Learn Marketing Jargon [So You Can Spot The Douche-Burgers]

Marketing is full of wanky-sounding words that act like they're all fancy, but in reality they make simple concepts harder to understand.

People throw marketing jargon around in meetings or when they "jump on a quick call" (Oh, do fuck off, Mark!) to sound clever. And if you’re not fluent in the lingo, it can feel like you’ve accidentally landed on the wrong planet. Planet Douche-Burger.

You don’t need to love marketing lingo to run your own business ... in fact, we hate it with a fiery passion. But if you stick with us, we can give you a sense of what these visitors from another galaxy are actually saying.

Why Marketing Jargon Exists

Marketers use jargon because they think it makes them sound clever.

Spoiler Alert: It does not. It makes them sound pretentious.

And they’ll tell you it saves time, but we’ll demonstrate how nonsensical that is, too.

They believe that saying “we need synergy to drive engagement across omnichannel touchpoints” sounds a lot more impressive than “we should work together to make sure our stuff works across all platforms.”

When in reality, it's dripping with douchebaggery.

And time saving? Most people will need to Google each phrase on the toilet after the meeting so they can understand what the fuck just happened.

Buzzwords make boring ideas sound exciting – “growth hacking” will always get more attention than “we’re trying lots of new things to grow the business faster.”

But we think it's all pretentious bollocks.

So we're going to translate some of the marketing-bro lingo so you can understand what they’re waffling about and judge them at the same time. Our mission is to eliminate this pointless bullshit from our industry, ensuring that growing your business is as straightforward as possible.

The Bollocks You’ll Hear And What It Really Means

"Synergy"

Jargon In Use: “Utilising synergy to get a more efficient workflow.”

Real Meaning: When colleagues, teams, and departments combine their work, ideally making something better than they could have alone.

Example: Your marketing and sales departments actually talking to each other, so customers stop falling through the cracks. Y'know, teamwork?

Verdict: “Synergy” is just another word for cooperation dressed up in a ridiculously tight suit.

"Growth Hacking"

Jargon In Use: “We’re innovatively using growth hacking to accelerate our growth trajectory.”

Real Meaning: Trying creative, low-cost ways to grow your business as quickly as possible instead of burning piles of money on ads. It's just a fancy phrase for "working hard".

Example: Dropbox’s free-storage-for-referrals trick that increased growth by 3900%, or that café offering free coffee for a TikTok post. Just try as many different ideas as possible.

Verdict: They're just reinventing the fucking wheel by sticking the word "hacking" on the end of everything. Utter bullshit.

"Brand Storytelling"

Jargon In Use: “We emotionally engage consumers with a brand storytelling.”

Real Meaning: Telling real stories about your business so people might remember you and maybe care. It's called being human.

Example: A craft gin brand sharing the story of the founder’s nan making gin in a bathtub in 1962.

Verdict: Valuable if the stories are true, cringey AF if they’re fake.

"Customer Journey"

Jargon In Use: “We need to optimise the customer journey to produce more sales.”

Real Meaning: The steps someone takes from first hearing about your brand to turn into buying buying customers (and hopefully making repeat purchases).

Example: Sees Instagram ad → clicks to website → reads reviews → joins mailing list → buys socks.

Verdict: It’s a map of the customer’s experience, not exactly wizardry.

"KPI (Key Performance Indicator)"

Jargon In Use: “We’ll monitor KPIs to ensure success metrics are achieved.”

Real Meaning: A number that tells you if what you’re doing is working.

Example: Newsletter sign-ups per week, sales per ad, average order value. Are you happy with how many they did?

Verdict: Fancy term for “the numbers you care about.”

"Conversion Rate"

Jargon In Use: “We optimised our content marketing conversions by 12% quarter over quarter.”

Real meaning: The percentage of people who do the fucking thing you're trying to get them to do (buy, sign up, click).

Example: 100 people visit your website, 5 buy something → 5% conversion rate.

Verdict: Boring but actually pretty useful.

"Lead Generation"

Jargon In Use: “We’re executing a multi-channel lead gen strategy.”

Real Meaning: Finding people who might want to buy your stuff and offering them a freebie so you can collect their info and guide them down the "sales funnel" (more on that horrible shit next).

Example: Someone downloads your free PDF and gives you their email = lead generated.

Verdict: First step to a sale, not rocket science.

"Sales Funnel"

Jargon In Use: “We’ll optimise the sales funnel to improve conversions.”

Real Meaning: The step-by-step processes you employ to get people from “never heard of you” to “take all my money.”

Example: See an ad → click to a page → sign up for email → buy the thing → maybe buy again.

Verdict: It’s just a common sense set of steps you want your customers and clients to take.

"Omnichannel Marketing"

Jargon In Use: “Creating a seamless omnichannel marketing experience.”

Real Meaning: Making sure a customer’s experience and your branding are consistent wherever they interact with you, online, email, in-store.

Example: Adding something to an online basket and seeing it in the app too.

Verdict: Fancy words for “everything matches” on your website, store, emails, social media, and visuals.

"ROI (Return on Investment)"

Jargon In Use: “We’ll maximise ROI on our Meta advertisements with strategic initiatives.”

Real Meaning: How much money you got back from your adverts vs how much you spent.

Example: £1000 spent on ads → £3000 in sales = decent ROI. The boss will be happy.

Verdict: The only buzzword your accountant actually cares about.

"Leverage"

Jargon In Use: “We’ll leverage our assets for maximum output.”

Real Meaning: Using what you already have to your advantage.

Example: Turning a long blog post into 5 social media posts, a newsletter, and some email marketing.

Verdict: We reeeeaalllllyyyy fucking hate this one. Stop saying “leverage” and just say “use.”

"Deliverables"

Jargon In Use: “We’ll define the project deliverables.”

Real Meaning: The actual stuff you get at the end of a project.

Example: Your marketer says they're going to write two blogs and an email, and they provide you with two blogs and an email. Deliverables.

Verdict: A wanky word that means giving people the shit you say you're going to give them.

How to Stay Sane Whilst Traversing Planet Douche-Burger

When someone throws jargon at you, stop them in their tracks and ask: “What the fuck does that actually mean, Mark?”

If they can’t explain it in easy-to-understand terms, they probably don’t understand it either.

Translating buzzwords into normal language not only clears your head but also makes decision-making easier. You stop feeling like you need to be a marketing insider to have a conversation about your own business.

Our Take: We Fucking Hate Marketing Jargon & Will Avoid It At All Costs

At Monotropic Media, we don’t do soggy word salad.

We speak human.

While many autistic business owners and entrepreneurs with ADHD are perfectly comfortable around the industry lingo, many of us loathe the complexity of the way Mark and his mates speak.

It's a marketers job to make your business as straightforward to understand for your customers and clients as possible. So, why is everything so needlessly fucking confusing behind the scenes?

If you’re interested in working with marketers who’ll speak to you like an actual human being, send us a message and we'll get back to you within 24 hours.

No pissing about.