Brand School
The Brand.e Dictionary
All the marketing words your designer keeps saying, explained like a human. Marketing loves its jargon. We don't. Plain English, zero fluff, mildly cheeky.
No judgement here. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or a grandma with a brand-new business, everyone's allowed to not know things.
The Brand Basics.
Marketing.
Everything you do to help the right people find you, understand you, and eventually buy from you. Not just adverts. Your packaging is marketing. Your Google reviews are marketing. The way you answer the phone is marketing.
Branding.
What people think and feel about you when you're not in the room. Your logo is not your brand. Your logo is a name tag your brand wears.
Advertising.
Paying to put your message somewhere people are already looking. A subset of marketing, not a synonym for it.
Target audience.
The specific people you're trying to reach. "Everyone" is not a target audience. It's a wish.
Brand identity.
The visible parts of your brand. Logo, colours, fonts, imagery, the way your words sound. Everything someone could point at and say "that's them."
Value proposition.
The one-sentence answer to "why you and not them." If yours could be copied and pasted onto a competitor's website without anyone noticing, it isn't one yet.
Tone of voice.
How your brand sounds when it talks. Formal or friendly, dry or warm, cheeky or careful. Consistency here does more work than most people expect.
Brand guidelines.
The document that says how your brand is allowed to be used. Which logo version, which colours, which fonts, what never to do. Prevents your brand slowly turning into six different brands.
Touchpoint.
Any moment a person encounters your business. Your invoice is a touchpoint. Your out-of-office reply is a touchpoint. Most businesses design three and ignore thirty.
Rebrand.
Changing how your brand looks or sounds. A full rebrand changes the strategy underneath. A refresh just tidies the surface. People often ask for the first when they need the second.
Brand equity.
The commercial value of people knowing and trusting your name. It is why two identical products sell at different prices.
Positioning.
The space you occupy in someone's head relative to your competitors. You are the cheap one, the fast one, the fancy one, or the one nobody can describe. Choose deliberately.
Logo Language.
Vector.
A logo built from mathematical instructions rather than pixels, which means it scales to any size without going fuzzy. File types: .ai, .eps, .svg, .pdf. If your designer only gave you a JPEG, you don't have a logo. You have a photo of one.
Raster.
The opposite. Built from pixels, so it degrades when enlarged. .jpg, .png. Fine for a website. Not fine for a billboard.
PNG vs JPG.
PNG supports a transparent background, JPG does not. If your logo has a white box around it on a coloured background, someone gave you a JPG.
Favicon.
The tiny icon in a browser tab. Usually a simplified version of your logo, because full detail disappears at that size.
SVG.
A vector format built for the web. Small file, infinitely scalable, stays crisp on every screen. Ask for one.
Logo mark.
The symbol on its own, without the name. Think the tick, the apple, the swoosh. Only works once people already know you.
Wordmark.
Your business name set in a specific typeface, with no symbol. Perfectly legitimate as a logo. Cheaper to make and often harder to get wrong.
Lockup.
A fixed arrangement of your logo elements. Symbol left, name right, specific spacing. Locked so nobody rearranges it on a Tuesday.
Clear space.
The invisible margin around your logo that nothing else may enter. Stops your logo being squashed against a headline.
Monochrome version.
Your logo in one colour, usually black and white. Needed for stamps, embroidery, faxes and anywhere colour is not an option.
CMYK vs RGB.
CMYK is for print, RGB is for screens. Send an RGB file to a printer and the colours shift. This is why your brochure came back looking slightly wrong.
Hex code.
The six-character code for a specific colour, like #1A1A1A. The only reliable way to tell someone exactly which blue you mean.
Campaign Speak.
Campaign.
A set of connected marketing activity with one goal and an end date. Not "posting regularly." A campaign has a beginning, a point, and a finish line.
Objective.
What the campaign is actually for. Awareness, leads, sales, sign-ups. Pick one. Campaigns with three objectives usually achieve none.
