Decoding Business Buzzwords In 2015

If your goal is to convey a clear and comprehensible message to a diverse audience, then you should generally avoid using industry-specific jargon and buzzwords altogether. Esoteric terminology and acronyms tend to encumber communication, delay progress, and either bore or annoy audiences, according to Virgin Group founder and CEO Sir Richard Branson. Obviously, none of those outcomes is desirable.

However, a working knowledge of new buzzwords and jargon can prove useful for at least four reasons:

1)  If someone asks you “What does X mean?”, you’ll be able to offer a better answer than “I don’t know.”

2)  Many esoteric terms indicate trends in your industry of which you should be aware.

3)  If you receive communications that contain buzzwords and jargon, you’ll be able to decode them and translate them into plain English.

4)  Provided you know that your audience will understand precisely what you mean, buzzwords can occasionally spare you the time and effort of describing a complex idea in a roundabout way. Why use 150 words when one or two will suffice?

Here is a list of some popular business buzzwords you may have come across this year, and their definitions.

The Internet of Things (IoT): This term has a variety of definitions that range from concrete descriptions of our daily reality (the devices that gather, retain, and communicate information digitally, such as smartphones, tablets, servers, and computers) to speculative visions of the future (eventually, everyday physical objects will be integrated within our digital networks and capable of identifying themselves to other digital devices. Imagine your bedside lamp connecting wirelessly with your smartphone.) You’ll have to infer the appropriate definition from the context of the discussion.

The “it factor”: synonymous with familiar terms like “the X factor” or “the secret ingredient”. The “it factor” is the attribute or set of qualities that make(s) your enterprise special.

Momtrepreneur or Mompreneur: an enterprising businesswoman who balances the demands of founding a startup with the challenge of raising kids.

Conversation marketing: As opposed to content marketing, conversation marketing is an approach to attracting clients and customers that prioritizes interpersonal dialogue, rather than top-down communication.

H2H or Human-to-Human: the conceptualization of prospective clients or customers as fellow human beings with wants and needs that a business can help to satisfy, rather than as targets for one-way advertising messages. Effective H2H marketing involves tailored, audience-appropriate communication and encourages feedback. H2H is closely related to conversation marketing, and the two often go hand-in-hand.

Remarketing: a form of follow-up using automated text messages or e-mails to customers who have just left a business or website without following through on a deal. A remarketing message might try to entice a recently departed customer back to an e-commerce website after that customer has abandoned h/er shopping cart.

Freemium: a portmanteau of “free” and “premium”. This refers to pricing models in which a website offers a basic account with limited functionality for free, and a more versatile premium account for a monthly or annual fee. LinkedIn, for instance, features a freemium pricing model.

The suffixes -hack and -jack: By now, you’ve almost certainly encountered the term growth hacking, and you may be familiar with life-hacks (techniques or insights that can help you succeed at a particular facet of life). The suffix -jack—which implies stealing, hijacking, or piggybacking off of something that already exists—features in memes like newsjacking (leveraging a news item in order to communicate a marketing message) and brandjacking (appropriating or manipulating an existing brand to serve alternate ends). Environmental organization Greenpeace often employs brandjacking tactics in its campaigns.

What is Growth Hacking, and Could it Work For You?

Growth hacking is a term that originated in the tech industry—coined by entrepreneurs Sean Ellis, Hiten Shah, and Patrick Vlaskovits in 2010—and remains popular in Silicon Valley. In effect, it describes a non-traditional approach to marketing, wherein expansion of the business is the primary focus. Many growth hackers (some of whom have even adopted that title) would describe themselves as more-or-less analogous to the VP of Marketing at a conventional firm. Historically, growth hackers have tended to work with small- and medium-sized enterprises rather than major established companies—although there are indications that growth hacking is now making inroads into the corporate mainstream.

You needn’t be an IT wizard—or even a self-identified growth hacker—to take advantage of growth-hacking techniques.

A common perception of growth hackers is that they are mostly associated with the dot com sector, and as such, possess extraordinary technical knowledge and skill, including the ability to code at an advanced level. While this is undeniably true of many in the field, technical expertise is not necessarily a precondition for growth hacking. Marketing and expansion techniques familiar to growth hackers can be adopted by traditional marketers, entrepreneurs, managers—in fact, just about anyone in the business world. And now that website design templates are widely available, non-techies have ample opportunity to establish a profitable online gateway.

Growth hackers’ approach to marketing resembles more conventional marketing strategies in some respects, but principally revolves around the online medium. Like traditional companies, firms that adopt growth-hacking principles aim to attract customers, facilitate sign-ups, and retain clients over the long term, in part, by offering innovative products and services. But under a growth-hacking framework, the effectiveness of the website (and online pathways thereto) take precedence.

A simple, elegant website, with an easy sign-up process

Modern society is characterized by short attention spans, and a rule of thumb for business website design is that there is roughly a ten-second window in which to attract a prospective customer’s attention and pique h/er interest. In your initial user interface, aim for short but clear descriptions, understandable options, and visible (but not gaudy) links and portals. Allow visitors to navigate to some areas of your site without registering, and give them the option of signing up for additional services.

Another vital consideration is the process of registration itself: You’ll want to collect relevant data from your prospective clients, but it’s also important to ensure that they know exactly what they’re signing up for, and don’t feel daunted by the duration and/or arduousness of the endeavour. Many would-be customers will simply give up and move on rather than endure even a few seconds of unnecessary inconvenience.

 

Tools of the trade

Among the devices in the growth hacker’s tool kit are search engine optimization (SEO), data analytics, viral video, guest blogging, mailing lists, and a wide range of specialized survey and marketing software. A fairly extensive list of utilities for marketing and metrics is available here.

Some common objectives growth hackers emphasize in the development of a new product or business are virality, effective distribution, and ease of access and use of the business’s website (from the customer’s perspective). The purpose of metrics, surveys, and other data is to provide feedback as to the success of those efforts.

Start with your networks to drive traffic. Use “calls to action” to generate sign-ups.

Online advertising can get expensive, and virality can be a difficult and time-consuming ambition. For start-ups with low cash flow, the cost and challenge of driving traffic to a website can be especially prohibitive. One of the ways around this problem is to start with your social network. Let your friends on Facebook know about your business, send e-mails to your contacts, call up friends to gauge their level of interest.

Create a landing page separate from the website’s home page, and direct visitors toward it. Once they arrive, the next goal is to promote registration. An approach that many businesses find effective is the Call to Action—usually in the form of a prominent icon that visitors can click on in order to “learn more”, “get started”, etc. This is where registration kicks in, which you can then measure, analyze, and, in turn, identify ways to improve.

Of course, there is no shortcut to a robust level of growth. But a growth hacker’s mindset can help to propel your business toward that goal.

A wealth of additional information is available online. Check out QUICKSPROUT’s Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking, GrowthHackers, growth-hacker.com, and the personal blogs of growth-hacking specialists Aaron Ginn and Andrew Chen.