Glossary

The plain-English glossary

Marketing and AI are full of jargon. Here are the terms that actually matter for a service business, defined simply, with no hype.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation): Optimising your business to be surfaced and cited by AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews), not just ranked in classic search results. Often used interchangeably with "AI SEO". Learn more →
AI agent: Software powered by AI that carries out a task on its own, such as answering a call, replying to an enquiry or booking an appointment, understanding plain language instead of following a rigid script. Learn more →
AI audit (AI readiness assessment): A structured review of where AI and automation would genuinely help a business, and where they would not, done before any tools are bought or built. Learn more →
AI automation: Automation that uses AI to handle tasks involving language or judgement, answering enquiries, qualifying leads, booking jobs and following up, so the work happens without someone doing it by hand. Learn more →
AI chatbot: An AI that chats with visitors in text on your website or social channels, answering questions, qualifying enquiries and booking them in, around the clock.
AI chatbot: A chatbot powered by AI that answers questions on your website or socials in plain language, qualifies enquiries, and books or hands over to a human. Unlike old menu-button bots, it understands what people actually type. Learn more →
AI Overviews: Google's AI-generated summary that appears above the traditional results for many searches, often answering the query directly and citing a few sources.
AI receptionist (voice agent): An AI that answers phone calls, understands what the caller needs, answers common questions and books appointments, including after hours. Learn more →
AI search engines: Tools that answer a question directly, often naming a few businesses or sources, instead of returning a page of links. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews are the main ones, and being recommended by them is the goal of AEO.
Answer engine: A tool that returns a direct answer to a question rather than a list of links, e.g. ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews.
Attribution: Identifying which marketing source (search, social, ads, referral) led to an enquiry or sale, so you know what's actually working.
Backlink: A link from another website to yours. Genuine backlinks from reputable sites build authority and help you rank.
Booking automation: Letting customers book themselves in, with automatic confirmations and reminders that cut no-shows. Learn more →
Brand strategy: Deciding how your business is positioned, and how it sounds and looks, so your marketing stays consistent and recognisable.
Business process automation (BPA): Automating a whole process end to end, for example enquiry to booking to follow-up, rather than a single task, so it runs reliably without manual handoffs. Learn more →
Citation (local): A mention of your business's name, address and phone on another site or directory. Consistent citations build local trust.
Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who see your listing or link and then click it. A higher rate usually means your title and description are doing their job.
Content marketing: Publishing useful articles, answers and guides that get you found, build trust and feed AI search, instead of relying on ads alone. Learn more →
Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors (or leads) who take the action you want, enquire, book, or buy.
Cost per lead (CPL): What you spend, on average, to generate one enquiry. Useful for judging whether a channel is worth it.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management, one organised place for every contact, conversation and job, so nothing falls through the cracks. Learn more →
Customer lifetime value (LTV): The total revenue a customer is worth to you over the whole relationship, not just the first sale. It tells you how much you can afford to spend to win one.
Database reactivation: Reaching back out to past or dormant customers with a relevant message to win repeat business, usually the cheapest revenue available. Learn more →
Digital transformation: Changing how a business runs by adopting digital tools and automation across its operations, not just bolting technology onto old ways of working.
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust): A Google framework for judging content quality. Showing real experience, expertise, authority and trust helps pages rank, and makes AI more willing to cite them.
Email marketing: Using email to stay in front of prospects and past customers, nurture them and bring them back, usually automated off triggers. Learn more →
Generative AI (GenAI): AI that creates new content such as text, images, audio or code, rather than only sorting or labelling data. It is the technology behind tools like ChatGPT and the AI now built into search.
GMB (Google My Business): The former name for Google Business Profile. If you see GMB, it means the same free listing that powers Maps and local search.
Google Business Profile (GBP): Your free business listing on Google that powers Maps and local search. For most service businesses, the single highest-return marketing asset. Learn more →
Google Maps 3-pack: The three local businesses Google shows at the top of a maps/local search. Appearing here drives a large share of local enquiries.
Keyword: A word or phrase people type (or say) when searching. Targeting the right keywords means matching what customers actually look for.
Knowledge panel: The information box about a business, person or place that Google shows beside or above the results, built from trusted sources across the web.
Lead generation: Attracting and capturing new enquiries from people who could become customers, through search, ads, content or referrals. Learn more →
Lead nurture: Staying useful and in touch with a prospect (usually by automated email/SMS) until they're ready to buy.
LLM (Large Language Model): The kind of AI behind tools like ChatGPT, trained on huge amounts of text to understand and generate language, including answering questions.
Local SEO: Optimising to show up in local and "near me" searches and Google Maps, driven by your profile, reviews, citations and local content. Learn more →
Marketing automation: Software that performs marketing tasks automatically on triggers, instant replies, follow-ups, reminders, review requests. Learn more →
Missed-call text-back: An automatic text sent the moment you miss a call, keeping the caller engaged instead of dialling a competitor. Learn more →
NAP (Name, Address, Phone): Your core business details. Keeping them identical everywhere online is a key local-search and AI-trust signal.
No-show: A booked customer who does not turn up and does not cancel. Automated confirmations and reminders are the main way service businesses cut no-shows. Learn more →
Paid ads (PPC): Advertising on Google and Meta where you pay per click or view to put your business in front of people who are searching or who match your target audience. Learn more →
Reputation management: Actively building and protecting how your business looks online, mainly by generating genuine reviews and responding to them well. Learn more →
Sales automation: Automating the follow-up that turns enquiries into sales, instant replies, reminders and nurture sequences, so leads do not go cold while you are busy. Learn more →
Schema / structured data: Behind-the-scenes markup that tells machines what a page is (a business, an FAQ, an article). It doesn't change what users see but removes ambiguity for search and AI.
SEO: Search Engine Optimisation, improving your site and presence so you rank in search results and earn clicks.
SERP: Search Engine Results Page, the page of results (links, ads, AI answers, maps) returned for a query.
Service area business (SAB): A business that travels to its customers rather than serving them at a shopfront, such as a plumber or a mobile vet. Local SEO for an SAB focuses on the areas served, not a single address.
SMS marketing: Reaching customers by text message for reminders, follow-ups, review requests and offers. Texts get opened far more often than email, which makes them strong for time-sensitive messages.
Speed-to-lead: How fast you respond to a new enquiry. Responding within minutes is one of the strongest predictors of winning the job.
Systems integration: Connecting your separate tools (CRM, calendar, phone, email) so they share data and work as one system, instead of needing manual copying between them. Learn more →
UTM parameters: Tags added to a link (e.g. utm_source=linkedin) so analytics can attribute the visit and conversion to the right campaign.
Voice search: Searching by speaking instead of typing, through a phone or smart speaker. Voice queries tend to be longer and more conversational, and lean heavily on local and "near me" intent.
Workflow automation: A chain of steps triggered by an event and run automatically, e.g. a new enquiry triggers a reply, a booking link and a follow-up.
Zero-click search: A search where the person gets the answer on the results page itself, through an AI Overview, a snippet or a map listing, without clicking to a website. It makes being the cited source more important than ever.

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