Developer marketing 101: the top terms you should be aware of

You’re talking to a developer, everything is going well, and then, suddenly… you get hit with a head-scratching term you’ve never heard before.

Who hasn’t been there?

With developer marketing jargon changing faster than you can say “software update”, it’s easy to get left behind when it comes to dev and marketing acronyms and phrases.

But, with a handy guide like this one (which you can bookmark for easy access), you can keep track of even the most difficult key terms – and always know what's what.

A

A/B testing

This concept is also known as split testing and allows you to compare two or more versions of a newsletter, a paid ad, etc., by showing them to your audience to see which one performs better (drives more traffic or sales). The advantage of doing this type of testing is that you can improve your marketing efforts.

A/B testing doesn’t need to be complicated – you can compare something as simple as two different subject lines for an email marketing campaign, or several landing pages to find the highest-converting one.

So, tweaking copy, perfecting your calls-to-action, or trying out different typefaces on your website (yes, really) can help you to cut bounce rates, increase conversions, boost engagement, and more.

Above the fold

While this expression used to mean the bit of page you saw when you folded a newspaper, it’s now applied to digital content as well and refers to the section of a page you can see without having to scroll.

Affiliate marketing

With this form of advertising, you can earn money by promoting someone else’s products and services. A good way of looking at it is like receiving a commission for each sale you’re responsible for.

There are several kinds of affiliate marketing programs you can choose from, depending on what you want to achieve, from PPC ads to affiliate links. A famous example is Amazon; its Associate Program allows people to “monetize their traffic” by using links to promote products to an audience and be rewarded for each purchase.

Algorithm

Generally speaking, an algorithm is simply a set of rules/ instructions/ procedures designed to perform certain tasks. For instance, every marketer knows how many times Google (frustratingly) updates its search algorithm so that it can better identify quality content and improve user experience.

Algorithms are behind most programming and coding and are used for virtually anything, including data encryption and complex calculations.

Analytics

This is a must-have tool for all developer marketers. Data-driven marketing allows you to discover patterns, gain insights, analyze trends, create content plans, and so much more, so it’s crucial that you use something like Google Analytics in order to make informed decisions on your day-to-day (and for any long-term plans as well).

Some of the benefits of using analytics include:

Reaching a wider target audience,
Improving your SEO efforts,
More in-depth understanding of behaviors,
Tracking conversions,
Figuring out where your audience is,
Checking your rankings,
And more!

API

The acronym stands for Application Program Interface and is, in short, the way computers and systems talk to one another. APIs are protocols that retrieve information from one application to another and aim to solve specific problems people may have.

Marketing APIs is often a key part of marketing to developers!

Applications

These are also known as apps and consist of programs custom-made to perform specific tasks and functions. You probably already use them every single day on your smartphone, but there are other types of applications, including web applications.

B

B2D

Business-to-developer, or B2D, is different from B2C and B2B marketing, as it refers to marketing specifically to developers.

And, as we know, marketing to developers isn’t the same as marketing to any other group, though having a killer program in place can get your product into developers’ hands without being seen as pushy.

Despite being different, you can still find some similarities with B2B and B2C, such as the expectation of having your product purchased and having to include that in your business strategy.

Back end

Equivalent to a peek behind-the-scenes! The back end of a website is everything that a user doesn’t see when they visit a site, such as data, coding, and styling.

If your website is the theater stage, the back end is the costume design, the makeup artists, the stagehands that make sure everything is running smoothly and the audience gets a flawless performance…

Backlinks

These are also known as inbound links and connect one website to another. Search engines tend to use backlinks as a way to analyze the quality of your website, and may even rank it higher over your competitors if you have a good number of quality backlinks.

So, a backlink is when someone links to your website. This is a vital part of your SEO strategy, as it can help you to grow your site by not only boosting your rankings, but also your discoverability and traffic.

You’ll want to appear on reputable websites so search engines also view your website – and your content – as valuable and credible. On top of this, you can get more link juice by getting backlinks from authoritative sites than from a random, newly-created, or not-very-trustworthy site.

Getting backlinks takes time but it can be done in several ways, including by:

Reaching out to people to replace broken links on their website with your fresh content,
Investing in digital PR,
Performing a link gap analysis that identifies sites that link to your competitors,
Publishing skyscraper content people will want to feature on their sites,
Using HARO (Help A Reporter Out), which provides quotes to journalists who need help with their stories.

Build

This term can have other names, such as software build or code build, and consists of source code that’s converted into a form capable of being run on a computer, for example. Typically, developers will create a build when the code’s ready to be tested or even released, so it’s something that happens later down the line in software development.

Buyer personas

Incredibly important in marketing in general, but crucial in developer marketing in specific. Buyer personas portray your ideal customer and allow you to fine-tune your target audience.

They’re used at all levels, whether you’re reaching out to a developer for the first time or want to create paid ads.

These personas are built with real information about your existing clients and with industry research, so you’re never making anything up (such as minor details like your persona’s name – fun fact: did you know that the first-ever persona was named Kathy and was created in 1983?).

Because the developer community’s so fragmented, you must be aware of who exactly your target customer is. Do you want to market to application developers? Is your service or product best suited for a full-stack developer? Or are you targeting game creators?