Call to action (CTA).
The bit that tells people what to do next. Book now, message us, get the guide. Content without a CTA is a conversation that ends awkwardly.
Landing page.
A single page built for one campaign with one action. No menu, no distractions. Sending paid traffic to your homepage instead is the most common money leak in small business marketing.
Impressions.
How many times your content appeared on a screen. Not how many people saw it, and definitely not how many cared.
Reach.
How many individual people saw it. Always lower than impressions, and more honest.
Engagement.
Likes, comments, shares, saves. Useful signal, terrible goal. Nobody has ever paid a supplier in likes.
Conversion.
Someone did the thing you wanted. Bought, booked, subscribed, enquired. The only number that pays rent.
Conversion rate.
The percentage of people who converted out of everyone who saw it. Tells you whether the problem is your traffic or your offer.
A/B test.
Running two versions to see which performs better. Change one thing at a time or you learn nothing.
Retargeting.
Showing ads to people who already visited you. It is why that pair of shoes followed you around the internet for a fortnight.
ROI.
(Return on investment.) What you got back versus what you put in. If you cannot measure it, you cannot claim it worked.
Strategy Stuff.
Marketing strategy.
The plan for how you will reach and convince people, over months not days. Answers who, what, where and why before anyone opens Canva.
Sales strategy.
The plan for turning interest into money. Marketing gets them to raise a hand. Sales shakes it.
Funnel.
The journey from "never heard of you" to "bought from you." People drop out at every stage. Knowing where they drop out is most of the job.
Awareness stage.
The top of the funnel. They have a problem but do not know you exist. Educational content lives here.
Consideration stage.
They know you exist and are comparing options. Case studies, reviews and pricing clarity matter most here.
Decision stage.
They are choosing. Make it easy. Remove friction, answer the last objection, tell them exactly what happens next.
Lead.
Someone who has shown interest and given you a way to contact them. A follower is not a lead.
Lead magnet.
Something useful you give away in exchange for contact details. A checklist, a guide, a template.
Customer journey.
Every step someone takes with you, from first glimpse to repeat purchase. Usually messier than the diagram.
Competitor analysis.
Looking properly at what everyone else is doing, so you can deliberately not do it. Most useful for spotting the phrases everyone repeats.
Differentiation.
The reason to pick you over the identical-looking business next door. Should be true, specific, and hard to copy.
KPI.
(Key performance indicator.) The specific number you have agreed to care about. Choosing three is focus. Choosing twelve is a spreadsheet nobody opens.
Social & Content.
Carousel.
A multi-image post you swipe through. Good for step-by-step content, before-and-afters, and anything too long for one image.
Reel.
A short vertical video. Currently the format platforms push hardest, which is why everyone suddenly makes them.
UGC.
(User-generated content.) Content made by customers rather than by you. A customer's phone video of your product usually outperforms your polished advert, which is either encouraging or insulting depending on how much you spent on the advert.
Voice-over.
Recorded narration over video. Ninety percent of it is filmed on a phone in a quiet room, not a studio.
Hook.
The first line or first second. Its only job is to stop the scroll. "Struggling with your brand?" is not a hook. It is a survey.
Caption.
The text under a post. Where the actual selling usually happens, and where most people paste three sentences and eleven hashtags.
Content pillars.
Three to five themes you post about consistently. Stops you staring at a blank screen wondering what to say.
Grid.
How your Instagram profile looks as a whole. First impression for anyone deciding whether to follow you.
Story.
A post that disappears after 24 hours. Lower stakes, more casual, good for showing the human running the business.
Static post.
A single image that does not move. Still works. Not everything needs to be a video.
Evergreen content.
Content that stays useful for years. A dictionary of marketing terms, for instance.
Community management.
Replying to comments and messages like a person. Unglamorous, unbillable, and one of the highest-return things a small business can do.