Create brand-owned terms

Create brand-owned terms

1. Identify potential ideas and terms based on customer surveys, interviews, website comments, reviews, and live chat transcripts.

For example, inbound marketing, coined by HubSpot, is used to indicate that marketers are attracting, not bothering people. Zuora coined the term subscription economy to describe an economic trend where brands like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Spotify are successful. Growth hacker, first coined by Sean Ellis, added impact and edge to the more generic term, marketer.

2. Keep testing words and phrases in copy, until customers and industry insiders begin to use them.

For example, before coining the term conversational marketing, Drift kept refining their homepage headline and design until they finally hit on the term conversational marketing:

3. Create resources like ebooks and guides to claim and maintain ownership of your terms, drive awareness and interest, and own the search results for your term.

For example, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of HubSpot, co-authored a book on Inbound Marketing. Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown first coined the term growth hacking in a blog post, and later published an ebook titled Hacking Growth, to strengthen ownership.

4. Conduct original research to prove the value and credibility of the term you coined, and strengthen ownership.

For example, Zuora charted the growth of the Subscription Economy Index against retail sales and the S&P 500.

5. Organize events and discussions centered on your term, to drive adoption and eliminate misinterpretation.

For example, HubSpot holds an annual Inbound event, and GrowthHackers holds an annual GrowthHackers conference.