Defining your personas at the beginning means you can maximize your chances of attracting more leads and retaining your existing pool of customers.

C

Cache

If you’ve ever cleaned your browsing history, you already came across the term “cache”. It refers to a location that stores temporary information to help sites and browsers load faster.

This happens every time you visit a website so, when you return, the browser will simply retrieve the data it has in the cache instead of having to go to the server where the information is – the result is that the site loads a lot faster!

Canonical tags

This digital marketing term’s useful for everyone who dabbles in SEO. Canonical tags (rel=”canonical”) allow for duplicate content – which search engines frown upon – under different URLs. The tag lets you determine which version’s the main one to appear in search results.

Champions

In essence, these are your advocates, the people who help advocate and scale your products. Developer champions or advocates evangelize on your behalf, which can mean creating blog posts about your products and services or creating tutorials, recording videos, hosting Q&A sessions, and so much more.

You don’t have to rely on just a handful of people to promote your offerings – a network of champions dedicated to singing the praises of your product will go much farther.

Closed-loop marketing

A type of analysis that depends on data and insights, which means being able to implement, track and show results when it comes to your marketing campaigns.

Closed-loop marketing’s all about knowing the clients – the sales and marketing teams must feed information to each other and provide feedback, something that can lead to growth if well implemented.

Cookies

We’re always slightly disappointed this doesn’t refer to sugary goods… But website cookies are (almost) as important. They’re the information that a web server sends to a browser while you’re navigating a website. These blocks of data are placed on your computer or cellphone and allow browsers to track how and how many times a website’s accessed.

CMS

CMS is the acronym for Content Management System, and it’s crucial for those with a non-technical background to upload content to a website. A popular example is WordPress, which allows people to manage all their content, from onsite pages to blog posts.

You can upload the latest news about your product, have a regular blogging feature, add images or videos, etc. There are endless possibilities at your fingertips!

Content marketing

Simply, content marketing is part of a broader digital marketing umbrella and consists of the creation and distribution of materials designed to attract, engage and retain an audience. Content marketing can refer to a thousand and one different things, such as:

Blog posts
Articles
Videos
Podcasts
Social media posts
Newsletters
White papers

Creating engaging content that stays with people can boost your brand awareness and ensure that you’re seen as an expert and authority in your field.

Guest posts can also be part of your content marketing strategy, so why not give it a go and create content other marketers will love to read on our Developer Marketing Alliance page?

Crawl

The term for when a search engine goes through your website to compile information on your pages and index your content. This allows your website to be searched when people are looking for something you offer.

For example, Google has “spiders” that analyze your website and “decide” what should be displayed or not according to the search a user’s making.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an incredibly useful tool for companies since it allows them to stay on top of all tasks for clients. This can be anything from keeping track of emails and calls to organizing the day-to-day so you always know what’s up.

There are many benefits to using a CRM, including:

The ability to provide better customer service,
Increased sales
Better client retention
Increased collaboration
Higher productivity

CSS

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a language that creates the visual elements of a website. First, developers use HTML to figure out the structure and content of a page; then, they use CSS to make it look the way they want, which includes colors and font size.

CTA

A call-to-action (or CTA) is almost like a call-to-arms, where you ask someone to perform an action. There are endless possibilities when creating good CTAs that convert, so it’s all about seeing what works for you.

As we mentioned in the A/B testing section, you can compare different variations of the same CTA to figure out the one that people engage with the most – for instance, “subscribe now” vs “sign up now”.

You’ll also want to have different CTAs for different things. If you want people to download a guide, you can have anchor text that reads “download now”.

CTAs can be found everywhere, from landing pages and homepage pop-ups to social media posts and product pages.

The only rules? Your CTAs should be clear and specific and create urgency in the people browsing your content.

CTR

Clickthrough rate measures the number of clicks you get on your ads per number of impressions. Having a high CTR is crucial for your marketing campaigns, especially in PPC, so you’ll want to monitor this metric.

After all, a high CTR means you understand your target audience and know what works when trying to engage them. A low percentage could mean you’re not looking at the right customers or your copy isn’t attractive enough to get them to click.

D

Database

It’s impossible to escape this term even if you’re new to developer marketing since it can be used in many different contexts.

In developer terms, a database is a management system that stores and organizes all data, which has to be easily accessible and retrievable.

Debugging

No, we don’t mean spraying the house to get rid of bugs, though the process is similar! Debugging means identifying and removing errors in the code, which often contains several steps.

Developers must first find the problem and figure out how to isolate it, and can then either fix it or try to find a way around it, depending on what works better.

DevOps

A portmanteau of “development” and “operations”, DevOps combines IT with software development with the aim of creating better tech – and to do it faster than other more traditional processes.

DevRel

Also known as developer relations, DevRel is all about nurturing relationships with developers. The goal is to get devs to trial and purchase your products without being sales-y, so it’s crucial that you foster and grow these mutually beneficial relationships from the start.

Investing in DevRel has several advantages. For example:

Can lead developers to adopt a product.
Can change the way devs look at your product or company.
Enables you to educate devs on your product features, etc.

