Throughout our various Marketing How-to blog posts as well as our Local Marketing & Content Plans by Industry, we use certain phrases consistently. These ideas are often unfamiliar to business owners, nonprofit leaders, and community organizations, so we wanted to define them here.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - The process of helping your website pages appear more prominently in search engine results. The “Holy Grail” of SEO is appearing on the first page of Google, though no one can reliably guarantee that. You should aim to rank for ideas, products, services, events, and local resources - not merely your business name.
AI Discovery - The way people find answers, recommendations, businesses, events, and local resources through AI tools and AI-powered search experiences. Strong website content, structured local information, and current pages can help your organization become easier to understand, reference, and recommend by both search engines and AI tools.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Paid placement on search engines. SEM allows you to pay for clicks or conversions and show your message based on criteria like search terms, location, and audience. While your bid matters, your landing page, ad copy, relevance, and website quality also affect performance.
Content Marketing - Creating and sharing useful, relevant content to attract the right people and encourage them to take action. The Content Marketing Institute defines Content Marketing as creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. In simpler terms: create helpful content, then distribute your content effectively so people can find it through your website, email, social media, Google, and AI Discovery.
Content Distribution - The process of getting your content in front of more of the right people after it is created. This may include your website, email newsletter, social media, partner websites, community calendars, business directories, and other local channels.
Cross-Promotion - When local businesses, nonprofits, and organizations promote or support one another. Offline, this often looks like flyers in windows, business cards on cork boards, or brochures at neighboring businesses. Online, cross-promotion can happen through Local Connections™ by helping local updates, events, and resources appear across connected local channels.
Local Connections™ - Locable’s network-enabled approach to local cross-promotion and content distribution. Local Connections™ helps events, offers, jobs, posts, and updates appear across connected calendars, directories, websites, email newsletters, and partner channels so real-world relationships create more online visibility.
Participation Tax - The hidden cost created when people have to take extra steps to participate - such as submitting events, reposting updates, emailing details, or logging into another system. In community marketing, the Participation Tax causes fewer events, updates, and local resources to be shared because participation feels like more work. Learn more about the hidden cost of manual event submission.
Resourceful Website - A website that does more than sit online like a brochure. A resourceful website helps collect, organize, promote, and distribute useful local information such as events, businesses, attractions, jobs, stories, and community resources - ideally with less repetitive work for your team.
Community Calendar - A public calendar that helps people discover local events, activities, meetings, and happenings. A strong community calendar should reduce manual work, stay current, support Google and AI Discovery, and make it easier for local partners to be visible.
Business Directory - A structured list of local businesses, nonprofits, attractions, or community resources. A strong local business directory should be more than a static list - it should help people discover local options while supporting SEO, AI Discovery, cross-promotion, and ongoing community visibility.
Collaboration - Collaboration is more active than cross-promotion. It may include creating a multi-business flyer, coordinating an event, building a shared campaign, or working together to reduce costs, increase reach, or both.
Persona - A simplified profile of a specific audience segment. A persona helps you clarify who you are trying to reach, what they care about, and how to communicate with them. Often, a persona includes a name, demographics, interests, buying preferences, goals, and common objections.
Blue Ocean Strategy - Blue Ocean Strategy is a way to differentiate your product or service in order to redefine the rules of competition. Rather than adding more than your competitors, you change the rules by stressing what customer really want and letting go of things they don't.
Included are a number of frameworks to increase willingness-to-pay while reducing costs and identifying unique strategies. A couple favorites are their Four-Actions Framework to identify what should be Eliminated, Reduced, Raised and Created and their Strategy Canvas.
The Kano Model - The Kano Model framework for evaluating products and services break attributes of benefits into specific categories. For marketing purposes, it's best to focus on what makes you unique and "delights" customers while ensuring them that necessary features are included.
Power Words or High Emotion Trigger Words - There are hundreds of words the elicit emotional responses when used effectively such as: Secret, Behind the Scenes, Confession, Miracle, Proven, Quick, Instant, Accurate, Convenient, Easy, Guarantee, Now, Reliable, Cheerful, Helpful, Daring, Carefree, Genuine, Efficient, Imagine, You, Because. >> Download the free Power Words one-sheet here.
6 Principles of Persuasion by Dr Robert Cialdini - The 6 universal ways to influence decision making: Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, Consistency, Liking, and Consensus
