Why Doesn’t a Handy Marketing Terms Dictionary Exist?

Every now and then — but more often than I’d like — I’ll talk to a marketer about a testing case study and find out for the past 5 minutes the A/B test we’ve been discussing is not an A/B test. It’s actually a before and after Web page analysis.

This brings me back to my MarketingSherpa days. I remember several instances like this. Once, I was interviewing a source about what I thought was a multi-channel marketing campaign only to find out the “channels” were actually audience segments.

This got me thinking… Why don’t marketers have some sort of master dictionary of marketing terms? (Sort of like the AP Style book for journalists.) That would make communicating so much easier because everyone would be on the same page. Of course, who would do this? I don’t know. And would there be some tug of war over the definitions? Most certainly.

It’s a confusing thing – marketing terms. Even in the testing industry, vendors have varying definitions on what they consider a conclusive result. Some say you must run a test for at least a week, others say you must run a test for at least two weeks. Here’s our definition of conclusive results.

We’ve even got our own version of a marketing term dictionary, but it’s only for testing related terms. Check out our WhichTestWon glossary here. And please let us know if we’ve forgotten any terms.

Also, there may be a marketing terms dictionary out there that I’m not aware of. If one exists, please let me know.