Digital marketing

If you choose digital-based technologies and the internet to promote and advertise your products and services (or to measure results), then you’re using digital marketing.

This type of marketing is a big umbrella that includes many different things, such as blogging, social media, PPC campaigns, video content, digital PR, email marketing, etc. It contrasts with traditional forms of marketing like TV ads or billboards.

Displays ads

When we talk about display advertising, we’re referring to online ads with text, images, and a URL that takes people to a website where they can learn more about what’s being offered.

Of course, display ads aren’t so rigid as to only have one format – in fact, you can include video, sound, banners, buttons, apps, and more. You can also create static or animated ads, as long as they have a CTA that spurs people into clicking through to a page and taking action.

Ads are usually charged on a CPC – cost-per-click – basis, and are also useful for retargeting campaigns where people see ads about websites they’ve visited before (which aims to entice them to return).

Domain name

A domain name’s a website’s address on the internet. It’s what you write on your browser when you want to visit a particular site.

Here’s the breakdown of an URL if you’re curious about it:

URL: https://www.developermarketing.io

Protocol – https://
Subdomain – www
Domain name – developermarketing
Top-level domain – io

Every website has an IP address, which you’ll recognize immediately as a series of numbers and periods; for example, 147.120.17.24. Now, imagine trying to remember the IP addresses for all your favorite sites!

To avoid that, the domain name helps you to identify websites without resorting to memorizing a myriad of numbers, making life easier for everyone.

Dynamic content

Even if you haven’t heard of this term before, you’ve probably already noticed that website content (and email content) can change over time. It changes based on certain data, like your interests and behaviors, and can be anything, from text to videos, including personalized CTAs.

Dynamic content requires information to be stored in a database so that it can adapt to people visiting your pages. With this data in hand, you can more easily provide specific content depending on where users are in your purchase funnel.

E

Email Automation

There are many benefits to email marketing, from allowing you to collect feedback to helping you boost traffic to your website.

Email automation’s crucial for this. With it, you can send emails to subscribers at a specific time, target them with customized messages, remind them that they have something on their shopping cart, etc., without having to manually send it out.

Automating the process allows you to avoid repetitive tasks and save time.

ERP

An acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning, which refers to the resources, technologies, and processes a company uses, such as accounting, HR, and sales.

Evergreen content

In digital marketing, evergreen content is when the content you create continues to be valuable for a long time – even if someone looks at it months after you published it!

For a piece of content (an article, a video, or an infographic, for example) to be considered evergreen, it needs to be valuable, high quality, and canonical – they’re also well optimized in terms of SEO.

Eye-tracking

This feature is incredibly useful in digital marketing, as it analyses the way people’s eyes move on a page – what are people looking at? What are they most interested in? What do they spend the most time on?

The answer to these questions can help you to better understand the elements on your website that are working better than others and where CTAs can be better placed, etc.

F

Featured snippet

A featured snippet is also position zero on Google’s results page – if the search engine believes your content is high quality and provides the best answer to someone’s query, then it’s likely you’ll end at the top of the page as a featured snippet.

Your content will show up as a little paragraph, bullet-point list, or even an image that people can see without having to actually go to your website.

Freemium

A business model that’s also the portmanteau of “free” and “premium”. It consists of making products free, but adding a charge for anyone who wants additional services and elements.

This way, SaaS owners can get people interested in their products faster. Other benefits include the ability to save money when creating and launching a product and the option to offer something with no usage barrier.

Front end

The front end is what people see and interact with when they visit your website. Developers who work on it have to know languages like HTML and CSS, and ensure that the site is visually optimized – they also focus on debugging to ensure the user has the best possible experience.

Full Stack

A full-stack developer is a jack-of-all-trades. Not only do they work on the back end of a website, but also on the front end, which means they have a lot of responsibilities, including:

Designing and developing software
Testing software
Writing code for the back and front end of the site
Developing APIs
Ensuring users interact well with the site
Maintain responsive elements
And so much more

Full-stack devs are also able to help out all members of the development team, ensure faster turnaround times, cut down the cost of a project, etc.

Funnel

Simply put, a marketing funnel is the journey a client takes with you, from the awareness stage to advocacy. It’s all about the path to conversion, so effective funnels help potential clients become actual customers, and several marketing strategies are used every step of the way, including social media and email marketing.

G

Gamification

A term that’s become increasingly popular in the past few years. Gamification means using elements specific to games, such as points, to encourage people to engage with a brand, product, or service.

Wondering how to apply gamification in your marketing? Examples include rewarding your audience with a badge if they complete a course, offering an interactive quiz, and having progress bars that show people where they’re and what they need to reach the next “level”.

There are plenty of benefits to adopting gamification techniques when creating your developer marketing plans, including:

Boosting user engagement
Creating friendly competition
Allowing people to learn while having fun
Improving knowledge retention
Making learning more “addictive”

Geotargeting

This is a type of advertising that provides different content to people depending on where they’re located (country, region, zip code, IP address, etc.). This means geotargeting is incredibly useful for local businesses in their PPC campaigns, for example.

