers in the pipeline.
Marketing Channel - One-way communication channel between a company and their customers.
Meta Element - Tags used in HTML/XHTML documents to provide information about a web page.
Mobile Search - A type of information retrieval focused on the rise of mobile platforms.
Monthly Unique Visitors - A metric used in web analytics to determine the amount of users who visit a site in a given month.
Open Rate - A percentage measuring how many successfully delivered advertisements were opened by subscribers.
Pages Per Visit - A measurement determined by dividing page views by visits, which allows companies to see how many pages an individual can be expected to view in a given visit.
Pay Per Click (PPC) - Internet advertising model in which the advertising company pays the company who hosts the advertisement based on how many users click a particular link.
Persona - Fictional, generalized representations of ideal customers. These are intended to be easily remembered in order to ensure that the company does not forget the people for whom their products are made.
Press Release - A public relations announcement sent to the news media in order to let the media know of company developments or decisions.
Public Relations - The communication strategy that builds a relationship between a company and the public.
Referral Marketing - The spreading of information about a product via existing customers. This process is often incentivized by companies.
Registered Users - The number of users registered for a product or service.
Repositioning - Marketing strategy to re-shape a product’s purpose or image in a customer’s mind.
Responsive Design - A website design strategy focused on usability across all access platforms and interfaces.
Retargeting - A form of marketing in which users who have previously expressed interest in a given product are presented with banner ads about that product on various other web pages.
Retention Rate - A metric derived by analyzing the number of customers at the start of a period, the number of customers at the end of a period, and all customers gained during the course of that period. (see formula)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Marketing method that focuses on purchasing ads that are prominently featured on search engine results pages.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - The process of attracting attention to a product or company by increasing visibility on search engines. (see Startup Marketing 101: An Entrepreneur’s Guide)
Session Length - The amount of time individuals spend on a given site.
Sitemap - An XML file listing all URLs for a website, allowing search engines to more easily determine useful keywords.
Social Media Monitoring - The process of using social media channels to gauge attitudes and collect information on the public’s perception of a company.
User Acquisition - The transition of an individual into a user of a product or service.
Vertical Search Engine - Search engines that use a focused crawlers, only focusing on relevant web pages by limiting the amount of topics on resulting web pages.
Viral Coefficient - A measure of virality designed to gauge how often users of a product introduce that product to others.
Viral Cycle Time - The amount of time required for a customer to see a product, use it, and invite others to try it.
Viral Loop - An incentive-based system where users are rewarded for sharing a product with others.
Viral Marketing - A marketing technique that encourages users to pass on marketing information, creating exponential growth. (see The Art of the Hustle: Unconventional Methods for Building a Startup for more info)
Website Pageviews - The accessing of a page by a visitor or user.
Widget - A small application that provides information in a customizable manner.
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