Git

As a staple for devs, this software allows them to both store and manage code, and any change they make can be reversed if necessary. Collaboration between devs is also easier with this tool, whether they’re building a website or an app, for example.

Go-to-market

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a plan that helps you to launch a new product or brand, which includes practices related to audience and competitor research, the buying journey, pricing, sales, branding, and more.

A good GTM strategy allows you to meet the needs of the market and ensures customers engage and purchase your product or service.

Guest blogging

You’re guest blogging if you’re writing a blog post or article on someone else’s website or blog. This strategy can help you to build the authority of your website, grow your network, boost your credibility and reputation, get more brand awareness, increase the number of newsletter subscribers, and so on.

If you’re looking to try your hand at guest blogging, why not contribute content to the Developer Marketing community? Browse our guidelines and showcase your expertise!

GUI

When you visit a website, everything you can see – the layout of the site – and the way you interact with the elements on it are the GUI, or graphical user interface. It includes icons, menus, and other graphics.

H

No, this isn’t about delicious food… you’ll have seen these buttons a thousand times before, even if you weren’t aware of how they were called.

Hamburger menus are the three lines (stacked on top of one another) that let you access a website’s navigation when you’re using a small screen – namely, your cell phone.

They save precious space and allow sites to be easily viewed and navigated.

Hashtag

These act as labels for your social media content. Represented by the symbol “#”, hashtags have become crucial in social channels, from Twitter to Instagram and LinkedIn, allowing people to find you and engage with you.

If you’ve created a post about developer marketing on LinkedIn, for example, you’ll want to tag it with #developermarketing or #marketing. Of course, the more popular the hashtag is, the more difficult it is to stand out against countless other posts.

But, by adding hashtags, people can find you more easily when they search for that tag.

HTML

HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, is the language of choice to write web pages. No matter how simple or complex a page or website is, HTML is the foundation everything else is built on. You can get a basic site structure with it, which can then be enhanced by other languages like CSS.

HTTP

With a HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, computers and servers can communicate via HTTP requests and responses on the internet.

Without this, your YouTube videos wouldn’t be able to load and you couldn’t access any pages on the internet!

Hyperlink

This is simply an item that takes you to another page, a document, etc, meaning it helps you to navigate a website. It doesn’t just need to be text either, as hyperlinks are also URLs, images, and buttons.

Another term you should know is “anchor text”, which refers to a link represented by text and is crucial for SEO.

I

Impressions

These are key metrics that measure the number of views your content gets (even if people don’t click on it), whether you have an ad live or a social media post, for instance.

Impressions are important because they show you how many people are actually looking at your content – the more impressions you get, the more likely it is for your community to grow and for people to engage with your content.

Inbound marketing

A key concept for all marketers! This marketing model is all about ensuring that people find your company and buy your products – and that you can grow long-lasting relationships with customers.

Inbound marketing includes a wide range of tactics and methods to attract clients and convert them, such as:

SEO
Content marketing (articles, ebooks, etc.)
Email marketing
SEO
Social media
Conferences and other events

In short, the inbound method aims to boost brand awareness, grow relationships and increase leads.

Integrated marketing

With an integrated marketing strategy in place, you can deliver a unified, comprehensive, and consistent experience to your customers and potential clients.

It includes a wide range of practices and tactics, from landing pages and display ads to email marketing and blogging – the idea is to have everything directed toward the same objective so you can achieve your marketing goals.

For instance, if you have the same core message across all platforms/channels, then you’re likely using an integrated marketing approach.

J

Jargon

This term is often used to refer to complicated terminology specific to a particular industry or group of people, including web development and marketing.

Many things can be considered jargon, like acronyms that are used by some but confusing to others outside the field.

As a developer marketer, you’ll want to avoid marketing jargon and make your content as accessible to your audience as possible, especially because devs don’t love being marketed to…

However, you may have to learn IT and developer terms that may be considered jargon to you, since this can help you to better understand your audience and their problems.

JavaScript

One of the most well-known and flexible programming languages on the internet, which helps to create dynamic content and sites – this means anything from animated graphics to interactive maps. Developers typically need to know three different languages: JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

jQuery

jQuery is a JavaScript library that makes it easier to manage the front end of a website. It simplifies JavaScript by compacting several lines of code into one, helping devs to add animation and interactive elements to pages.

JSON

This term stands for JavaScript Object Notation and is a lightweight format to store and transport information between a server and a web app.

This object is text-based and has become used by most online services.

K

Keyword

Keywords are simply the words that you use when you’re looking for something on the internet. When you type “developer marketing” into Google or YouTube, you’re using keywords.

They’re crucial in digital marketing, as search engines consider them when delivering search results to people – keywords also help attract visitors to your site, which is why they’re vital in SEO.

Keywords are a way for you to generate sales, boost company profits, increase the number of conversions, and so on, and there are several different types of keywords, including the following:

Short tail and long tail
Short term and long term
Geotargeting
Intent targeting
Product defining

Keyword research

If you want to rank better for certain terms on search engine results pages (SERPs), then keyword research is vital.

The process analyzes the words and phrases that are related to your website and the content you write about, and shows you the most popular ones, their ranking difficulty, and even new key terms you may not have thought about before.

You can then place them strategically across your pages and articles so you have a higher chance of ranking high in SERPs.

The importance of this research is undeniable – it offers you insights into what people are looking for and helps you to meet the demand for content and, of course, helps you to boost traffic to your pages.

KPIs

In marketing, KPIs, or key performance indicators, are metrics that track and analyze the efficiency of your marketing and sales.

These metrics include page views, ROI, sales qualified leads, revenue, cost-per-lead, and customer acquisition cost.

You want to set clear KPIs since they ensure your team’s goals are aligned and allow you to focus on strategies that are working (and abandon those that aren’t).

L

Landing page

Landing pages differ from the other pages on your website, as they’re standalone and made for a specific action – maybe you want people to download an ebook or register for an event.

Visitors to your site land on these pages from an external source; for example, after clicking on one of your ads on social media. Landing pages don’t have the navigation that your website pages have, which, combined with good copy and a targeted CTA, encourage people to leave their information in exchange for a newsletter, a free trial, etc.

There are no limits to how many landing pages you should have. Creating and maintaining several can actually be beneficial for you since it helps you to target specific audiences.

Languages

While this can also refer to literal languages, in developer terms, it means things like HTML and CSS. Languages are used to build sites, software, and applications, and there are many different types of languages out there – including markup and style sheets.

Lead generation

As the name suggests, lead generation, or lead gen, is the process of obtaining leads – this includes identifying potential customers, drawing their attention, and converting them to your product or service.

It doesn’t matter how big your company is or whether you focus on B2B, B2C, or B2D audiences; lead gen is vital for all businesses!

Lead magnet

With a lead magnet, you can get website visitors to give you their information – namely their email – in return for a freebie. It’s a helpful tactic to get more sales leads!

Lead magnets can be ebooks, free trials, white papers, and more, so it’s up to you to decide what you can give away.

Lifetime value

This metric measures the earnings your business can make from a customer throughout their relationship with you.

Because it’s easier to sell to someone who’s already a client than to attract a new customer, make sure your audience is satisfied with your product or service so you can retain them. The longer someone buys from you, the greater their lifetime value is.

Having a good understanding of this metric benefits your marketing and sales, as you can make better-informed decisions.

Link building

Everyone can have a website – the difficult part is making your pages visible in SERPs! A great way to do that’s via link building, which means getting other websites to link to yours.

Links are essential for SEO and to drive organic traffic to your site and, by using several link-building techniques, you can showcase your authority and have a higher chance of ranking higher in search engines.

Link juice

This SEO term (which can also be called link equity) is the value that a backlink gives a website. The more authoritative and high quality a website is, the more juice it can give you – which will then help you to rank better in SERPs.

You can split it into internal and external link juice. As the names suggest, internal link juice refers to the authority that internal linking offers, while external is the value another domain can give you.

Local environment

This is a useful tool for devs. Instead of writing code that’s immediately live for everyone to see, developers can use local environments to tweak their software and make changes to the code before sending a product to production.

M

Marketing qualified lead

You might have heard this expression before – marketing qualified leads, or MQLs, are the number of people who, after an initial assessment, are considered a good fit for your business (and most likely to become long-term customers).

They’re often passed on to the sales team and further nurtured to promote retention.

Metadata

In tech terms, metadata is information that describes the data in a page or a document, like the name of the author, the size of the file, or the date it was created.

When we talk about metadata in marketing, we’re referring to meta tags like title tags, alt tags, and meta descriptions – all of which help your site rank higher in SERPs.

An example is a page title on your website, which is the headline that shows up in search results and which you click to visit the page.

This title has to be concise but descriptive, so people can immediately understand what your page is all about – and so that Google and other search engines can use it to determine whether your content is relevant.

Metrics

As a developer marketer, “metrics” is one of those terms you must be aware of. A metric is a way of measuring (and quantifying) your marketing efforts so you know whether you’re on the right path and if your campaign was successful.

Examples of metrics include:

Conversions
Reach and engagement on social channels
Churn rate
Customer acquisition cost
Cost per lead
Key performance indicators
Keyword rankings
Organic traffic
Number of followers

Mobile-first indexing

Due to the growing number of smartphones worldwide (and users, which are expected to reach around 7.7 billion in 2027), Google now uses the smartphone version of your website to index and rank your content.

This means that, when building a website, you need to prioritize mobile devices instead of desktop – so, responsive design is of the utmost importance!

Mobile optimization

Having your website optimized for mobile ensures that users have the best experience when they access it from their phones or tablets.

To know whether your website is well optimized, answer questions like these:

Does the site display well on small screens?
Is the site easy to navigate?
Is the design responsive?
Are the buttons and images proportional to the size of the screen?
Does the site load quickly on mobile devices?
Do you still have some content above the fold on a small screen?

Monthly recurring revenue

Also called MRR, this refers to the earnings a subscription-based business gets every month. Many SaaS companies use this model since it helps them to measure their revenue (gains and losses) from different sources, including upsells and cancellations.

This metric can also help you to analyze your sales team’s performance, for example, as well as keep on top of sales forecasts and budgets.

Multichannel marketing

This is when you use several different channels to promote your products and services, from blogging and social media to email and text messaging.

While there are some challenges to keep in mind when taking this approach, such as ensuring a consistent experience on all channels, there are also many advantages.

These include allowing you to be everywhere your audience is, be it GitHub, Slack, or LinkedIn. You can also increase your customers’ engagement levels, boost conversion rates, build relationships that’ll last a long time, and so on.

MySQL

Another term you may have stumbled across as a developer marketer.

This open-source database management system is widely used all over the world and is crucial for web developers. MySQL allows them to create and manage databases while working on systems with different languages, such as PHP and C++.

MySQL helps with data security, allows devs to enjoy the benefits of an open-source tool, provides the ability to scale the work when needed, and so much more.

N

Native advertising

A type of paid content (whether articles, videos, etc.) that aligns with the website or social media profile it’s published on. Native ads must have the same style and tone, and blend with the organic posts or blogs.

Nofollow link

By adding a nofollow tag (rel=”nofollow”) to your link, you’re telling search engines not to crawl it or count it in any way.

But why would you want to do that when it’s already hard enough to rank in SERPs?

This option, which was introduced by Google in 2005, tells the search engine that you don’t agree with or endorse the link, which is useful if you want to avoid it being tagged as unnatural.

Some links can penalize you, so you’ll want to avoid them at all costs. This includes:

Paid links (Google will think you’re trying to game the system to rank higher)
Dofollow directories
Guest posts with keyword-heavy anchor text

Before Google tackled this issue, it was common for companies to spam links in forums and blog comment sections to make sure their content was above other (more relevant and natural) sites’. By adding a nofollow attribute, you can tell Google to ignore spammy links.

On top of this, if someone paid you for a link (press release or guest post, for example), the nofollow tag ensures you stay above board at all times.

O

Open-source

This type of software is available for everyone to use. Devs can work on code that other developers, no matter where they’re in the world, can also analyze, tweak, improve and even distribute.

This is a decentralized way of working and leads to a higher level of collaboration too – instead of quality control being down to a single person or team, open-source software can be reviewed by a whole community.

Because of the nature of open-source software (and because it’s looked after by many different people), it can also last for a longer time.

Operating system

An operating system, or OS, is how a user interacts with a computer. It’s software that manages everything, from memory and peripherals to processes and files, allowing you to use different programs, inputs, outputs, and so much more.

Popular operating systems include Windows, Safari, and Linux.

Opt-in form

Simply put, opt-in means you need to perform an action to subscribe to something – often a mailing list since opt-in is a term widely used in email marketing.

It’s hard to get people’s contact info, but opt-in forms are useful for this. You can more easily get their names and email addresses and, of course, grow your leads.

Because people voluntarily exchange their information for an ebook, weekly newsletters, event tickets, etc., they’re more likely to engage with you as well. You’re not spamming anyone, to start with, so you’re more likely to have a better open and click through rate.

You can also get higher conversion rates!

Organic search

Organic search is the opposite of paid search (for example, PPC) as it’s all about getting natural results on SERPs like Google and Bing (however, each search engine has its own algorithm, which is why you see different things if you type the same query into them).

Search engines base organic results on relevance, backlinks, domain authority, and other factors, meaning SEO is of the utmost importance here!

Organic search can be presented in different ways; while you don’t get ads, you can get images, blogs, maps, etc.

Outbound links

These refer to links you add to your website but which point to someone else’s pages. For example, if you research a specific topic and come across a statistic you want to showcase, you’d point to the original source.

Outbound marketing

This method is more in line with what people tend to think marketing is – a more “in your face” (some would even say “pushy”) approach.

However, while outbound marketing means that businesses initiate a conversation or send a message to people, it doesn’t mean they have to do it in a disruptive way that annoys people. Of course, cold calling is included in this type of marketing, but it’s not the only tactic to consider.

Outbound marketing can include activities like TV commercials, flyers, trade shows, billboards, radio ads, magazine ads, and catalogs.

P

Paid media

With so much content out there, paid media can be a way to make your business stand out – and offer your product the exposure it needs!

With paid media, you pay to get your message out to audiences and boost your traffic and conversions. There are different methods of paid advertising you can explore, including PPC, display ads, and Facebook ads, all of which can help you to increase your brand exposure and revenue.

Pain points

Knowing your audience’s pain points is crucial because it’s a way to connect with them. Pain points are the issues your customers (or potential customers) experience – as well as the impact they have on the individual and business.

To find out your customer’s pain points – and address them – you must put yourself in their shoes. While there are many different types of pain points, they tend to fall into certain categories, such as productivity, financial, support and process pain points.

By identifying and fixing your customer’s pain points, you can both get new customers and retain your existing ones, since you’re able to provide the best experience.

Personalization

Personalization is all about tailoring a product, an experience, or even your content marketing, for example, to certain people or groups, using the information you’ve learned about them.

You should opt for personalization because, nowadays, people expect it – it’s also good for business since customers are more likely to buy from you, as you’re keeping them engaged.

So, personalization is a way to remain competitive because you’re showing your customers that you understand their needs and pain points.

PHP

At the start, PHP stood for “Personal Home Page” but, now, it means “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”. It’s a back-end scripting language used to write desktop apps, create dynamic content, and more.

The reasons why this language is so popular include:

PHP is free and open-source
Many servers support PHP
It’s easy to learn and use
PHP is updated often
It can be used in different operating systems

Plugin

Plugins let you add an extra function to existing browsers, software, CMS, etc. They’re extensions, usually built by third parties, that improve the platform or tool and allow for their personalization. An example would be a plugin that lets you watch YouTube videos on your website.

Positioning

Your brand positioning is what makes you different from everyone else and how people identify your brand and connect with it. It’s how you sit in your market and your customers’ minds. There are several ways to convey this positioning, such as by visual examples and tone of voice.

Brand positioning is crucial because it helps you to make the right decisions in your business, create better messaging, stand out from the competition, and so on.

PPC

PPC – or pay-per-click – is an online marketing technique that allows you to place ads on a platform and pay a fee when people click on them. Contrary to organic media, PPC is a type of paid media that leads customers to your site where they can then perform an action, such as buying your product.

You may want to consider adding PPC to your marketing efforts due to the benefits it can offer, which include:

It’s cost-efficiency – you only pay when someone clicks on your ads.
It’s measurable – you can quickly see whether you’re having a return on your investment and tweak your campaigns as you go.
It’s versatile – you can run several campaigns for each keyword.

Product lifecycle

This refers to the amount of time a product is on the market, from when it’s introduced to customers to when it’s taken off the market. A product goes through four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Knowing where your product is at any given moment is important because it informs your marketing decisions. For example, if you’re launching a new product, you’ll probably want to focus on brand awareness. However, that mightn’t be such a big priority if your product has been in the market for a while.

Psychographics

If you want to segment your audience into key subgroups, you can use psychographics – which include your audience’s interests, values, behaviors, lifestyle, and more – to do so.

They help you to create a more personalized message, to put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and to create detailed profiles of your target audience.

Python

As a programming language, Python is often used to create web apps. It’s widely used by many people all over the world as it’s a helpful tool for API development, machine learning, and automation as well.

It’s considered an easy enough language to learn and utilize, and many big companies, including Google and Reddit, use it.

R

Responsive design

When a website’s design is responsive, it means that it flows across different devices and screen sizes, from cell phones to desktop, rendering text, media, etc., in a layout that works for these devices.

If you don’t have a responsive design, your website may be difficult to interact with on a phone or tablet – and user experience is crucial for people to remain on your website and return as well.

Return on investment

The return on investment (ROI) measures the profitability of your investment relative to its cost. ROI helps you to make financial decisions, to understand how much money you made or lost, etc.

This is an important metric that helps you to see how effective your marketing is and whether you need to change tack or tweak your campaign.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt provides instructions to the crawlers that go through your website and tell search engines which URLs they should index and which they should ignore. This allows you to hide certain pages from the crawlers, including “thank you” pages people get when they sign up for your newsletter, for instance.

Ruby

A beautiful gemstone and an open-source programming language all in one! This is an open-source language used for many different things, including DevOps, crawling, and web servers.

S

SaaS

This stands for “Software as a Service” and is a cloud platform where people can share documents and files, as well as collaborate with others. You may already use some SaaS platforms, such as Google Drive!

With SaaS, there’s a service provider that manages everything and you simply rent it from them – this type of service helps you to keep costs down because you’re not responsible for maintaining the whole app or platform.

Schema markup

If you’ve heard of schema markup before but don’t really get it, you’re in luck! Here’s a quick and easy (we hope) explanation!

Schema markup is code you can add to your website and pages; it’s crucial for SEO because it helps search engines understand what your page is all about. It can help you to rank higher in SERPs as well – schema markup returns better results when people ask a question or search for a key term, so this is an opportunity for you to generate rich snippets.

Rich snippets are more than the usual title tag, meta description, and URL you get when you use a search engine. With them, you can also see reviews and upcoming event dates, for example, and more people tend to click on them due to this extra information.

Think about it; you search for a term and get several great-looking options, but only one has star ratings that show how good the website is – which URL are you most likely to click?

SEO

SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and it’s vital to help you show up in SERPs when people search for a service or product you offer. The better optimized your website is, the more traffic, leads, and conversions you can get.

There’s a staggering amount of websites on the internet – the current estimate is 1.6 billion! – so standing out from the ever-growing crowd is essential if you want people to find your website. SEO practices help with this.

With so much information to sort through, search engines use “spiders” that crawl and index websites; algorithms will then analyze those sites and decide which pages should be pulled up for a given search term.

Because search engines find the most relevant and accurate information, whether it’s a video, image, or business listing, you need SEO to create content that’s deemed relevant. This includes structuring your pages a certain way, adding metadata to them, including schema markup, etc.

SEO and content go hand-in-hand, so keep that in mind when writing your landing pages, website content, and so on.

Search query

These refer to word combinations that people use in real life, such as “how to market to developers?” (while keywords can be terms like “marketing to developers”).

There are several different types of queries because people search for different things depending on where they’re in the buyer journey. This also means your SEO efforts should take them into account!

Informational queries – when people use these, they want to get more information about a particular topic but may not be looking to buy anything at the moment.
Navigational queries – these refer to searches where people are looking for a certain company or website.
Transactional queries – as the name suggests, these are the queries people do when wanting to buy something.

Segmentation

Market or audience segmentation helps you to separate people into different groups based on demographics, occupation, income levels, common interests, needs, and so much more. This allows you to target a specific subset of your audience when it comes to your marketing campaigns.

For example, segmenting your audience, you’re more likely to get higher conversion rates and survey answers.

We tend to trust the opinions of our peers and even seek them before making a decision. If you see a restaurant is full, you’ll probably think it serves good food!

Think of it this way: if you want to buy a new product you’ve not tried before, are you more likely to purchase one that has reviews or one with none?

Social proof can be as simple as adding testimonials to your website, creating case studies, or including star ratings. If your customers are on the fence about buying your product, reading a testimonial from a company that’s already using it with great results can help them decide to take the leap.

SSL

An SSL certificate is essential nowadays for all websites! SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” and ensures that all information transmitted between two points (such as a server and a browser) is encrypted and secure.

You can tell if a website is SSL-certified if, instead of “http” in the address, you see “https” (as well as a padlock symbol before the URL).

SWOT analysis

A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis should be done before creating a marketing plan because it helps you to understand your business and your competitors’ better – this’ll help you inform your marketing strategy.

SWOT allows you to evaluate factors such as your branding, your positioning, future projects, etc. It also gives you the opportunity to find weak points in your business and address them, which is essential if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

In essence, you analyze:

Strengths – things you do well, what you have that your competitors don’t, great products, etc.
Weaknesses – some examples include what others do better than you, something you’re missing in your company, and a lack of resources.
Opportunities – a need for a certain product, a lack of competition, a market that’s underserved, and so on.
Threats – poor brand reputation, a weak product, too many competitors, etc.

T

Target audience

Simply put, your target audience is the group of people you want to reach with your marketing campaigns.

If you market to developers, they’re your target audience, but you can also segment them further by thinking about more specific personas: full-stack developers, game devs, data scientists, or software engineers, for example.

Thought leadership

This is a concept – and a type of content – essential to marketers. It means you’re an expert in your field, someone people listen to, and seek information from. Thought leadership content helps your audience to trust you and your products, as they see you as credible.

If you want to become a thought leader, you can do several things, including creating content that’s educational and useful, networking with others, participating in communities, answering people’s questions, etc.

U

Unique selling proposition

What makes you different from your competitors?

What can you offer your customers that they haven’t seen before?

Having a unique selling proposition (USP) allows you to stand out in your industry. It helps your customers and potential customers to remember you better and to understand immediately what they gain when they choose your product.

Think about what you have that others don’t: maybe your pricing is lower, your product meets a specific need, or you’re the only one selling in a certain location.

No matter what it is, finding a USP helps you market your brand and products better and set you apart.

User experience

Whether someone is navigating your website or trying out your product, you want them to have the best possible experience so they want to return or buy what you’re offering.

A good user experience (UX) means ensuring easy access, having simple designs, and optimizing interfaces, among other things, from the moment someone becomes a lead to when they purchase your product.

UX helps your customers to form a positive opinion of your business, brand, and product!

V

Version control

When creating code, developers want to keep track of all the changes they make, as they may need to refer to them at some point. So, having a version control system in place means they can reverse changes if necessary, record tweaks for other devs to see, collaborate more easily with other people, and so on.

Viral marketing

Who doesn’t want their marketing campaigns to take on a life of their own and spread like wildfire across the internet?

Viral marketing is all about relying on other people to share your content – getting it to the point where your audience wants to share it for you and, essentially, promoting your message, is the tough part.

However, viral marketing techniques you may find useful include:

Reddit promotion
Social outreach
Targeting the right audience
Using videos
Offering freebies
Doing something no one expects

It’s impossible to say what marketing campaign will become viral but these might help get you started. You should also have a strong emotion behind your message, as well as a good story, a unique point of view, etc.

W

Webinar

Webinars are just like seminars, only they happen online. You can have a real-time conversation with people, present slides, showcase documents, talk about events, and so much more.

You can also create educational webinars where people go to learn more about your product, for example. It’s important to note that webinars are fantastic opportunities for you to get a sense of what your audience thinks by having a survey or poll.

White hat SEO

While black hat SEO is the term people use to refer to SEO practices that go against the guidelines of a search engine (for instance, keyword stuffing and paying for links), white hat SEO is the list of recommended techniques you should use to rank in SERPs.

They won’t get your website penalized or banned, something that can happen if you follow black hat practices. So, you must ensure that your SEO is always above board.

Whois

Every minute, countless new domains pop up all over the world. Each of them must contain certain information, such as an address, phone number, email, and name, which is considered whois information.

These records are important to ensure domains are properly registered and owned – they’re also kept in several registrars, not in one single centralized location.

X

XML Sitemap

This refers to a list of all pages on your website, which should be easy to find by search engines and indexed. Make sure Google, Bing, or any other search engine can actually crawl them! So, your XML sitemaps should be well structured.

Bookmark this handy guide to keep track of key marketing and tech terms – and always know what's what!

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